GE sucks up government money, invests in secret stuff that we're not allowed to know about
Jason sez, "GE bought a patent for a device called a Stamet Pump that was developed with significant taxpayer money by DOE and then refused to share the device with other firms or the public at large. DOE argued unsuccessfully that the patent should be part of the public domain.
This device has tremendous potential in aiding gasification of certain types of coal, something that would pave the way for carbon sequestration from coal-fired power plants. DOE argued with GE execs that they should either release the technology to the public domain or license it to multiple other firms in the interest of the public, since it was funded with public money.
Also intriguing in this story is that the state of Wyoming has partnered with GE to build a $100 million gasification test center using this technology--Wyoming is chipping in half of the money from federal funds that were released to the state after a long battle by coal-friendly legislators. Wyoming released the documents detailing the partnership with so many pages blacked out because of "intellectual property, commercial, and trade secrets" that no one can figure out the answer to questions like "what does Wyoming get for its $50 million?"
GE and Wyoming decided to start a new test center after DOE officials, upset at GE's selfishness, pulled the plug on other gasification research based on the device and instead shifted their funding to a competitor who would presumably be more willing to share the fruits of taxpayer research dollars."
$100-million GE-Wyoming Coal Project Found Willing, Discreet Partner In Wyoming (Thanks, GE!)
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Release of this information should be a precondition prior to release of funds for any new GE proposals or any other firm. The Gov. should also look at terminating any other funding of GE programs. Just another company that is to big for its britches, time for a reality check.
What do you mean 'secret stuff we're not allowed to know about'? Google for 'stamet pump' and you get a quite technical article (which I find pretty interesting, having once studied chemical engineering)
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/192454-Es5ow7/webviewable/192454.pdf
It's a solid-matter pump for fluidized bed combustion reactors.
The pump was developed by Stamet Inc, with support from the DOE. I don't really see how it's G.E.'s fault here if they bought the patent from Stamet. Sounds like the DOE screwed up if they didn't write a contract demanding what they wanted in terms of IP rights.
BTW: The article is misinformed - carbon gasification does nothing for CO2 sequestration. It can, however, assist producing hydrogen and other intermediate 'clean' fuels directly and efficiently from coal, as well as more efficient coal plants.
Here's the real question: How did the rights to a federally funded invention fall into the hands of a private company?
Details are a little sketchy, but it looks like this:
(1) The DOE gave lots of federal funding to the University of Wyoming for the development of this pump.
(2) Patent rights to the pump were assigned to a spinoff company called Stamet, Inc.
(3) GE bought Stamet, Inc., including the patent rights, over the objection of the DOE.
Did GE really operate in bad faith? It saw great value in the invention, noticed that the rights were completely up for grabs, and bought them. Any other company that saw the same opportunity could have made a higher offer.
Even more importantly: The University of Wyoming likely accepted the DOE research funds under the Bayh-Dole Act, which obligates the university to (1) patent anything useful, and (2) make good-faith efforts to see the patented inventions commercialized - i.e., assigned to for-profit companies that can make good use of the inventions. That's right: the federal government REQUIRES the university to do exactly what it did.
In other words - everything seems to have gone according to the general plan of commercializing federally funded research - indeed, as federal law intends and requires! So what's the problem?
I guess the DOE just doesn't like that the rights weren't licensed as it would have preferred. Of course, it could have conditioned its granting of funds to UW on a particular licensing arrangement, or at least on its involvement in any subsequent sale of patent rights. Or, once the value of the Stamet engine was known, it could have negotiated to buy the rights outright. But it did neither, and now it is playing the "big greedy corporation" card. This is shameful.
- David Stein
GM, and now GE? Maybe I should've picked a simpler acronym to get my bailout bucks sooner.
I think its funny how companies will stop at nothing to make more profit.
First they let the DOE develop most of stament pump, then they buy the patent to the stament pump, get kicked out of federal labs because they hard-balled the DOE on it, then sign a contract with a public institution to develop it more. Then after most of it was conceived with public funds, take it into the dark and tell us that we'll benefit from the technology someday soon, for about 2 Billion a pop because they're going to integrate it with a vastly larger and more complicated system.
