Talk:Invention Secrecy Act

Energy Generation?
Quoting the tail end of the article:
 * The types of inventions classified under this Act is itself a secret, but presumably include a wide range of cutting-edge technologies that are related to energy generation, munitions and explosives, cryptography, aerospace transportation and electronics.

Over time many secrecy orders have been lifted (this fact itself should be included). Is there one example of a secrecy order being put on anything related to "energy generation"? One inference many readers might make from this reference is that the government is classifying real 50 mpg carburetors or perpetual motion machines, presumably to favor the "powers that be". Wikipedia should not encourage such speculation. -Wfaxon 18:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. I changed it to reflect what is known rather than speculation. Most of them are weapons-related patents, cryptography patents, and other things of that nature. --Fastfission 13:18, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The 1971 list of patent categories subject to a security review—the last list released—does indeed include methods for energy generation and conversion, such as "Solar photovoltaic generators – if > 20% efficient", "Energy conversion systems with conversion efficiencies in excess of 70–80%", and several other energy categories. See the recent article from Secrecy News, "Invention Secrecy Still Going Strong" and the linked .pdf, the Armed Services Patent Advisory Board's "Patent Security Category Review List". --71.174.168.44 (talk) 08:24, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Also relevant: some inventions discovered in countries like Germany and elsewhere later further developed under "Project Paperclip" (perhaps a tangential reference to the method) are also secret. It has been theorized that contradictory evidence relating to early rocketry may be cases where false information was leaked via patents on purpose to confuse possible rivals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.3.100.12 (talk) 06:37, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

New-ish article on secrecy orders
From 2013. Wired: Government Secrecy Orders on Patents Have Stifled More Than 5,000 Inventions. --73.114.26.16 (talk) 13:31, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Former "Categories of inventions that are liable to classification" section that I removed
Here was the text:

''The subject matter of patents that are classified under this Act are secret, which makes it impossible to authoritatively say what types of technologies or inventions are being classified and hidden from public view. However, a review of patents that were previously classified (but have since been declassified) would seem to indicate that the vast majority of them are those patents that deal in areas of high military significance, such as cryptography and weapons development.''

It was unsourced. I have assembled a growing list of sources here that may be helpful to restore that, and I'll see if I can later. In the meanwhile I've replaced it with this:

Invention Secrecy Act -- Very Polite Person (talk) 00:25, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Sources to work through
I have not gone through most of these and will in coming weeks, and there seems to be around three or four times more.

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s120.html

https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/the-thousands-of-secret-patents-that-the-u-s-government-refuses-to-make-public.html

https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/invention/index.html

https://fas.org/publication/invention-secrecy-2016/

https://www.dodcui.mil/Patent/Secrecy-Orders/

https://wwws.law.northwestern.edu/research-faculty/clbe/events/innovation/documents/pellegrino_disclosure_effect_of_patents.pdf

https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1208&context=wmelpr

https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=ipt

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718723001133

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25545/revisions/w25545.rev0.pdf

https://www.khuranaandkhurana.com/2021/10/08/an-overview-on-the-invention-secrecy-act-of-1951/

https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1189&context=journal-of-property-law

https://www.btlj.org/data/articles2015/vol12/12_2/12-berkeley-tech-l-j-0345-0412.pdf

https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6108&context=mlr

https://michiganlawreview.org/journal/patents-procedure-applicability-of-invention-secrecy-act-where-government-use-of-invention-is-authorized/

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/hidden-costs-securing-innovation-manifold-impacts-compulsory-invention-secrecy

https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/facsch_lawrev/article/2123/&path_info=Secret_Inventions.pdf

https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=akronintellectualproperty

https://tiplj.org/wp-content/uploads/Volumes/v13/v13p351.pdf

https://www.archives.gov/cui/registry/category-detail/secrecy-orders

There should be plenty of material to expand this. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 00:57, 31 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I've started to work through these beginning somewhat with the lede, and then to expand each point there within the body. I also just posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law to see about similar scenarios from laws that had limited duration effects on people, to see how examples of those things are arranged and structured. The sources above have numerous actual examples of people and their inventions. I've also found a number of additional sources, but it'll take me weeks or longer to work through just this. Unsurprisingly, I'm easily finding data going back to the 1950s. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 00:23, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for taking the time to work on this article. I have a couple of comments:
 * Footnotes go outside of the punctuation, not inside of it.
 * The lead should neutrally summarize the article. Right now, it appears to present an argument that the Act stifles innovation.
 * voorts (talk/contributions) 02:05, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * How's the current setup looking since I changed it?  -- Very Polite Person (talk) 21:04, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It looks much better. I have a few more notes:
 * "in the opinion of selected federal agencies, present an alleged threat to the economic stability or national security of the United States" - is this what the statute said? do they only need to allege a threat, or actually find one?
 * Remove the word "simply" from the lead.
 * The lead should summarize the entire article, including the history.
 * Looking through the references list, I don't see any law reviews cited. If you have access to legal databases, I recommend looking there, or you should try looking on Google scholar.
 * Nice work. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:09, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * "do they only need to allege a threat, or actually find one?"
 * They don't seem to have to even prove it, from what I can tell. It's wholly subjective and left to the discretion of staff at the agencies. I haven't seen a passage that goes any further than that yet and have started adding some law review material that I have access to. I'll have to dig more probably but that seems accurate on available information so far, but I have literally hundreds of pages of reading to go.  -- Very Polite Person (talk) 18:04, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

"The only way an inventor can avoid the risk of such imposed secrecy is to forgo patent protection."
I've removed this here until we can source it. Putting it here for posterity as it's interesting enough to look into more later. I removed the other remaining uncited statistics factoids. Probably overkill to have that much. It would be better in a chart if we could even source that. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 18:01, 7 February 2024 (UTC)