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US Patent Office Fast Tracks Green Patents
eldavojohn writes "A new initiative is being piloted where 'green' patents are given special priority over other patents in the backlogged system. David Kappos (Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO) said, 'Every day an important green tech innovation is hindered from coming to market is another day we harm our planet and another day lost in creating green businesses and green jobs. Applications in this pilot program will see a significant savings in pendency, which will help bring green innovations to market more quickly.' The details of how you qualify for a green patent (PDF) are available with patent blogs offering opinions on this initiative."
I'm going to patent the patenting of green patents. That way, while everyone is pursuing the effort to GO green, I'll be EARNING green!
Oh good, now I can get my patent on "process for deploying biological devices to convert CO2 into oxygen and sugar using various enzymes in combination with solar power." I call this invention "plants."
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yes, its great news. Now, we have a great way of stopping some of these idiotic ideas in their tracks, which is what patents usually do, or stopping them once they have got going, which is almost as good. But it comes too late for many ideas, which are already in the public domain.
For example, we can no longer patent the idea of killing huge numbers of birds by erecting vast quantities of whirling mobile metal machines on migration routes, on the pretext of generating electricity. The thing I truly wish we could have patented is the idea of allying with industry to develop wild areas while erecting these things, but calling the result conservation. Where was the USPO when we really needed it?
We can no longer patent the idea adjusting the surface station record to show unprecedented warming regardless of what it actually shows. We cannot either patent the famous method of 'hiding the decline' in the proxy record.
We cannot patent the idea of pretending that the Arctic is going to melt and flood the planet sometime very soon, thus raising vast amounts of grant money to do studies to find out how soon.
More serious, we cannot patent the idea of seeding the upper atmosphere with sulfur, and so there is every chance that fools will actually try and produce a new ice age by doing it.
So its a great idea and a most innovative step by the USPO, but they should have done this 20 years ago, and we could have either become enormously rich, or spared the world the greatest mass hysteria since.... Well, certainly since the millenial frenzy around the year 1,000, but maybe one has to go back even earlier.
Still, look on the positive side. If we are a little creative and surreptitiously join some green circles, there is no shortage of truly insane public policy ideas being floated. The best may have gone, but never underestimate the capability of the environmental movement to come up with more. It may be too late for society, but there is probably still time to get very rich if we get busy patenting now.
Considering that the whole "green" movement, like a watermelon is green on the outside and RED on the inside, I think it will be good for the rest of us if it has to choke on silly patents.
Since the bureaucracy is pushing fast approval of "green" patents, expect the USPTO, in order to make quota, start rubberstamping applications of extremely obvious and silly patents, such as "method of conserving electricity by actuating switch" (ie: turn off the lights).
About the only people who benefit from "fast tracked" patents are patent troll companies and lawyers in Texas.
Of course, the only person who seems to have benefitted from the "green" movement is it's high priest, Algore himself, who has become filthy rich off the trading of fradulent "carbon offsets", rich enough to live in a mansion that uses 20 times the electricity of an average American, to own a fleet of SUV's and limos, and to fly only on private jets.
When the doomsayers start practicing in their own lives what they wish to impose on the rest of us, I might start taking them seriously.
Corporatism != Free Market