The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951

in 1790 the First US Congress delegated patent application review and award to the Patent Commission--consisting of Secretary of State, Secretary of War and Attorney General
this system functioned until the first of several fires destroyed all patent records and working models required in those days--in 1836

and in that year senator from Maine John Ruggles sponsored a bill to create the Patent and Trademark office of 1836--and strangely enough--Senator Ruggles, himself an inventor--was awarded patent No 1 under the new system

destroyed patents spanning 1790 to 1836 are now labeled "X-patents"

Group 220

during WW1 and WW2 Congress authorized the Dept of Defense to maintain secrecy for any patent judged to be critical to national security

the nuclear age brought about The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 which made patent secrecy permanent for strategic technologies---yearly review of each sequestered patent submission is required--the list currently numbers around 5000

a number of these date to the 1940's --- the Manhattan Project--and will likely never be released--

an interesting wrinkle is the mechanism by which present day review is administered

in the Patent and Trademark Office--employing 8000 patent examiners,
around 50 are given highest level security clearance and are referred to as
Special Laws Administration Group--- commonly Group 220

they solicit input from all branches of defense, NASA, Depts of Energy and Justice

Interesting. It had me wondering what the first english patent was…

[ARCHIVED CONTENT] UK Government Web Archive – The National Archives

Much earlier than i thought.

i have known companies that did not patent stuff for fear of letting anybody know how and what they were doing then their competition does patent same ideal and then they are forced to not use ideal they had used for many years.
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only reason to patent stuff often is to maintain control of the ideal for the 17 years or what ever the life of the patent is and of course then others can use the ideal and improve or change it to get another patent on a further improved ideal.
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that is what large corporations that have a research department do all year long. they look at new patents and see if they can use the ideals. sometimes easier to make a licensing deal and pay the patent holder for the right to use the patent. the world wide multi national corporations look at new patents from all countries and have people to translate to other languages. you could ask research librarian to make a patent list of a certain ideal or key words and they could quickly collect electronic copies of hundreds of patents in a few minutes. or librarian could show you how to do it and you could do it yourself
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i remember old library in China from a company bought by a multi national company and they had books from all over the world in all languages. literally 80% of books i could not read and the other 20% were so technical i could read but not understand anyway. the company must have for many decades been buying books from all over the world. Swiss have no problems selling to any country

Back in the early '80s we had a company research list circulated every month. It had lists of significant papers, patents and meetings in the engineering fields (pre-google...). I still remember reading that one of the Japanese car makers had gained a patent for the use of wire mesh inside the exhaust pipes of cars to reduce high frequency noise. It made me wonder how they and the patent examiners had never seen the exhaust pipes of a VW beatle!

And then you can have strange things happen when dealing with the likes of 'Group 220'.

Friend of mine working as an engineer in a certain field (this was defense work). Couple of them come with what they though was an off the wall idea in a parallel area, mention it to boss. Next thing they are told they are not cleared high enough, they know nothing, but thanks for the idea.

Sometimes the rules create strange outcomes.......

Dale

DMF_TomB said:

i have known companies that did not patent stuff for fear of letting anybody know how and what they were doing then their competition does patent same ideal and then they are forced to not use ideal they had used for many years.
.

Click to expand...

Our patent lawyers gave all us engineering types a crash course in patents,
in a one day series of lectures.
The above case was real, American manuf had secret process, did not patent,
Japanese company comes along a couple of years later and patents it.

Easy enough work around, they said keep your notes, have then signed, to document
the actual date when first company actually created/used secret process. It will hold up in court.

Not any more. The US "rolled over" and accepted the european model for patents, lock stock and barrel, basically.

First one through the patent office door wins. Patent goes 20 years. NO more fighting over who had the idea first.

However, the patent on something that was actually sold in the markets for years previously should be an automatic invalidation. The company lawyers fell on their faces there. All new patents have a review period during the application time, where they are disclosed by the patent office and are available to be commented on.

If the company had been on the ball, they could have squashed the application right there, basically for free. After that it costs lawsuit money.

If, for instance, this supposed Japanese company had sold any products with that patented device in them before putting in their application, THAT would have invalidated the application. Much more so for sales going back years before the application by some other company.

A friend of mine was making a certain woodworking-related product. He got a nice letter from a lawyer who requested he "cease and desist" pirating his client's patented device. My friend was not worried. He wrote the lawyers a nice letter back, referring them to a 40 year old issue of Popular Mechanics, where the device was fully described and plans published.

He kept right on making the thing, and never heard another word about it. The lawyer knew better than to risk opening THAT can of worms, because that sort of thing is a near-automatic patent-killer. Exceedingly obvious "prior disclosure". If he pushed the matter, the prior disclosure would come out, and he would have lost his client the patent.

The same should go for anything which has been in a commercially sold product, un-patented, for many years. But the lawsuit would be more complicated than for widely published disclosure such as in Popular mechanics.