X-Message-Number: 30878 Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 06:52:18 -0700 Subject: Re: [CN] US-Patent: cooling without risk of macro-breakage References: <> From: (Tim Freeman) From: "Jens Rabis" <> >here a US-Patent: http://www.custombiogenics.com I don't see a patent there. If you want to talk about a patent, please give the patent number. Their main business is apparently selling racks that would allow conveniently storing and unstoring cryonics patients if cryonics organizations were willing to dice them into lots of little pieces, which isn't going to happen. Cryonics organizations already have suitably-sized cartridges for their patients so they can be handled while being stored and unstored, so what's the step forward here? >CH-Service: http://www.labtec-services.ch/D/kryotechnik.php Google translated well enough from German to English: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.labtec-services.ch%2FD%2Fkryotechnik.php&sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 Their point seems to be that they have a dewar-like container that's slightly above the LN2 boiling point so you don't have LN2 in contact with one sample and then flowing around to have contact with another sample, so the samples don't contaminate each other. I don't see what this has to do with macro-breakage. You would get a slower initial cooling rate than you'd get with direct contact with LN2. This would probably improve macro-breakage, if the alternative were to do initial cooling by dumping in the LN2. The cryonics organizations don't do initial cooling by direct contact with LN2, so that's not the right comparison. Still no indication of what progress you think happened. Please make your point yourself rather than citing marginally relevant URL's and then asking us to guess. >A small, but very important step forward ... cooling without risk of >macro-breakage! Patents generally obstruct progress, since they're usually patenting something obvious. Prior to the patent, everyone could do it. After the patent, if anyone does it they have to pay the patent holder if they get caught, or invalidate the patent by proving that someone knew this before the patent was filed. In the US, at least, knowingly violating a patent triples the damages: http://www.quizlaw.com/patents/what_are_the_penalties_for_pat.php Everything under the sun is patented, so the extent of one's unavoidable liabilities depends on what one was thinking at the time. In short, there is thought-crime. The friendly thing to do is to talk about research without mentioning patents, or to talk about patents without saying what is patented, but never mention both together because then you're potentially inflicting triple damages on your listener. I bet some people have to protect themselves from this by getting someone to filter their reading material. -- Tim Freeman http://www.fungible.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=30878