From: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Subject: Re: [comp.patents] Patent Secrecy Orders
Keywords: patent secrecy, Cold War, patents, PTO
Reply-To: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 14:34:23 GMT

In article <1992Sep12.070449.14192@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>, fcrary@ucsu (Frank Crary) writes:
>In article <1992Sep11.131525.15100@nntp.hut.fi> jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala) writes:
>>-	I'm a writer on assignment with Technology Review working on 
>>a piece about Patent Secrecy Orders, a Cold War invention that allows 
>>the DOD to block grants of patents to inventors whose inventions are 
>>deemed inimicable to the national security for military rivals to know 
>>about or aquire.

No, I am not - ie. I didn't write that but was reposting an article
written by someone else.

>As I understand it, the DOD could classify (effectively conficate)
>any patent they wanted. This resulted from one of Truman's exceutive
>orders during the Korean War (like his abortive effort to sieze the
>steal industry). The order was negated (as I recall) sometime in the
>last ten years.

I haven't seen any news of it being negated.  Quite to the contrary,
here's a post from comp.patents from July, 1992:

From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
Newsgroups: comp.patents
Subject: [ARTICLE] DoD Secrecy Orders on US Patent Applications
Date: 2 Jul 92 20:35:11 GMT

#1992, June
    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 ATT's Bell Laboratories,
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  A patent can be issued only when the secrecy order is rescinded,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
ATT's patent applications 33 years after it was submitted.  In the meantime
the innovation, which involved a way to synchronize digital communications,
had become an industry standard, and companies had paid royalties to use it
because parts of it were covered by another ATT patent.  ATT could have
demanded royalties for the life of the new patent, another 17 years, but
chose to waive its rights because of the disruption it would have caused.
    According to records assembled by the US Patent Office, the number of
secrecy orders increased dramatically during the 1980s.  Ken Cage, who was in
charge of the secrecy order program for the patent office from 1981 to 1989,
says this was because of growing concern about the export of sensitive
technology.  The Department of Defense began recommending secrecy orders to
cover not only classified technology, but also any technology that was
banned from being exported.
    Since 1987, most secrecy orders have been issued for inventions owned by
private individuals or companies.  Previously, most secrecy orders had been
applied to government innovations.
    The largest category of secrecy orders, Type 1, allows companies to sell
commercial products using the technology, but prevents them from exporting it
or publishing details about it.  Type 2 or Type 3 secrecy orders cover
classified technology, and bar companies from using the invention in products
sold commercially.
    Type 3 orders are the most controversial, because they apply to
technologies that were created withvention described
in his doctoral dissertation.  The government slapped a secrecy order on it
before the student even had a chance to defend the dissertation before a
committee of the university's faculty.  He could have been prosecuted for
going ahead with the oral examination, says Cage.  Fortunately, the government
relented, and the student got his PhD.
[New Scientist 6/20/92, 9]


Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.politics.usa.constitution