Patent troll

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In international law and business, patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or contribution to the prior art, often through hardball legal tactics (frivolous litigation, vexatious litigation, strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), chilling effects, and the like). Patent trolls often do not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in question. However, some entities which do not practice their asserted patent may not be considered "patent trolls" when they license their patented technologies on reasonable terms in advance.

 

Other related concepts include patent holding company (PHC), patent assertion entity (PAE), and non-practicing entity (NPE), which may or may not be considered a "patent troll" depending on the position they are taking and the perception of that position by the public. While in most cases the entities termed "trolls" are operating within the bounds of the legal system, their aggressive tactics achieve outcomes contrary to the origins of the patent system as a legislated social contract to foster and protect innovation; the rapid rise of the modern information economy has put the global intellectual property system under more strain.

Beginning in 2011, a inter partes reviews (IPR) process in the United States allows executive branch agency rather than the courts to invalidate a patent—this was later affirmed by a Supreme Court decision in 2018. In 2015, 45% of all patent cases in the United States were filed in the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, and 28% of all patents were filed before James Rodney Gilstrap, as this court was known for favoring plaintiffs and for its expertise in patent suits. However, in May 2017 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a unanimous decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC that patent litigation cases must be heard in the state in which the defendant is incorporated, shutting down this option for plaintiffs.

Patent trolling has been less of a problem in Europe than in the United States, because Europe has a loser pays costs regime. In contrast, the U.S. generally used the so-called American rule, providing that each party is responsible for paying its own attorney's fees, until the U.S. Supreme Court decided Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc. on April 29, 2014.

Etymology and definition

The term patent troll was used at least once in 1993 with a slightly different meaning, to describe countries that file aggressive patent lawsuits. The 1994 educational video, The Patents Video also used the term, depicting a green troll guarding a bridge and demanding fees. The origin of the term patent troll has also been variously attributed to Anne Gundelfinger, or Peter Detkin, both counsel for Intel, during the late 1990s.

Patent troll is currently a controversial term, susceptible to numerous definitions, none of which are considered satisfactory from the perspective of understanding how patent trolls should be treated in law. Definitions include a party that does one or more of the following:

• Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased patent;
• Enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service;
• Enforces patents but has no manufacturing or research base;
• Focuses its efforts solely on enforcing patent rights; or
• Asserts patent infringement claims against non-copiers or against a large industry that is composed of non-copiers.

The term "patent pirate" has been used to describe both patent trolling and acts of patent infringement. Related expressions are "non-practising entity" (NPE) (defined as "a patent owner who does not manufacture or use the patented invention, but rather than abandoning the right to exclude, an NPE seeks to enforce its right through the negotiation of licenses and litigation"), "patent assertion entity" (PAE), "non-manufacturing patentee", "patent shark", "patent marketer", "patent assertion company", and "patent dealer".

Confusion over use of the term patent troll is clear in research and media reporting. In 2014, Price Waterhouse Coopers published research into patent litigation including a study of non-practicing entities including individual inventors and non-profit organisations such as universities. In quoting that research, media outlets such as the Washington Post labelled all non-practicing entities as patent trolls.

Legal and regulatory history

According to RPX Corporation, a firm that helps reduce company patent-litigation risk by offering licenses to patents it owns in exchange for an agreement not to sue, patent trolls in 2012 filed more than 2,900 infringement lawsuits nationwide (nearly six times higher than the number in 2006).

In addressing the America Invents Act (AIA) passed by Congress in September 2011 reforming US patent law, U.S. President Barack Obama said in February 2013 that US "efforts at patent reform only went about halfway to where we need to go." The next indicated step was to pull together stakeholders and find consensus on "smarter patent laws."

On June 4, 2013, President Obama referenced patent trolls and directed the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to take five new actions to help stem the surge in patent-infringement lawsuits tying up the court system. Saying "they don't actually produce anything themselves, they're just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else's idea and see if they can extort some money out of them," the President ordered the USPTO to require companies to be more specific about exactly what their patent covers and how it is being infringed.

