Invention Secrecy Act

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Invention Secrecy Act

The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 (Template:USPL, 65 Stat. 647, codified at Template:USC–188) is a United States federal statute that authorizes the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to suppress patent applications whose disclosure is determined by a defense or intelligence agency to be detrimental to national security, by placing them under indefinite secrecy orders that prohibit the inventor from publishing, marketing, or filing the invention abroad. The statute became active in 1952 and remains the primary peacetime legal mechanism by which patent applications are removed from the public record.

In suppressed technology and disclosure research, the Act is identified as the principal legal instrument through which thousands of free energy, anti-gravity and advanced healing inventions have allegedly been withheld from public use, and is cited as the documented endpoint of the broader pattern that researchers call invention suppression.

Statutory framework

The Act codifies authority that originated in the wartime Patent Secrecy Act of 1917 and was extended into peacetime by the 1951 statute. Under Template:USC, the Commissioner of Patents may, on notification from the head of an interested defense or intelligence agency, order that an invention be kept secret and withhold the grant of a patent for as long as the national interest requires. Template:USC prohibits the inventor from filing a corresponding application abroad without authorization. Template:USC provides a procedure under which the inventor may apply for compensation for damages caused by the secrecy order or for use of the invention by the government, and Template:USC establishes criminal penalties — including fines and imprisonment — for willful disclosure of an invention placed under a secrecy order.

Administration

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Secrecy orders under the Invention Secrecy Act

When a patent application is filed at the USPTO, it is screened by a roster of military and intelligence agencies — including the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Security Agency and others — each of which may recommend a secrecy order. Once a secrecy order is issued, the application proceeds through normal examination but, regardless of whether it would otherwise be allowed, the file is removed from public access and stored in a guarded facility colloquially referred to as "the vault."

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) tracks USPTO statistics on secrecy orders and publishes annual figures. As of 2023 approximately 5,915 secrecy orders were in effect, with figures cited by exopolitics researchers ranging up to roughly 6,500.

Categories of restricted subject matter

The categories of subject matter screened for secrecy orders include conventional weapons systems, cryptography, directed energy and stealth technologies, as well as classes flagged by the USPTO for review of claims that depart from accepted physics. Dan Willis, a Navy Disclosure Project witness, has described the latter category as encompassing "perpetual motion machines, antigravity devices, free energy — and other matters that violate the general laws of physics... the things that don't work with the known laws of physics — they operate, but they actually expand upon the knowledge that we have in ways that can extract energy from the vacuum of space."

Michael Salla has characterized the bulk of disclosed Act-related applications as covering free energy and alternative energy sources and advanced healing technologies. Tom Valone, a physicist and former USPTO patent examiner, believes that propulsion technologies are the most heavily classified subject area, with energy applications more likely to be eventually permitted to proceed to grant.

1999 cold fusion conference incident

In 1999, Valone organised the first cold fusion conference to be held at the U.S. State Department, under the Secretary's Open Forum. The conference was cancelled after a campaign by physicist Robert Park of the American Physical Society, who reportedly preemptively announced that the Supreme Court would decline to hear a cold fusion patent appeal before any such ruling had been issued. Valone was subsequently dismissed from the USPTO; an arbitrator later ruled the dismissal improper in an 80-page decision, and Valone was reinstated, ultimately serving 20 years at the Patent Office. The episode is cited in the suppressed technology literature as a case study in how institutional scientific gatekeeping reinforces the secrecy regime around breakthrough energy research.

Critical reception in disclosure research

Steven Greer, founder of the Disclosure Project, has conducted briefings on the Invention Secrecy Act for members of Congress and their staff, arguing that suppressed patents represent a deliberate policy to maintain fossil fuel industry dominance. Greer characterises the Act as the legal cover "used to suppress significant energy and propulsion technologies that could transform society," covering free energy devices, anti-gravity propulsion and other advanced technologies whose release, he argues, could end pollution and poverty within roughly 20 years. Greer has also said that any attempt to patent zero-point energy or over-unity devices typically triggers automatic confiscation under a national-security secrecy order; he claims to possess a denial issued under the Act for a device built by an inventor he works with, and advises inventors to open-source breakthrough designs rather than file for patents.

Dan Willis has described the Act as one of the most consequential psychological operations maintained against the public, listing it among "psyops" that he says keep humanity dependent on fossil fuels and obsolete energy systems and asserting that "the Invention Secrecy Act has suppressed over 6000 free energy, anti gravity, medical and many other inventions." Willis has reported personally working with inventors whose technologies were allegedly suppressed under the Act, including a Dominican Republic-based inventor whose device was reportedly seized by CIA agents who told him "this works, you're dead," after which the inventor disassembled the project entirely.

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