On July 20, 2000, the scientific journal Nature published a letter by Lijun Wang and co-workers of NEC concerning propagation of a light pulse at a speed nominally 300 times faster than the accepted speed of light n2. Newspapers across the United States covered this story as a major breakthrough. In their everyday work patent attorneys face the same issues presented to American readers on July 20: how to judge novel technical findings quickly and accurately in the face of possibly incomplete evidence. Herein, as a guide to such an analysis, three aspects of the story are discussed: the scientific issue, the intertwined prior art/embargo issue, and the reporting by newspapers of a story originating from a press release.
BACKGROUND
Although the major news story seemingly began with a July 19 press release by NEC and concomitant coverage by newspapers on July 20, there had been previous coverage of the scientific story on May 30, 2000 by the New York Times n3, on June 4 by the London Times n4, on June 7 by the BBC n5, by Matt Drudge as well as a posting on a StarTrek website n6.
SCIENTIFIC ASPECT
Superluminal propagation is a "popular" area and in fact, the manuscript for the NEC paper was submitted on May 11, 2000, shortly before a different paper had appeared in the journal Physical Review Letters on May 22, 2000 on the subject by Anedio Ranfagni and co-workers n7, which asserted propagation at 7% higher than the speed of light.
The NEC press release began: "Scientists at NEC Research Institute (NEC) the US basic research unit of NEC Corporation (Nasdaq: NIPNY - news), have proven light can travel faster than its acknowledged speed in vacuum [299,792.4580 km/sec] in a successful experiment in superluminal light propagation. Despite exceeding the vacuum speed of light, the experiment is not at odds with Einstein's theory of relativity and is explainable by existing physical theory." The press release also quoted the principal investigator, Dr. Lijun Wang: "Our experiment shows that the generally held misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light, is wrong. Einstein's Theory of Relativity still stands, however, because it is still correct to say that information cannot be transmitted faster than the vacuum speed of light. We will continue to study the nature of light and hopefully it will provide us with a better insight about the natural world and further stimulate new thinking towards peaceful applications that will benefit all humanity."
One notes that the press release makes clear that Einstein's [special] theory of relativity was not overcome, and that what was at issue was "the generally held misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light." My undergraduate physics texts (e.g., Berkeley Physics Volume III), in discussing differences between phase velocity and group velocity, suggested that there were things that could exceed the speed of light, although information could not be transmitted at such speeds. Further, a separate aspect of special relativity [causality principle], including that all observers will observe events in the same sequence, was not challenged by the NEC result.
An issue in many of the superluminal propagation papers is how to measure the peak of the light pulse. One chemist analogized the wave packet to a train with an engine in the front, a tank car in the middle, and a caboose in the end. Some of the experiments may have initially measured the peak at the tank car, then detached the tank car and caboose and measured the peak at the locomotive; some have criticized these for distorting the light wave packet. Other experiments, while not detaching the tank car and caboose, similarly may have altered where the measurement of the peak was made during the experiment. n8
In Wang's experiment, there are multiple laser pulses through cesium vapor, which first establish a population inversion in the cesium spin system (thereby exciting the cesium atoms and setting the stage for emission from an energetically unstable situation) and then trigger an emission. n9 The experiment takes advantage of backward modes of the light.
James Glanz of the New York Times said of the experiment: "But in the cesium experiment, the outcome is particularly strange because backward light waves can, in effect, borrow energy from the excited cesium atoms before giving it back a short time later. The overall result is an outgoing wave exactly the same in shape and intensity as the incoming wave; the outgoing wave just leaves early, before the peak of the incoming wave even arrives. As most physicists interpret the experiment, it is a low-intensity precursor (sometimes called a tail, even when it comes first) of the incoming wave that clues the cesium chamber to the imminent arrival of a pulse. In a process whose details are poorly understood, but whose effect in Dr. Wang's experiment is striking, the cesium chamber reconstructs the entire pulse solely from information contained in the shape and size of the tail, and spits the pulse out early."
Tom Siegfried of the Dallas Morning News stated n10: "A lot of complicated interaction between the light and the [cesium] atoms is involved in this trick. But the basic point is that the atoms mess with the way the waves in the wave packet interact and interfere. The upshot is that the waves cancel and enhance each other in a way that creates a new peak, forward from the location of the original peak. The shape of the pulse stays the same, but the position of the peak changes. So the wave packet's velocity, as gauged by the position of the peak, appears faster than a pulse traveling through an empty chamber."
