[cbanek]

I'd really love some world changing breakthrough technology now. I really would. But I don't really understand this stuff (not that I'm qualified). I guess you can actually patent a perpetual motion machine, so the fact that it is a patent, doesn't seem to require that it be real.

I can't help but think back to the 80's SDI "Star Wars" programs. We said that we could do a lot of things that we couldn't, and that made the Russians crazy.

Now I'm not prone to conspiracy theories, but could it be possible this is a misinformation campaign?

It's interesting the "new IEEE paper" referenced in the paper only has the one author and no coauthors. I wonder who (if anyone) peer reviewed this paper? Also in the views, interestingly it's only had 40 views (not sure if this is paper views, or not, it says PDF and HTML views). Sadly I don't have access to read it!

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8871349

[sterlind]

SDI freaked out the Russians because it was possible, if not feasible. A number of research projects (e.g. Brilliant Pebbles, Project Excalibur, Shiva Star) were spec'd and tested to various degrees. It would have cost many trillions, but we could have built a missile shield. SDI lives on as the Missile Defense Agency, which has had some modest successes (though nothing like taking down ICBMs during midcourse.)

Russia realized they couldn't afford to clone SDI, so they came up with an asymmetric tactic - MIRVs. A cat-and-mouse game on paper followed - the Soviets planned dummy warheads in MIRV payloads to confuse SDI, the Americans devised sensors to measure warhead density, etc.

AFAIK, Reagan really wanted SDI to work - if he'd been willing to compromise on it, we could have had denuclearization at the Rejkyavik summit. The myth that SDI was a misinformation campaign seems unsubstantiated by what I've read.

[scottlocklin]

MIRVs had been around since the 1960s, and were probably a response to the first gen ABM systems, which were to light off a giant nuke in the path of incoming missiles. I think SDI really did freak out the Soviets; the Russians are still mad every time we field a new kind of ABM, and have been developing numerous obvious countermeasures to them, like "use something that isn't a standard ballistic missile." It's all so tiresome. Everyone should stop.

Of course SDI looked plausible like you said, and ultimately did materialize various ABM systems. This stuff is just insane gorp. Dr Pais has a history of this sort of thing; a quick look at his patent trail on google scholar nets nonsense like "laser augmented jet engines"[1] which are obvious nonsense.

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US7080504B2/en

[cmroanirgo]

It seems that these devices are real:

> Despite the patents sounding extremely far-fetched, official documents show that the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise personally attested to the reality of these inventions and their importance to national security and peer-state competition in appeals with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Of course, the article immediately follows with:

> Meanwhile, the scientists and physicists we have talked to on and off the record have made it clear that they find the claims largely absurd and not grounded in scientific fact. At the same time, there is, in fact, many decades of government research into similar technologies that are very much alike in concept to some of Pais's work.

[jbay808]

I don't get it. The point of patents is public disclosure -- if you want to keep something secret, you don't patent it. A patent isn't going to prevent a foreign government from copying a technology in their own country. It instead helps them, because a patent is supposed to document the technology in sufficient detail to replicate it. It would just prevent them from competing to sell them in the US.

[kipchak]

A few potential explinations are deliberate misdirection intended for actual programs or towards foreign intelligence services, a filing or paperwork mistake, testing the waters for Mass disclosure, or infighting between the Navy releasing information and the Air Force or some other branch that owns the craft and has tested it on Navy latest and greatest assets.

[Iv]

My cynical experience at going through many pseudo science article makes me more inclined to believe that someone is just using Navy's name to fuel a scam.

Maybe someone clueless at the Navy was a tool, or maybe they just got into the zeitgeist that using official positions to pull a scam is the trendy thing to do.

[daveslash]

>> A patent isn't going to prevent a foreign government from copying a technology in their own country

Absolutely agree. But that's probably a moot point if the secret in question has already gotten out and you're/we're aware of it ("gotten out", at least from an intelligence standpoint). If that's the case, maybe they're just trying to protect the rights to said technology within the U.S. -- if they know the secret has gotten out to a foreign state, it would be problematic to have said foreign state patent said secret here, thereby preventing U.S. companies from making it? Just guessing...

[close04]

> It’s also worth noting the well-established trend of the U.S. military making use of the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 to file patents unavailable for public viewing

I could be that real patents are filed under the Invention Secrecy Act, and misdirection patents are made public.

[_8j50]

Misinformation

[bra4you]

"I guess you can actually patent a perpetual motion machine"

No, you can't because it violates fundamental principles of scientific laws.

[bra4you]

Downvote -4?

The voting system here lets me question the sanity and competence of many readers here.

For those interested:

----------------

Proposals for such inoperable machines have become so common that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has made an official policy of refusing to grant patents for perpetual motion machines without a working model. The USPTO Manual of Patent Examining Practice states:

    With the exception of cases involving perpetual motion, a model is not ordinarily required by the Office to demonstrate the operability of a device. If operability of a device is questioned, the applicant must establish it to the satisfaction of the examiner, but he or she may choose his or her own way of so doing.[25] 

And, further, that:

    A rejection [of a patent application] on the ground of lack of utility includes the more specific grounds of inoperativeness, involving perpetual motion. A rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 for lack of utility should not be based on grounds that the invention is frivolous, fraudulent or against public policy.[26] 

The filing of a patent application is a clerical task, and the USPTO will not refuse filings for perpetual motion machines; the application will be filed and then most probably rejected by the patent examiner, after he has done a formal examination.[27] Even if a patent is granted, it does not mean that the invention actually works, it just means that the examiner believes that it works, or was unable to figure out why it would not work.[27]

----------------

[cbanek]

Not only can you, but many people have:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion#Patents

[catalogia]

From that what that link says, it sounds like you could but now cannot patent perpetual motion devices, since those applications are now rejected in America and UK. Perhaps you can patent them elsewhere though.

[ganzuul]

IIRC they are not rejected but you have to demonstrate the invention with a physical implementation. Of course this proves nothing but it does reduce the amount of paperwork.

There is legitimate research going on into reversing the casimir effect but the narrative they present is one of tribology rather than power generation.