Wilhelm Roentgen: refused to commercially exploit his discovery of X-rays.
Jonas Salk: when asked who owned the patent for the polio vaccine he had developed in 1952, he replied ‘The people. Could you patent the sun?’
John Walker: declined to patent the matches he invented in 1827, or ‘sulphuretted peroxide strikables’ as the yard-long sticks were described.
Pierre and Marie Curie: refused to patent their process for refining radium. Marie declared that radium ‘is a natural chemical, it is for the people’.
Volvo: the Swedish car manufacturer made its ‘lap and diagonal’ seatbelt freely available to competitors.
Here are five inventors who spurned patents in favour of giving their inventions 'to the people'