Not only after all of that the UW signs the deal not even knowing what they will get, if anything out of it. Same thing for the state of Wyoming. We might as well just start working for free and letting the corporations keep our pay.
G.E. is Barry's Haliburton. They're feeding the govt a line about 'Green' technologies & the healthcare equipment they manufacture, no doubt the contracts will flow. Also, G.E.'s media ownership is a feather in their cap to the publicity craving hacks that have been elected. Let's just hope they continue to build jet engines for military applications, unfortunately, we might need them.
My wife has to jump through hoops to get reimbursed from grant funds for food she purchased for a group meeting of participants. But GM can get $50mm just by blacking out a bunch of stuff. I should show her this technique.
Why is the DOE funding private projects with public money, then allowing the fruits of those projects to be patented? It seems that a condition of receiving DOE funding should be the public domain release of all results.
(Yes, I know it's a naive opinion.)
@#7
The reasoning is, if you can't have all the profit, there's no incentive to do it. Sigh.
100 million dollars? The banks are getting 700 billion and it's all going down a rabbit hole and we're worried about GE getting 100 mil?
@7: It's called Private-Public partnership and was touted as one of the great tools to provide Small Government(tm) by people having vested interests in the private part of said partnerships.
Most government funded projects in private industry include "march in" rights to the IP. (under the Bayh-Dole act)
They only apply if GE were "sitting on" the technology. It strikes me that the DOE could push this issue if they wanted to.
Before we all pile on GE, it's worth noting the history of patents used by the U.S. government.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/09/68894?currentPage=all
In this case, the patent holders got nothing at all, because the U.S. government doesn't have to pay to license patents.
In the GE case in the article, I think it's worth noting that the DOE apparently wanted the technology in the public domain. Another common alternative is that releasing any info building on the Starnet pump patent would enable competitors to work around the patent - something that is often quite easy to do. So they've moved the whole thing to trade secret.
From GE's point of view, the DOE appears to be saying "what you are doing is so important that you should lose your investment for the good of the nation". *We* might agree, but I can't imagine GE agreeing.
After a bit of searching, it looks like the Stamet Pump might be better known as the Posimetric Feeder, and it looks like a nifty device "dosing" out solid material for automated batching and so forth.
they reinvented the wheel.
Doesn't DARPA fund a lot of (small) private companies? I'm assuming one of them was bought by GE, and the rights transferred.
DRTFA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioremediation
Scroll down to #3 "Mycoremediation".
@13 "the DOE appears to be saying 'what you are doing is so important that you should lose your investment for the good of the nation'"
Well, it worked on Chrysler and GM bondholders...
The article never mentions patents. GE probably bought the company for their trade secrets. Those trade secrets might have been developed with government money, hard to know since they are secret. In this case patents would have been better - at least there would be a patent that would expire - trade secrets never expire. That was part of the reasoning behind the policy of the government funding to Universities that requires them to Patent the results.
Apparently both corporations and large government agencies are not like psychopathic adults, as in "The Corporation", but rather petulant toddlers.
"It's my ball. If you won't play my way, I'm taking it and going home."
"Fine, I didn't want to play with your stupid ball anyway"
FOIA Fail.
Why did Cory thanks GE for the link?
sarcasm
Chicken or egg: did GE stop advertising on BB before or after this post?
@#2-
I oversimplified a bit when I said that gasification could pave the way for CO2 sequestration from coal. What I probably should have said was that gasification makes sequestration easier and cheaper and that this device makes gasification of certain types of common coal easier and cheaper...but I wanted Cory to read and post this so I trimmed things a bit.
Here's what the DOE has to say:
Coal gasification may offer a further environmental advantage in addressing concerns over the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. If oxygen is used in a coal gasifier instead of air, carbon dioxide is emitted as a concentrated gas stream in syngas at high pressure. In this form, it can be captured and sequestered more easily and at lower costs. By contrast, when coal burns or is reacted in air, 79 percent of which is nitrogen, the resulting carbon dioxide is diluted and more costly to separate.
Link: http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/index.html
Somewhere, a university bigwig relaxes on a beach house, owned in his sister's name. ...