THE EMBARGO AND PRIOR ART
The journal Nature has an "embargo" policy n11 which is summarized in the following: "Material submitted to Nature must not be discussed with the media, except in the case of accepted contributions, which may be discussed with the media no more than a week before the publication date under our embargo conditions. We reserve the right to halt the consideration or publication of a paper if this condition is broken." On the present facts, the article by Wang and co-workers was submitted to Nature on May 11, was discussed in the New York Times n12 on May 30 and in the London Times on June 4, all prior to the acceptance date of June 26. The embargo policy of Nature probably was not followed n13.
Of relevance to patent attorneys seeking prior art, the non-adherence can affect relevant dates. Thus, although the publication date of the article in Nature was July 20, there was significant disclosure of information on May 30, nearly two months earlier. Thus, when looking for prior art, don't be restricted to scientific databases.
NEWSPAPERS AS INFOMERCIALS n14?
The coverage by Associated Press n15 stated: "Scientists have apparently broken the universe's speed limit . . . Researchers say it is the most convincing demonstration yet that the speed of light - supposedly an ironclad rule of nature - can be pushed beyond known boundaries, at least under certain laboratory circumstances."
On July 20, the Washington Post headlined "the speed of light is exceeded in lab" and stated that scientists have broken the cosmic speed limit. n16 The St. Louis Post-Dispatch proclaimed "feat seems to defy theory of Einstein." n17 The Record (Bergen County, NJ) headlined "Scientists beat light speed's limit."; The Commercial Appeal (Memphis) wrote "Scientists break speed of light"; the Dayton Daily News said "Nothing faster than light? Guess again." The Osgood file on CBS stated "Physicists may have found a way to make light travel faster than Albert Einstein says it does." The Times Union (Albany, NY) found cosmic truth challenged in breaking speed of light. n18
The Newark Star-Ledger was particularly effusive. The sub-headline was "Princeton researchers shatter cosmic record," and the first two sentences were: "For generations, it's been one of the immutable laws of physics -- nothing moves faster than the speed of light. Don't tell that to a team of Princeton researchers, who say they've managed to shoot light pulses at such a rapid pace that they've left the old record in the dust." n19
Physicist Robert Park, author of the book "Voodoo Science," wrote in his What's New ("WN") column on July 21: But front page headlines across the country were proclaiming, "The Speed of Light Has Been Broken." It's now going to be impossible to characterize any claim as physically impossible without people scoffing: "that's what they said about the speed of light." At WN, we're already getting triumphant phone calls and e-mails from Einstein deniers. Charles Bennett at IBM Watson points out that this is little more than a confused rehash of an old story, where the peak of the wave packet leaving the "superluminal" medium is causally related to just the leading edge of the wave packet entering the medium. "Rolf Landauer is dead," Bennett sighed, "and someone needs to complain for him." Park later wrote in WN: The letter in Nature seemed to say no revolutionary physics was involved, describing the result as: "a direct consequence of classical interference between different frequency components in an anomalous dispersion region." But I doubt if many journalists read it in Nature.
In fact, a comparison of the NEC press release to the newspaper stories of July 20 reveals that some did little, if any, research beyond the press release. Further, in some cases, there was a newspaper by-line without attribution to the press release. Without making any comment on the accuracy of the NEC press release, one has difficulty with the idea that newspapers would "pass off n20" the NEC story as their own, thereby leaving unsuspecting readers with the idea that there had been some independent analysis thereof.
Finally, relevant to the University of Rochester's assertion that Searle/Pharmacia's COX-2 inhibitor CELEBREX falls within the scope of US 6,048,850 (see L. B. Ebert, Intellectual Property Today, p. 22 (June 2000)), note that the New York firm that prosecuted the '850 also had been working as co-counsel for Searle in the CELEBREX/VIOXX interference (see Amy Fantini, The American Lawyer (Aug. 7, 2000)).
