Re: US Patent for Free Energy?

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Thu, 4 Apr 2002, Allen Shotwell wrote:

> Someone sent me this and I admit to not having looked into it closely, but
> I though the Patent Office frowned on granting patents for such things.
>   http://fortboise.org/patentwatch.html (the March 29.2002 comment)

Actually there are quite a few "perpetual motion" patents, some of them
quite recent.  If the patentee doesn't make impossible claims, then they
can usually still patent the mechanism itself.  This is counterproductive,
because if their device should really produce energy, the patent doesn't
cover that claim, so they've shot themselves in the foot protection-wise.

Thomas Bearden has been talking about fringe-physics theories for the last
15 years or so.  Search on "scalar waves" and "tesla", and you'll get lots
of hits on Bearden.  The crackpot science community is watching the latest
events closely.  The biggest issue is that Bearden hasn't said anything
about "closing the loop", about connecting the output of his device to its
own input so the net energy output is unmistakable.  Several devices in
the past have convinced their creators that excess energy was present, but
this was based on possibly-faulty measurements.  Without stand-alone,
closed-loop operation, chances are good that the MEG creators are fooling
themselves.

  "Cargo-cult science":  science done without scientific integrity,
   lacking in utter honesty, lacking those special kinds of leaning-over-
   backwards behaviors used to avoid fooling oneself.  (paraphrasing
   Feynman)

(((((((((((((((((( ( (  (   (    (O)    )   )  ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb@eskimo.com                            http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits   science projects, tesla, weird science
Seattle, WA  206-789-0775    sciclub-list freenrg-L vortex-L webhead-L