Who Owns Film Recipes?

[takilmaboxer]

I'm not a lawyer so I thought I'd ask the community.
We have always seen the discontinuing of films, most recently Acros 100, but many other favorites over the years.
Now, I can only assume that each B&W film has a specific "recipe" for the emulsion. Thus Efke 25 would have a different recipe than Tri-X. When films are discontinued, what happens to the recipe? Does Kodak still own the recipe for Verichrome Pan, even though it is long discontinued? If a third party such as Adox or Foma wanted to duplicate that old film, would they be prevented from doing so because Kodak still owns the rights to its formula? Or are the recipes actually trade secrets?
Just curious!

 

[abruzzi]

The recipe is owned by the copyright holder. The lifespan of copyrights varies from country to country, but thanks to Disney, its a pretty long time. Parts of the recipe could be patented, and to be patented it must be a new and unique way achieving something, then that part of the recipe (i.e. using chemical Y to change the spectral sensitivity of chemical X) becomes freely available after the patent expires.

I should add that reverse engineering gets into a grey area that may be legal in some cases.

 

[AgX]

If a formula is not published in a patent (and patents not necessarily tell all to reproduce), or published in another way, it is up to the rights owner what to do with it. The rights owner is typically the manufacturer or its legal successor. In the worst case, if a company has been dissolved, a formuly may end between debris of a building...

I have seen myself at the photochemical industry old scientific documents being driven off for inceneration, my protest to no avail.

 

[Nodda Duma]

The only practical way corporate knowledge like that will get out is either via a licensing agreement or if Kodak volunteers to put the info out there for posterity (lol)

 

[nmp]

The recipe is owned by the copyright holder. The lifespan of copyrights varies from country to country, but thanks to Disney, its a pretty long time. Parts of the recipe could be patented, and to be patented it must be a new and unique way achieving something, then that part of the recipe (i.e. using chemical Y to change the spectral sensitivity of chemical X) becomes freely available after the patent expires.

I should add that reverse engineering gets into a grey area that may be legal in some cases.

As I understand, recipes are not protected by copyrights - logos, artwork, etc are. They are valid for lifetime + 70 years, for example, if approved after 1977. Patents on the other hand, which would protect something like a recipe or process for making film, are valid for 20 years after application. If the maker does not patent but relies on secret or proprietary recipe, others can legally reverse engineer and copy. More risky, but also others do not have the benefit of learning from a patent what is going on. To deter, the patent applications are made as vague as possible claiming everything under the sun. If they choose to publish in lieu of patenting, it is in public domain and anyone can use the idea. Publishing can be a good way to stop other people from patenting.

In any case, if it is an old film and no new changes have been made in more than 20 years, chances are it is not protected by a patent. So it may be fair game for anyone to make it if the recipe is known.

My 2 cent worth....

:Niranjan.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Making films like that probably involve far more than a recipe. It can entail specific equipment and a legacy of directly-trained personnel, perhaps as much art/craft as mere materials. My own background is in industrial coatings, while my wife worked in biotech quality control. If someone unlawfully pirates something patented, that's one thing; but lots of products involve trade secrets. There are ways of going after industrial spies through lawsuits. But if someone takes your product and breaks it down molecule by molecule, and essentially reverse-engineers it, there's really little that can be done. I doubt any film which couldn't sustain profitability in its former days is going to attract that kind of effort going forward. When you're talking about pharmaceutical products or even volume industrial coatings worth potentially billions, it happens frequently. A curious case is the storage overseas of large quantities of various dyes once used in the true Technicolor movie process, where nobody can get the actual dye identities for ordinary individual printing applications. Since those are just sitting in drums in a warehouse somewhere overseas, along with the special cameras themselves, and no one has come up with the budget or substantial infrastructure to revive the process, you'd think they'd at least sell off some sample dyes for unrelated usage. But nope; still a big secret. There will probably be a big earthquake, and some archaeologist a thousand years from now will uncover them, still in those drums.

 

[removed account4]

they are patented.
look up posts by photo engineer
he worked at eastman kodak and
has spoken at length about emulsion recipes and patents
good luck !
john

 

[David Brown]

I'm not a lawyer so I thought I'd ask the community.

Right. Because, um, we’re lawyers?

 

[MattKing]

Right. Because, um, we’re lawyers?

And I am not a photo engineer, but I used to practice as a lawyer.
If only things were as simple as a recipe.
The "recipe" is the simplest part - it is the application of the equipment available, in the environment one has available, with the skills of the technicians involved, using the recipe that gives the results.
And entities like Kodak tended to segregate each of those so that it was difficult if not impossible to steal the knowledge that Kodak sought to keep to themselves.