ENDNOTES
n2 L. J. WANG, A. KUZMICH & A. DOGARIU, Gain-assisted superluminal light propagation, Nature 2000, 406, 277 - 279. The paper was received by Nature May 11 and accepted for publication on June 26, 2000.
n3 James Glanz, "Light exceeds its own speed limit, or does it?", New York Times, p. D1, May 30, 2000; also "Faster than light, Maybe, but not Back to the Future," late edition, final, p. F1, May 30, 2000.
n4 Jonathan Leake, Eureka! Scientists break speed of light, London Sunday Times, June 4, 2000. "Scientists claim they have broken the ultimate speed barrier: the speed of light. . . . The research is already causing controversy among physicists. What bothers them is that if light could travel forward in time it could carry information. This would breach one of the basic principles in physics - causality, which says that a cause must come before an effect. It would also shalter Einstein's theory of relativity since it depends in part on the speed of light being unbreachable."
n5 Dr. David Whitehouse, BBC Online, 14:04 GMT, June 7, 2000.
n6 Also, among others, The Toronto Star, May 30, 2000; Daily Record, p. 18 (June 5, 2000); the Buffalo News, p. 2B (June 14, 2000); Time, p. 94 (June 12, 2000); University Wire, June 12, 2000; The Statesman (India), July 10, 2000.
n7 D. Mugnai, A. Ranfagni, and R. Ruggeri, Observation of Superluminal Behaviors in Wave Propagation, Physical Review Letters, 2000, 84 (21), 4830-4833. This was received by PRL on January 21, 2000.
n8 The need for a well-defined approach is seen by analogy to football, wherein the ball is marked at the position of the ball when a knee first hits the ground. Variability in definition would have dramatically affected the last play of last year's Superbowl as the Titan receiver extended his arm, with the ball, over the goal line.
n9 USHA LEE MCFARLING, Los Angeles Times, July 20,00: "According to Wang and several other physicists, the reason the light behaves the way it does is that when the leading edge of that third laser pulse begins to enter the chamber, it carries with it all the information needed to reconstruct the entire light wave. That allows the cesium atoms in the chamber to spit out a light beam before the entering pulse has fully reached them."
n10 Tom Siegfried, Velocity of light still limits speed of transmitting news, The Dallas Morning News, July 25, 2000. "But exceeding the velocity of light? Page One news! At least it was last week, when headlines in some major newspapers heralded claims that scientists had broken the ultimate speed limit. A new experiment purported to show that a pulse of light appeared to exit a small chamber before it entered, apparent evidence of superluminal (that is, faster than light) transmission. But there was no need for Einstein to turn over in his grave. His theory of relativity remains intact. No law of physics was broken. Einstein said no signal no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Nothing in the new experiment evades Einstein's prohibition. News reports may have given the impression otherwise, however, proclaiming that 'scientists have broken the cosmic speed limit' and 'textbooks could be wrong.'"
n11 The rationale is explained by Nature: Furthermore, the benefits of peer review by journals as a means of giving journalists confidence in new work are self-evident. Premature release to the media denies them that confidence as well as the ability to obtain informed reactions.
n12 The article by Glanz expressly notes that the paper by Wang "has been submitted to Nature and is undergoing peer review."
n13 Although the embargo policy nominally prohibits contact with the popular press at such early dates, it does not prohibit presentation at conferences, which in themselves may create art under 35 USC 102(a) or 102(b). The journal Nature takes the position: Neither conferences nor preprint servers constitute prior publication. Separately, a (hypothetical) position that the embargo policy was followed would evoke issues presented in Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Inc. v. CBS Inc., 52 USPQ2d 1656 (CALL 1999).
n14 See L. B. Ebert, "Commercialization of Information: Science Journals as Infomercials?", IPT, p. 5 (Dec. 99), concerning the violation by New England Journal of Medicine of its own policy on review articles. Also, L. B. Ebert, "What does it take to know something?", IPT, p. 44 (Feb. 00), especially end-notes 10, 11, and 12, on the publication by newspapers and journals of press releases.
n15 ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Light May Break Its Own Speed Limit, July 19 8:03 PM ET.
n16 Curt Suplee, Washington Post, p. A1, July 20, 2000.
n17 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. A1, July 20, 2000.
n18 As captioned in NorthernLight.
n19 Kitta MacPherson, "Lab test exceeds speed of light," Newark Star-Ledger, p. A1 (July 20, 2000).
n20 For the meaning of "passing off" in legal context, see Two Pesos Inc. v. Taco Cabana Inc., 112 S. Ct. 2753, 23 USPQ2d 1081 (1992).