It鈥檚 equivalent to blacking out five Thomas Edisons from history. Over 5000 patents in the US have now been decreed too sensitive to be made public, five times the number once held by America鈥檚 most celebrated inventor.
Figures released by the last week show that secrecy orders were applied to 128 patents in the year to October 2007 鈥� taking the total number to 5002. Of the new orders, 53 were on private inventors, against 29 in 2006.
The US Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 allows US military and intelligence agencies to impose a gagging order on any patent 鈥� whether from a commercial R&D or a garage inventor 鈥� if its publication threatens national security.
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Private inventors
Of the new orders, 53 were served on private inventors, compared to 29 in 2006 and 32 in 2005. The secrecy orders require inventors not to reveal details of their invention in any way 鈥� or risk 2 years in jail.
鈥淚 suspect that the oldest secret patents date back to the early days of nuclear weapons,鈥� says Steven Aftergood, who tracks government secrecy issues for the . 鈥淭here are certain technologies that have not ceased to be sensitive despite the passage of 50 or 60 years.鈥�
Aftergood adds that the policy is unlikely to have stifled a modern-day Edison. 鈥淚t would be nice to think [they] had the answer to global warming or some other miracle energy-generation technology, but it鈥檚 more likely to be a nuclear-powered can opener,鈥� he says.