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The #USGovernment’s Secret Inventions

Secrecy orders allow U.S. defense agencies to control patents, including those that are privately developed.

By Arvind Dilawar
May 09, 20189:00 AM

"Invention secrecy in the U.S. dates back to at least the 1930s, but it really took off in the ’40s, when the development of nuclear weapons was shrouded in classification. It became official policy in 1952 with the #InventionSecrecyAct, which allows USPTO to keep patents deemed ‘detrimental to the national security’ on lockdown. Under the act, USPTO’s commissioner of patents became empowered to flag patent applications—even those developed by private citizens—for review by government defense agencies, which could request that certain inventions be kept secret. Patents covered by such ‘secrecy orders’ may be restricted from export, made available only to defense agencies, or even classified. Patent holders can appeal secrecy orders, but the power to rescind those orders remains in the hands of the agencies that made the requests. While there may be a chance those agencies will reconsider, the statistics aren’t promising: According to figures from the Federation of American Scientists, from 2013 through 2017, an average of 25 old secrecy orders were rescinded each year—while 117 new secrecy orders were imposed annually. With so many inventions deemed secret, so few eventually publicized, and the entire process itself obfuscated in classifications, it’s no wonder that critics have questioned whether the current invention-secrecy regime is really working properly.

“FAS has been dogging the patent-secrecy system for three decades now. Founded in 1945 as the Federation of Atomic Scientists by the engineers of the #ManhattanProject, the organization was originally formed to promote nuclear disarmament. As time passed, it renamed itself the Federation of American Scientists and expanded its scope to address additional issues, like chemical weapons, arms sales, and government secrecy in general. In the ’80s, when the Reagan administration and the National Security Agency sought to limit discussion of cryptography using invention secrecy, FAS entered the fray, successfully fighting off government censorship and tracking the USPTO’s secrecy activity ever since."

https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/the-thousands-of-secret-patents-that-the-u-s-government-refuses-to-make-public.html

#Confiscation #GovernmentCensorship #AlternativeEnergy #AlternativeTechnology #NikolaTesla #WalterRussell