GAÏMTREZ M L E T T E R S (PVM) POLYVINYL M E T H Y L ETHER now available in development quantities
GRADES:
M-Î54-K40, 50% Solids, Water M-155-K53, 50% Solids, Water M-574-K40, 70% Solids, Toluene M-555-K53,50% Solids, Toluene THESE GRADES
ARE:
1. STABLE 2. UNIFORM 3. LIGHT IN COLOR USE
PROPERTIES:
1. Excellent adhesion to plastics, metals and coated surfaces.
2. Tackifier 3. Plasticizer 4. Soluble in water and organic solvents. 5. Compatible with most film formers. 6. Water solutions have an inverse cloud point of about 90° F. END
USES:
1.ADHESIVES 2. COATINGS 3· PAINTS 4. PRINTING INKS 5. LATEX HEAT SENSITIZER 6. PETROLEUM DEMULSIFIER GENERAL ANILINE fi FILM CORPORATION
Att: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT DEPT. 140 W. 51st St., New York, Ν. Υ. Please send me literature and samples of CANTREZ M-154 Π M-155 Π M-574 Π M-555 Π for (intended application)
Name Title Firm Address. Cit :ity. .Zip # _
State.
CEN 531
4
C&EN
MAY
31,
1965
Patents and Incentives DEAR SIR:
I have read with interest your edi torial "Patents and National Position,, in the April 26 C&EN. You state that Sen. Russell Long has been working to establish a requirement that all patents derived from a federally sup ported research should be "for the benefit of 180 million people, done with the benefit of their tax money." You refute the Senator's stand because it does not create the necessary incen tive industry requires and the end re sult will be a second-place nation. I disagree with your logic and I fully back Sen. Long on his patent position. If Sen. Long had his way, then, when a company bid on an R&D contract it could put in a no-bid if this patent clause bothered them. I'm sure that there would be enough companies to put in a bid, and in fact, a healthier competitive situation would result. Personally, I doubt if there would be any no-bids because of this except in near-monopoly instances, or where the business was not wanted for other reasons. It is a myth to assume that companies take R&D contracts only for patriotic reasons. This has been true in some instances, but since World War II the Defense Department has been a big customer zealously sought after and I doubt that Sen. Long's patent clause will slow anyone down in going after these plush R&D con tracts. Another myth connected with gov ernment R&D contracts is that these contracts are given to the most ad vanced company in the field who would have continued this work in any event and had the privilege to patent them without benefit of the R&D contract. This, like the patriotic reason, is far in the background and simply not so about 99% of the time. So far, I have said nothing about patents. This is a subject in itself, but suffice it to say that most of these are junk patents whose chief value is to have entry into a lawsuit and thus scare away the competitors. Many of the arguments used in your editorial were used about five years ago when companies wanted to be excused from price fixing because they needed in centives to carry out the policies re quired to keep the U.S. a first-place nation.
Patents have a hidden value to a large and powerful company, because it takes several years and several hun dred thousand dollars to fight one all the way. Therefore, even a junk patent has tremendous value. If it were not for these hidden values; if the Justice Department would foot the bill in a lawsuit (similar to the civil rights law) ; if the Patent Department had to make free-of-charge decisions on what constituted an infringement on a patent they allowed; then the patent laws would make more sense and their support would shift from big business to the small. If one is truly concerned that busi ness incentive would disappear with the Long patent rider, he can set his mind at ease since what is morally sound is also in the long run economi cally sound. A. F. TORRISI
Bennington,
Vt. •
·
·
DEAR SIR:
Re your editorial "Feeding the Goose and Crushing the Eggs" (C&EN, April 12) I would like to remark that all comparisons of R&D expenditures, patents issued, and gross national in come are rather misleading. The average R&D expenditure per inven tion is bound to increase as a function of our progress. Bunsen, using a primitive and inexpensive spectro scope, could in a very short period of time discover and isolate two new elements—cesium and rubidium. Nowadays we have to spend much more time and use the "slightly" more expensive mass spectrometers, elec tron spin resonance spectrometers, nu clear magnetic resonance spectrom eters, IR and UV spectrometers, p o n ographs, gas chromatographs, etc., to achieve a comparable amount of in novation. Moreover, as far as the number of patents granted is concerned, there is little doubt that the ratio between patents applied for and patents granted is continuously increasing. In other words, the number of patents issued is only a function of the ability of the U.S. Patent Office to process the steadily mounting number of applica tions (I know of a number of patent applications which had to wait con siderably longer than a year for the first Patent Office action).
Under these circumstances it is a foregone conclusion that the ratio be tween R&D expenditures and patents issued is bound to increase with time and this does not mean that there is a decrease in the conversion of research discoveries to the development of mar ketable products. JACOB ROSIN
Maplewood,
N.J.