The Administration further stated the USPTO will tighten scrutiny of patent claims that appear overly broad, and will aim to curb patent-infringement lawsuits against consumers and small-business owners using off-the-shelf technology. The President asked Congress to enact legislation to more aggressively curb "abusive" lawsuits. David Kravets said "[t]he history ebooks will remember the 44th president for setting off a chain of reforms that made predatory patent lawsuits a virtual memory."

In the U.S. Congress, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) sponsored legislation in 2013 intended to reduce the incidence of patent trolling. The bill, called the Patent Litigation Integrity Act, would help judges make patent trolls pay for the cost of the lawsuits, especially if the trolls lost the lawsuits.

In February 2014, Apple filed two amicus briefs for cases pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming to be the #1 target for patent trolls, having faced nearly 100 lawsuits in the preceding three years.

In November 2014, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled its first consumer-protection lawsuit against a company, for using "deceptive sales claims and phony legal threats". The FTC found that defendant MPHJ had sent letters to more than 16,000 small to mid-size businesses threatening patent infringement lawsuits if the companies did not comply with its demand for licensing fees of $1,000 to $1,200 per employee, but never making preparations for such lawsuits. The 2014 settlement provided for a $16,000 fine per letter that MPHJ or its attorneys would send.

State responses in the United States

In May 2013, Vermont's Consumer Protection Act took effect. The Vermont law prohibits bad faith infringement threats, with bad faith indicated by: lack of specificity of the alleged infringement, settlement demands or damage claims that include excessive licensing fees, and unreasonably short deadlines for payment of demanded monies. Vermont's statute gives recipients of threat letters the right to counter-sue in state court, thus making it a less lucrative business model to send out large numbers of threat letters. As of August 2013, the Vermont legislation had not been tested in court as to violation of federal preemption, the legal principle that bars states from interfering in matters regulated or administrated by the federal government (such as aviation), or enforcement of federal law.

In August 2013, Nebraska's Attorney General sent warnings to a patent troll's law firm, asserting that to send frivolous licensing demands to Nebraska businesses may constitute unfair and deceptive business practices and violate Nebraska's unfair competition law.

In 2013, Minnesota's Attorney General obtained a settlement prohibiting MPHJ Technology Investments LLC from continuing its licensing campaign, Minnesota said to be the first state to obtain such a settlement.

In April 2014, the Wisconsin governor signed legislation that would make patent-trolling Wisconsin companies more difficult. The legislation imposes strict notification duties on the entity claiming infringement, and there are potentially strict penalties for non-compliance with the notification process.

In the 2014, legislative session, Idaho Lieutenant Governor Brad Little sponsored Senate Bill 1354, or the "Patent-troll" bill which protected companies from "bad faith assertions of patent infringement", in which a patent holder frequently harasses businesses for purportedly infringing on a patent in order to collect an extortionate licensing fee.

Causes

The cost of defending against a patent infringement suit, as of 2004, was typically $1 million or more before trial, and $2.5 million for a complete defense, even if successful. Because the costs and risks are high, defendants may settle even non-meritorious suits they consider frivolous for several hundred thousand dollars. The uncertainty and unpredictability of the outcome of jury trials in the United States also encourages settlement.

It has also been suggested that distortions in the patent market, such as those caused by the examination backlog, promote patent trolling.

If the patent office accepts claims that have been invented, published or even patented before, ignoring material prior art, then even existing technologies in use are subject to patent trolling. Reexamination to invalidate the patent based on prior art can be requested, but requests are typically made only after a lawsuit is filed or threatened (about 0.33% of patents in U.S. have re-examination is requested.) and often in conjunction with an infringement lawsuit. Only the patent holder will participate in this process, and the party requesting the reexamination has no right of appeal and is estopped from using the same evidence in any subsequent civil action; this risk keeps the popularity of reexamination low despite its lower cost. Furthermore, the most common outcome is not the validation or invalidation of the patent, but narrowing the scope of the claims.

