I know for a fact that the government can order a patent kept secret. I once patented a spread spectrum transceiver which was placed in a secret vault. It used some new concepts which the air force wanted with held.
Dave -----Original Message----- From: Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> To: vortex-l <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, Mar 28, 2012 4:51 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:the desktop supernova [snip]... , the technology would have been appropriated by the goverment . . . The U.S. government cannot "appropriate" things at will. There has been some talk here about the government ordering patents to be kept secret. People who know about patents have told me that is a myth. I wouldn't know, but I doubt the government can suppress information. If it did not grant you a patent, you could simply publish the entire patent application on the Internet, perhaps in a foreign country. If you are not enrolled in the military or the CIA, and you have not signed an NDA or other secrecy agreement with a corporation or agency, you can tell anyone you like about just about anything. There are some commonsense rules about revealing military secrets or dangerous chemical and biological formulas, such as the DNA of virulent avian influenza. Other than that it is a free country, and even if it isn't, many other countries are, and the Internet is everywhere. - Jed ......
