From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 09:48:11 MDT
Hal Finney wrote:
> Bret Paatsch writes:
> > But with this Secret Patent idea, based on a convo I had
> > with a patent office guy in Australia, the would be patenter
> > subs their application and if anything weaponish grabs the
> > attention of the examiner, the examiner is obliged to shoot
> > it off to the the defence department for the once over.
>
> Yes, this really happens. In the United States it is called a
> Patent Secrecy Order and is described at
> http://www.sumeria.net/free/secorder.html and
> http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/invention/program.html
> for example.
Thanks for the link Hal, I would not have intuitively gone
looking for this stuff with a keyword like Sumeria.
>
> If your invention is given such an order, you not only
> don't get the patent, you aren't allowed to make or use
> the invention, or to tell anyone about it. One reference
> I found from the 1980s suggested that there were several
> thousand patent secrecy orders in effect in the United
> States at that time, many of them relating to cryptography.
>
Yeah I was hoping to collect a few declassified historic
examples of these but the Australia patent office guy I'd
been speaking though he recollected but could not put
his fingure on a specific example.
<snip>
>
> One way to avoid a patent secrecy order is to not
> patent your idea.
Yep. But at this stage although there is much in patent
law that is ripe for revision the most optimal (fastest)
paths to actualising transhumanist technologies that I can
think of rely on the use of patents to secure funding in scale.
> As far
> as I know, there is no comparable procedure to hush
> up your invention if you don't patent it. Of course
> certain areas such as nuclear research are "born
> classified" and you can't start selling nuclear reactors.
> It's possible that eventually nanotech and similar
> technologies will be treated like nuclear work,
> something illegal unless done under government
> supervision.
That this will happen with nanotech and cryptography
strong enough to withstand governmental economic
imperialism is my current concern.
Regards,
Brett Paatsch
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