> Possibly, but I’d like to pose a relevant question: had they discovered it and then chosen to keep quiet, how long would it have been before someone else discovered it independently?
>Answer: definitely less than 20 years. So why then should the first group to discover this be given 20 years of exclusivity?
What is absolutely hilarious about your musings here is that you are completely, 100% wrong. You make un-informed guesses and manage to get just about every aspect of the issue completely wrong. Well done.
Would you like to know when it was known that gallium-doped silicon substrate was going to perform well and possibly better than boron-doped substrate? At least the mid-70s. Would you like to know when this patent was issued? 2000. So for almost 25 years everyone KNEW gallium was better. It was literally sitting out there on every periodic table on the planet and for some reason no one produced gallium-doped PV cells at scale or cost. Why is that?
Maybe because the trick was not knowing that gallium is what you wanted to dope the silicon with, but in knowing HOW TO ACTUALLY PULL IT OFF. For more than two decades it was staring everyone in the face. For more than two decades everyone knew what the target was. For more than two decades NO ONE DID IT. That is why the first group to figure out how to manufacture gallium-doped silicon with the proper amount of other components were given exclusivity, because if they had not managed to do it then maybe we would all still be waiting for gallium-doped PV cells.
>Answer: definitely less than 20 years. So why then should the first group to discover this be given 20 years of exclusivity?
What is absolutely hilarious about your musings here is that you are completely, 100% wrong. You make un-informed guesses and manage to get just about every aspect of the issue completely wrong. Well done.
Would you like to know when it was known that gallium-doped silicon substrate was going to perform well and possibly better than boron-doped substrate? At least the mid-70s. Would you like to know when this patent was issued? 2000. So for almost 25 years everyone KNEW gallium was better. It was literally sitting out there on every periodic table on the planet and for some reason no one produced gallium-doped PV cells at scale or cost. Why is that?
Maybe because the trick was not knowing that gallium is what you wanted to dope the silicon with, but in knowing HOW TO ACTUALLY PULL IT OFF. For more than two decades it was staring everyone in the face. For more than two decades everyone knew what the target was. For more than two decades NO ONE DID IT. That is why the first group to figure out how to manufacture gallium-doped silicon with the proper amount of other components were given exclusivity, because if they had not managed to do it then maybe we would all still be waiting for gallium-doped PV cells.