If I recall correctly, their patent for method covered a wide range of constituent elements, but left off gold. I would feel pretty bad for them if they genuinely discovered an RTP superconductor but that omission prevents them from becoming billionaires.
But more likely the issue is that their current method has lots of room for improvement and someone else finds one that is substantially better.
ETA: apparently wrong, can patent composition of very novel materials.
You can write stuff down generally enough that it's hard to make small changes and get around it. I did a lot of "1-10%" stuff in the claims.
The patent is here for reference: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023027536A1/en
And yeah, they left off Au.
The only thing I can think of is that they did it and know that those noble metals don't work very well, and so they're getting everyone else to follow a wild goose chase down a very expensive rabbit hole while they already have a better approach.
... but the tech doesn't look that developed. Very strange.
I'm no patent lawyer, but there is literally a US patent-office category covering "material" for exactly this kind of invention. Section 505 - "Superconductor Technology: Apparatus, Material, Process".
> This is the generic class for subject matter involving (a) superconductor technology above 30 K and (b) Art collections involving superconductor technology. Apparatus, devices, materials, and processes involving such technology are included herein.
https://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspc505/def...
Even so - if this works out, their prizes and paid speaking gigs will cover a very comfortable life if that's what they want. I'm not sure why they should be entitled to more than that.
They'll make a ton of money either ways. Maybe not billionaire level, but they'll be venerated wherever they go, will be granted countless prizes, will sit on the boards of important companies, and have their pick of academic jobs - all of it entirely deserved, of course.
Is it possible that the inventors do not receive a dime of royalties?
However, they have told me what I interpreted to mean that if someone improves it but uses it then they need to license the underlying patent. That just makes sense, it's required in order to implement their concept.
And in reverse the original company can keep doing whatever they want as long as it isn't covered by the referencing patent. Makes sense to me there too, if they come up with some other clever way to make it good enough more power to them. There's no reason for them to pay some other people who patented something they don't use.
Better yet would be to offer partial payouts for failed efforts if research is made public.
This is probably more relevant for pharmaceuticals though.
