[bernardom]

From the article: "The company has deliberately avoided filing patents on its heat exchanger technology to avoid details of how it works - particularly the method for preventing the build-up of frost - becoming public."

I would think that for something like this, the patent system would actually work fine. Anybody who tries to make this is going to be located in the US, Canada, Western Europe, or Japan. It's not like they're going to make cheap ones in China and India, and if they did it would be easily correctable with the WTO. What am I missing?

[JonnieCache]

SpaceX doesn't have any patents either. Musk has specifically said this is because in the long term their main competitors are the chinese, who treat patents as recipe books.

[bernardom]

I appreciate the argument about SpaceX (and the other thoughtful replies to my question). I just think that this case is fundamentally different from a rocket company. This is something that, to make profit, would need to be used by global airlines, where patent laws are much more enforceable.

My thinking boils down to this: if SpaceX comes up with a novel, patentable way to improve rocketry, China can steal it.

If these guys come up with a much faster aircraft engine, even if China made them for cheap, they could and would prevent United, Lufthansa, BA, and the other big airlines from using it.

China can steal IP when it is used internally, or sold as consumer goods to other countries that violate patent laws. They can't steal IP and sell it to large multinationals.

[UnoriginalGuy]

You're missing the point that a competitor could build it in direct violation of the patent, go into space, get all of the glory, while they tie this company up in court for tens of years and cost them millions of dollars. This company might eventually win but by then the other company has become massively successful.

This has happened before. It will happen again.

[njharman]

Maybe the principals are easily applied in a just different enough to not violate patent way.

Maybe they don't want to spend the time or money in court instead of on getting to market.

Maybe they know big aerospace companies will be able to out spend them on lawyering/lobying and so will loose.

Maybe they believe their time to make profit > than the duration of patent protection.

[rfugger]

According to this BBC Four documentary (found in another comment)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ_a21fPkYM

the engineers wanted to apply for a patent once the British government stopped funding their work, but the government classified their work as secret, preventing them from doing so.

EDITED TO ADD: Apparently the original secret classification expired in 1993, at which point they filed a patent which ended up being owned by Rolls Royce. Their current work circumvents that patent.

[rkalla]

I think "prior art" lends these companies some protection while not having detailed patents filed.