Despite the end of the Cold War, a record 774 US patent applications were placed under 'secrecy orders' last year. The Pentagon imposes a secrecy order, which prevents a patent from being issued, when it believes the patent would harm national security by revealing technical secrets.
William Keefauver, formerly the chief lawyer for AT&T's Bell Labs, says that the secrecy orders 'create a lot of problems for inventors and patent owners'. He is a member of a government commission that will soon recommend that the government reduces its use of secrecy orders.
While an inventor waits for the secrecy order to be lifted, there is nothing to prevent another company from developing and selling the same invention. A patent can be issued only when the secrecy order is rescinded, which can take years.
Keefauver says that in one case, a secrecy order was lifted on one of AT&T's patent applications ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.