Article ID: CBB000775036

Patenting the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Intellectual Property, and Technological Control (2008)

unapi

During the course of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government secretly attempted to acquire a monopoly on the patent rights for inventions used in the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. The use of patents as a system of control, while common for more mundane technologies, would seem at first glance to conflict with the regimes of secrecy that have traditionally been associated with nuclear weapons. In explaining the origins and operations of the Manhattan Project patent system, though, this essay argues that the utilization of patents was an ad hoc attempt at legal control of the atomic bomb by Manhattan Project administrators, focused on the monopolistic aspects of the patent system and preexisting patent secrecy legislation. From the present perspective, using patents as a method of control for such weapons seems inadequate, if not unnecessary; but at the time, when the bomb was a new and essentially unregulated technology, patents played an important role in the thinking of project administrators concerned with meaningful postwar control of the bomb.

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Authors & Contributors
Kevles, Daniel J.
Cioci, Vincenzo
Con Diaz, Gerardo
Mays, Michael
Yi, Doogab
Wellerstein, Alex
Concepts
Science and law
Patents
Intellectual property
Manhattan Project
Physics
Science and war; science and the military
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
20th century, late
18th century
17th century
Places
United States
Hiroshima-shi (Japan)
Ohio (U.S.)
Germany
France
Europe
Institutions
United States. Patent Office
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie
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