Patently stupid?

I’ve decided to patent curvy membrane and gridshell structures. I might as well get in before anyone else has the brilliant idea of staking a claim for an architectural typology in law.

Sorry Frei Otto you owe me 1% of the contract value of the Munich Olympic stadium. Ridiculous, many people would say. It’s reprehensible to patent a geometrical typology, surely such things represent the sum of human knowledge to that point, built on academic research and freely available knowledge. 

Not if Evolute, an Austrian digital geometry consultancy has its way. Their patent application claims ownership of all freeform surfaces panelised with quadrilaterals used in architecture, independent of the production method. It sounds obscure but may disguise more profound implications to designers. If you’re SOM/Buro Happold and you’ve designed the Roppongni canopy in Tokyo, us (Ramboll UK) in our timber funnel sculpture in London or parts of the new John McAslan Kings Cross station canopy, tough, you may have infringed the patent. And where will this stop? In the future will Architects feel the need to claim ownership of new shapes and combinations of typology used in building?

There is a well argued exposition and following comments here.

It might be defensible to patent the physical manifestation of original research or any new and unique procedures behind the production of a physical product. Indeed, Buckminster Fuller did the former,  but to patent the form itself?. 

Whist I’m patenting grid shells I think i’ll look at grabbing the patent for folded paper or origami-like forms. We are designing one at the new St Petersburg airport and there are lots of them about these days so maybe there is a tidy business waiting or maybe even Miesian cruciform columns are fair game? Clearly I’m not going to but is this the beginning of something disturbing? 

So far this debate has been confined to the confines of geometrical design but it needs wider discussion and scrutiny.