DEAR SIR:
Your editorial, "Patents and Na tional Position" (April 26) begins and ends with exaggerations, the first by Sen. Russell Long (D.-La.), the other by the editor. Unfortunately, two ex aggerations in opposite directions do not add up to a balanced statement. The problems involved in patents re sulting from government-sponsored re search are complex and not new; they have been deeply discussed during the Hearings on Science Legislation (S. 1297 and Related Bills), 79th Con gress, Oct. 8 to 19, 1945. In these hearings, men like Irving Langmuir (Oct. 8) and R. J. Dearborn (Oct. 11) clearly stated the case for private in dustry, and Henry A. Wallace, Secre tary of Commerce, for Government— although much more moderately than Sen. Long. In the discussion after the testimony by Gen. H. H. Arnold and Col. J. C. Burton (pages 359-61), spe cific examples were fairly cited. The question of ad hoc decisions viz. uni form rules came up particularly in the exchange between the chairman, Sen. Harley M. Kilgore (D.-W.Va.), and Bruce K. Brown of Standard Oil (Ind.). I have referred to these im portant documents in The Chemist, 23 (5), 91-6 (1946).
preme Court will rull on whether a useless product can be patented." This is inaccurate, as can be seen by reading the rest of the item; the real issue is whether a process is patentable which produces a product for which no use is disclosed in the patent ap plication. There has never been any contro versy over the patentability of a "use less product." The Patent Act of 1952 (35 U.S.C. 101) says, in part: "Who ever invents or discovers any new and useful process . . . or composition of matter . . . may obtain a patent there for . . . ." (Emphasis added.) This glaring inaccuracy contrasts with the usually dependable reporting of C&EN. I hope your staff will be more careful in reporting on legal mat ters in the future. W I L L I A M H. PITTMAN
Clevehnd,
Ohio
Intelligence, Information, and Opinion DEAR SIR:
DEAR SIR:
y your statement (C&EN, March 29, page 7) with regard to the use of gas in Viet Nam had read "Surely the information available to our policy makers offers a better basis for de cision than does the information gen erally available to the public," I should have agreed with you completely. I hope that our policy makers have more information than has the public or even the technical community as a whole, and I hope that this situation continues. I believe that you, L. J. Sacks, and A. Q. Mowbray (C&EN, May 3, page 4) have all fallen into the trap of careless use of words. Intelligence and information are not synonymous and opinion is a very different thing still, not necessarily being based on either of the first terms. I am not yet ready to conclude that our three-branch system of govern ment is not an effective preventive for dictatorship. If our Senators and Con gressmen are not using their judgment and the information available to them effectively in curbing unwise actions by the Executive branch, then our remedy is to elect better representa tives rather than to ask that all tac tics and strategy in military and for eign affairs be settled by polls of pub lic opinion.
On page 21 of C&EN for May 3, the statement is made that: "The Su
Aiken, S.C.
New aspects have appeared in the 20 years since these hearings were held; yet, these informed discussions between experienced and devoted men should not be neglected. They can greatly facilitate the work of the President's new commission men tioned in the editorial. By starting from this prepared high level, the heat of controversy will readily be con verted into useful work. EDUARD FARBER
Washington,
D.C.
Patents on Processes
W. P. BEBBINGTON
PUMP LINES by Paul Lahr Sr. Application Engineer Goulds Pumps, Inc.
WHERE HAVE ALL THE "STANDARDS" GONE? When we introduced the first standard dimension pump in 1961 we were aim ing at the chemical process market. Today the complete acceptance of the standard pump concept in the chemi cal industry is history. What we didn't anticipate was how quickly the idea of pump standards would catch on in other industries. Based on sales of Goulds STD pumps, the distribution of standard dimension pumps, by the industries using them, looks like this today: FOOD PROCESSING CHEMICAL PROCESS INDUSTRIES
HYDROCARBON PROCESS INDUSTRIES
PULP AND PAPER
The reasons for this rapid and wide spread acceptance are clear-cut. Stand ard pumps reduce engineering time. That's money you're ahead. Installation costs go down. And you pare spares and maintenance costs right down to a bare-bones minimum. Obviously such benefits are rather attractive to people not only in chemi cal plants but just about everywhere. And the intangibles shouldn't be overlooked, either. It's tough to be exact, but what's it worth to stay on stream? Flexibility, too, can't be pinned down. But it's there. So are savings on space, fewer man-hours, and less paper work to keep inventories just right. Bring yourself up to date. On new 4" sizes, on Titanium units, on the complete STD story. Drop me a note and I'll send you our latest literature. Goulds Pumps, Inc., Dept. CEN-55, Seneca Falls, Ν. Υ.
GOULDS MAY
@ .
p u
3 1 , 1965
MPS C&EN
5