 

[AgX]

But if someone takes your product and breaks it down molecule by molecule, and essentially reverse-engineers it, there's really little that can be done.

If you make or use something commercially which is identical to what is described in a valid patent then you are infringing that patent.

Nonwithstanding whether
-) you read the patent and followed its advise
-) you never read the patent but reverse engineerd the product
-) you did neither but invented it independantly of the existent patent

 

[AgX]

But as already said

-) a patent typically does not tell the whole story
-) a patent has a limited lifetime. As there hardly has been any innovation lately at our field a patent would be irrelevant legally.
-) what else would be important for manufacture belongs to the manufacturer, or... has already been lost...

 

[DREW WILEY]

There are innumerable ways to find technical detours around chemical patents. I've witnessed this many times over the years, had it described in detail in certain cases. And like I already hinted, there are a lot of important things that never get patented because it would be easy to somehow engineer a tweak around even a suite of patents, so they remain as potentially vulnerable trade secrets. That is why the contentious field of "intellectual property" law is currently thriving.

 

[Arklatexian]

There are innumerable ways to find technical detours around chemical patents. I've witnessed this many times over the years, had it described in detail in certain cases. And like I already hinted, there are a lot of important things that never get patented because it would be easy to somehow engineer a tweak around even a suite of patents, so they remain as potentially vulnerable trade secrets. That is why the contentious field of "intellectual property" law is currently thriving.

Unless I missed it, no one brought up one of the main reasons not to waste your time trying to duplicate a formula. Any competent chemist can easily find out what ingredients are in a formula but it takes much time and much money to find out how much of each chemical is used, maybe even a million dollars or more iin some cases.. Had a friend who was a PhD in chemistry and worked with plant fertilizers and insecticides and did qualitative analysis all the time but they never did quantitative analysis for this very reason. It is not as simple as it looks......Regards!

 

[warden]

There are innumerable ways to find technical detours around chemical patents. I've witnessed this many times over the years, had it described in detail in certain cases. And like I already hinted, there are a lot of important things that never get patented because it would be easy to somehow engineer a tweak around even a suite of patents, so they remain as potentially vulnerable trade secrets. That is why the contentious field of "intellectual property" law is currently thriving.

Yes, there are detours around most patents in addition to chemical. But patents can offer a strategic advantage to manufacturers by publishing authentic methods, bogus decoy methods, or methods that are similar to what your company is doing, but not exactly. Or all of the above, all at once. Getting enough patent protection, but not giving away the farm, can be a challenge if you plan on producing the product beyond the patent term. For film though I would guess the huge initial capital investment would be the barrier to entry that would prevent most competitors from copying Velvia50 for instance, rather than knowing what the specific methods and recipes are. Kind of like razors.

Gillette has been studied for decades for their patents about lubricating strips, cartridges, pivoting heads, multi-blade gee-jaws, etc, features that do nothing at all to improve shaving but do an awful lot to improve profits. And they made them in such staggering volumes that the barrier to entry is huge; manufacturing disposable cartridges with five blades, four of which are useless, is very difficult and expensive unless you can make them by the tens of millions, and that is pretty good protection for them, patents or no patents.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I'm not a lawyer so I thought I'd ask the community.
We have always seen the discontinuing of films, most recently Acros 100, but many other favorites over the years.
Now, I can only assume that each B&W film has a specific "recipe" for the emulsion. Thus Efke 25 would have a different recipe than Tri-X. When films are discontinued, what happens to the recipe? Does Kodak still own the recipe for Verichrome Pan, even though it is long discontinued? If a third party such as Adox or Foma wanted to duplicate that old film, would they be prevented from doing so because Kodak still owns the rights to its formula? Or are the recipes actually trade secrets?
Just curious!

Why would you want to reintroduce a film that apparently died due a lack of sales and repeat a business flop?

 

[Agulliver]

Why would you want to reintroduce a film that apparently died due a lack of sales and repeat a business flop?

Because times change and perhaps a film which was unpopular 10,20,30 years ago is viable now.

Witness the considerable interest on Photrio in Panatomic X. People sometimes miss films when they're gone.

It's not quite as simple as "who own's the recipe". The recipe for the goo that eventually becomes photographic emulsion may be protected by a patent and may never have been published. The documents instructing how to make it might even have been destroyed. Also there's the actually coating process, there are several methods of coating and this might be vital to how a film performs. Coating apparatus might also be protected by patent or the design may never have been revealed. Sometimes chemicals that were commonplace in 1980 might be impossible to source today, or environmental protection laws have changed making it difficult to use. It might well not be feasible for an organisation to recreate old emulsions. Witness Adox, who have the recipes for the Efke films but cannot reproduce them due to chemical availability and the unique nature of the ancient Efke coater.

