-18-
Dr. Buckley was concerned about the matter of ownership, "a red flag", |
If the same purpose could be accomplished through lease, it would be much
easier to get legislation for that adopted.
Mr. Dean said there are two
problems, the fuel and the materials produced in the reactor,
seem to want free rein with fission products.
Some people
Mr. Trowbridge said the only
alternative to private ownership of the product would be a government com-~
mitment to purchase the product,
Dr. Buckley felt the government could
commit itself to leaving the product there, without committing itself to buy
it.
The question of private ownership was discussed at some length.
The
Committee in general seemed to have some reservations as to the necessity
for private ownership.
Mr. Murphree favored it. .
Mr. Murphree raised the question of patents,
Patents
Mr. Dean said that the
Commission has been very conservative in this regard, and needed to be much
more liberal, as permitted by the Act.
question were the following,
policy is the security system.
Various views expressed on this
The main difficulty in liberalizing the patent
(The Commission, however, still files secret
patents with the Patent Office to satisfy the disclosure requirement.)
A
big difficulty would be to determine whether an invention resulted from the
use of taxpayers' funds.
(The analogous problem in military contracts has
been worked out fairly well.)
A great body of information has been built
up in the National Laboratories, and it would not take much extrapolation
for a newcomer to jump to a patent application.
-
Patents are a big incentive
for the chemical companies, much less so for utilities.
The patent situatio
should-be resolved stepwise, otherwise the whole business will founder.
The Commission's present patent policies are a great irritation.
1
DOZ ARCHIVES 5
OC