“Perhaps Nutriset could have saved more lives by freeing the license on Plumpy’Nut. But how does one actually measure something like this? Is it even true?”

It makes sense to look at patent disasters from the point of view of “accident investigations”. Trying to assign blame makes no sense; it is more important to figure out what went wrong, how, and why; and even more importantly, what could be done to prevent scenarios like this in the future, if they need to be prevented.

The case of Plumpy’Nut (see web page) has been covered in earlier postings.  Almost everyone who has commented on the case has held that the patent system is broken. Perhaps. But just how is it broken? Continue reading Plumpy’Nut, Part 4: What do we really know? →

The hard facts of Case Plumpy’Nut have been given in Part 1 and Part 2. Now is the time to speculate. If someone wanted to be truly evil with this patent, could they start a “Kill the Children” campaign, as I have outlined in Trolling on the Human Rights?

This is clearly a patent that has the potential to be truly dangerous in the wrong hands. However, whatever bad press Nutriset has gotten, it is not causing the maximal damage that such a patent would allow.

Nor is it the only player on this field;  even a very quick Google search brings up patents and applications which on the face of it don’t seem to differ that much from the Plumpy’Nut. (See for example 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,…). All of these products are however slightly inferior to Plumpy’Nut in some way, so that Plumpy’Nut is optimized for famine relief.

Consider now a different scenario. Suppose Nutriset was not producing Plumpy’Nut anymore, but instead had sold the patent to a non-practicing entity X.  (Non-practicing entity NPE is a polite term for “patent troll”)

Continue reading Plumpy’Nut, part 3: What could a truly evil company do? →