• Question: What have you invented?

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      Asked by anon-290130 on 17 Mar 2021. This question was also asked by anon-290184.
      • Photo: Jesko Koehnke

        Jesko Koehnke answered on 17 Mar 2021:

        So we talk about inventions when we actually get a patent for something, because we think it has commercial value. I have been involved in a few of those for a wild mix of things.
        We talk about discoveries when we find out something new. Only a small fraction of a percent of all discoveries are patented and then classed as “inventions”, because it costs 10s of thousands of pounds to file patents.

      • Photo: Martin McCoustra

        Martin McCoustra answered on 17 Mar 2021:

        Science isn’t all about invention. A lot of science is just about finding out new things about how stuff works. It may be that someone else will take what you’ve learned and make something useful out of it. But that can take a long time.

      • Photo: Andrew Parrott

        Andrew Parrott answered on 17 Mar 2021:

        I have actually been involved in writing two patents but the companies involved decided it was too expensive to file them. The majority of what I do does find new information out, but would probably never be called an invention as such.

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