Unusual Patents

snowstreams

I saw this recently but didnt think much of it at the time.
It describes a method for creating a room temperature superconductor that the US navy claims works.

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-navy-patent-room-temperature-superconductor.html

But I saw more unusual patents from the Navy recently that describe things that sound like more like UFOs for the want of a better word!
Reactionless drives etc.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-aerospace-tech-boss-claims-key-ufo-patent-is-operable

It seems like they stemmed from random experiments that yielded results, in a similar way to how the EM drive came about. Which we now know doesnt work.

Has anyone here looked into these?

Capt'n Midnight

Do not get me started on patents. Too many speculative patents.

Once upon a time you had to prove you could do the thing in the patent. And patents were supposed to grant the inventor a temporary monopoly on condition they provided the details that would allow others to reproduce the invention.

Both rules are long dead.


British Rail got a patent in 1970 for a Nuclear Powered Flying Saucers.
A classic example of a patent that only existed to prevent anyone who actually invented a similar device using it.



Prior art checks ?
In 2001 John Keogh got an innovation patent for a circular transportation facilitation device
you may know it better as the wheel.

IIRC Fire and thinking have also successfully been patented.



IMHO Unless a patent represents a sizeable step in human knowledge AND allows everyone to replicate it when the patent expires then it only exists to block real innovation.



So until the technology is demonstrated I view patents as a way to stifle work in that area. Look at 3D printers. They didn't come out of nowhere. What happened is that many of the original patents expired in 2014.

snowstreams

Thanks for those examples!

It does look like pure speculation alright.
Apparently it was granted in order to block the Chinese from using it in the military.
If that was really the case they would be better keeping it all secret.

Maybe its a new military tactic to put the Chinese on the wrong course with their research!

Capt'n Midnight

snowstreams wrote: »

Maybe its a new military tactic to put the Chinese on the wrong course with their research!

Nah

The really secret stuff stays secret.


IBM used to patent everything so that you couldn't replicate their designs. Because there was too much stuff to check through.

Midster

I once heard of an invention were tiny spiral holes were either drilled or molded into a long thick bit of plastic, then water at one end was pressurized through the tiny holes producing enough electricity to not only power the pumps that pressurized the water, and a return pump, but more besides.

I’m not sure if it was fake, or were it went or what happened to the idea, but it looked pretty good.

Never seen it since.

snowstreams

That almost sounds like cold fusion from the 80s!

TheSpooner

I've got a good weird patent for you. This is a patent for a transceiver that doesn't use radio waves and can go straight through shielding. What's more, this particular patent was argued about in Court over a 5 year period and is used in case law as an example of a valid patent, that was initially denied, because the claims seem like pseudo-science.

US5845220 (A) ― 1998-12-01: Communication method and apparatus with signals comprising scalar and vector potentials without electromagnetic fields
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=US&NR=5845220A&KC=A&FT=D&ND=3&date=19981201&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP#

Fathom

Patent flooding another problem.

Patent flooding has been described as an approach to patent claiming in which the patent flooder files many patent applications that claim minor or incremental variations on technology developed by another, the target company. The goal of the patent flooder is to surround the target company's technology with patents and patent applications, so that the target company cannot commercially exploit its technology without the risk of infringing the flooder's rights.