 

[Ian Grant]

Why would you want to reintroduce a film that apparently died due a lack of sales and repeat a business flop?

EFKE closed because the plant was old and wearing out, it was still using the old Schleussner Fotowerke GmbH coating line that DuPont had sold them, they licensed the emulsion rights from DuPont..

The EFKE 25 (tungsten speed) film went because an ingredient was no longer available (according to Mirko), the same happened wirth Agfa APX25 and Agfa stated sales were to low to warrant the R&D costs of reformulating the emulsion.

Of course Kodak's emulsion formulae for early Tri-X etc did fall into German hands when they invaded Hungary and took over the Kodak Ltd (UK) coating plant there which was then put under Agfa's control,. After the war it was nationalised and became Forte. The reverse happened in the US where the Government seized Agfa Ansco and gave Eastman Kodak access to all their Agfa trade secrets.

Ian

 

[AgX]

The recipe for the goo that eventually becomes photographic emulsion may be protected by a patent and may never have been published.

The content of patents IS published, that is the idea of patents, spreading knowledge compensated by royalties.
(Let aside secret patents, but that is a rare breed.)

 

[Nodda Duma]

Something else to consider after gaining experience studying and making emulsions: As your experience begins to pull back the veil surrounding the mystique of emulsion making, it becomes possible to gain an understanding of what part of the process or which addition to the recipe affects which characteristics of the end result. Much of the modern process controls are designed to ensure consistency and coating quality on a large scale... those aside, reproducing the basic characteristics such speed, tonality, silver content, spectral response, etc., is a simpler (albeit still challenging) problem especially in smaller volumes and single-coating films.

 

[dwross]

I've been reading through this thread this morning, and was considering a reply. Then, I got to #19. Jason has expressed my thoughts better than I could. "Veil of mystique" indeed. It still amazes and delights me how easy it is to make really good film -- any format. No debate that we can't make something as advanced as the most recent of the modern emulsions, but we couldn't do that anyway, even if we had the access to descriptions of the complete processes. Researching those is an interesting goal in itself. History is always worth learning. But, if anyone wants to make negatives or paper, just do it. 2 cents from an emulsion-making darkroom. d

 

[removed account4]

small scale...
sean posted something about a futuristic emulsion spray head to self coat materials
years ago when alaris was being formed someone there spoke about small scale coating runs
and it seems that is exactly what they are doing... first with 3200, next with ektachrome who knows what will be after that.
much like some of the craft beers being produced ( heady topper )
==
you said it denise !

 

[takilmaboxer]

Small scale-exactly. I started this thread after pulling a couple of sheets of Efke 25 out of my dwindling stash to photograph some wildflowers. The fine grain and poor red response made this an interesting film to use. It got me wondering if the desirable characteristics of other discontinued films could be reproduced on a small scale. We've seen RPX 25, Berg. 400 and Retro 320 all produced in the last few years, so why not? But if the needed ingredients are proprietary, secret, or no longer available, it wouldn't work. And it could be expensive; but how much would you be willing to pay for a fresh brand new roll of HIE?

 

[dwross]

takilmaboxer,
If you want an exact duplicate of Efke 25, yes, that would be difficult. If you want a very close match (fine grain, low red sensitivity), then that's as easy and inexpensive as you could ask for. I think that's the take-home message a number of us (all actual emulsion makers) are trying to convey.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I've stated a number of times how I infer certain things about photographic manufacture from a degree of analogous experience in paint and industrial coatings. In a few notable cases, big manufacturers literally possess research facilities more extensive and expensive than entire competing companies, replete with several kinds of electron microscopes, X-Ray diffraction equipment, and multiple floors of highly trained phD sleuths. So, no, not just any chemist can pick something apart and reverse engineer it. It might take a significant costly infrastructure. Kinda like the difference between just breeding cattle and having the ability to genetically engineer them. But unless there is a commensurate financial incentive, it's not going to happen. I still have a stash of both Efke 25 and Acros in the freezer, not to mention rarer things. But I'm not anticipating the return of any of them. Once I heard Acros was doomed, I took a fresh look at other films and developer tweaks until I got a
relatively straightforward practical substitute for its kind of applications.

 

[removed account4]

drew:

you don't need to be a PHd sleuth or chemistry wizard to make photographic emulsions ..
if you go to denise's website or look at her books you will see.
it is pretty simple ...