Wireless Power Legality?

Question

I actually thought of this concept when I was a sophomore. I recently found out that some people at MIT have already started researching this. My question is, will I be able to research this when I'm working on my Masters next year? Or does the concept belong soley to them now? Thanks.

Answer 1

Given that this is such a new field, there will be plenty of research subjects (on wireless power) available in the next few years. Even if MIT hold patents, there are always improvements to patents that can be obtained. That's what the vast majority of patents are anyway -- improvements on old patents (called prior 'art').

Even if MIT holds a bunch of patents, that would not preclude academic research from taking place, especially for a masters thesis.

Even if you were to use their exact methods and system, and come up with a way to make it transmit twice as much power, that would be patentable (certainly worthy of a masters thesis).

What you might be worried about is a relatively new phenomenon relating to patents, where companies will not only want to protect their intellectual property, but also any possible future IP. They do this using what I will call pre-emtive patents (granted by patent clerks who are overworked, and not fully knowledgeable about the state-of-the-art for a given subject). These companies will also threaten to sue anyone who is even researching the same things for which they hold patents.

So long as there is no monetary gain (as in pure academic research), supposedly they can't 'touch' you, but some lawyers will talk un-informed judges into anything these days.
If this was a doctoral dissertation I might worry a bit more, but a master's thesis -- well, I wouldn't worry so much.

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