There is also no obligation to defend an unused patent immediately, thus manufacturing companies may produce the patented product for years until the patent troll sues them. For example, the JPEG format, intended to be free of license fees, was subject to two patent attacks, one by Forgent Networks during 2002–2006 and another by Global Patent Holdings during 2007–2009. Both patents were eventually invalidated based on prior art, but before this, Forgent collected more than $100 million in license fees from 30 companies and sued 31 other companies

Effects

In 2011, United States business entities incurred $29 billion in direct costs because of patent trolls. Lawsuits brought by "patent assertion companies" made up 61% of all patent cases in 2012, according to the Santa Clara University School of Law. From 2009 through mid-2013, Apple Inc. was the defendant in 171 lawsuits brought by non-practicing entities (NPEs), followed by Hewlett-Packard (137), Samsung (133), AT&T (127), and Dell (122). Patent troll-instigated litigation, once mostly confined to large companies in patent-dependent industries such as pharmaceuticals, came to involve companies of all sizes in a wide variety of industries. In 2005, patent trolls sued 800 small firms (those with less than $100 million annual revenue), the number growing to nearly 2,900 such firms in 2011; the median defendant's annual revenue was $10.3 million. A July 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers study concluded that non-practicing entities (NPEs) accounted for 67 percent of all patent lawsuits filed—up from 28 percent five years earlier—and though the median monetary award size has shrunk over time, the median number of awards to NPEs was three times higher than those of practicing companies.

A 2014 study from Harvard University, Harvard Business School and the University of Texas concluded that firms forced to pay patent trolls reduce R&D spending, averaging $211 million less than firms having won a lawsuit against a troll. That 2014 study also found that trolls tend to sue firms with fewer attorneys on staff, in effect encouraging firms to invest in legal representation at the expense of technology development. The 2014 study reported that trolls tend to opportunistically sue firms with more available cash, even if the firm's available cash was not earned in the technology that is the subject of the patent lawsuit, and targeting the firms long before a product begins turning a profit, thus disincentivizing investment in new technologies.

Emphasis became progressively focused on patents covering software rather than chemical or mechanical inventions, given the difficulty in defining the scope of software patent claims in comparison to the more easily defined specific compounds in chemical patents. A GAO study concluded that the proportion of patent lawsuits initiated by trolls hadn't changed significantly from 2007 through 2011, the GAO speculating that the raw numerical increase in both troll and non-troll instituted lawsuits may be due to the "inherently imprecise" language and a lack of common, standardized, scientific vocabulary in constantly evolving emerging technologies such as software. Software patents were described as "particularly prone" to abuse because software is "inherently conceptual", with research indicating that a software patent is four times as likely as a chemical patent to be involved in litigation, and a software "business method patent" is thirteen times more likely to be litigated.

On June 4, 2013, the National Economic Council and Council of Economic Advisers released a report entitled Patent Assertion and U.S. Innovation  that found significant harm to the economy from such entities and made recommendations to address them. The report further stated: "Specific policies should focus on fostering clearer patents with a high standard of novelty and non-obviousness, reducing disparity in the costs of litigation for patent owners and technology users, and increasing the adaptability of the innovation system to challenges posed by new technologies and new business models, would likely have a similar effect today."

A core criticism of patent trolls is that "they are in a position to negotiate licensing fees that are grossly out of alignment with their contribution to the alleged infringer's product or service", notwithstanding their non-practising status or the possible weakness of their patent claims. The risk of paying high prices for after-the-fact licensing of patents they were not aware of, and the costs for extra vigilance for competing patents that might have been issued, in turn increases the costs and risks of manufacturing. 

On the other hand, the ability to buy, sell and license patents is seen by some as generally productive. The Wall Street Journal argued that by creating a secondary market for patents, these activities make the ownership of patents more liquid, thereby creating incentives to innovate and patent. Patent Licensing Entities also argue that aggregating patents in the hands of specialized licensing companies facilitates access to technology by more efficiently organizing ownership of patent rights.

In an interview conducted in 2011, former U.S. federal judge Paul R. Michel regarded "the 'problem' [of non-practicing entities, the so-called "patent trolls"] to be greatly exaggerated." Although there are a number of problems with the U.S. patent system, i.e. "most NPE infringement suits are frivolous because the defendant plainly does not infringe or the patent is invalid", "patent infringement suits are very slow and expensive", and "NPEs may add value to the patents by buying them up when manufacturers decline to do so. Inventors may have benefited from the developing market in patent acquisition."

This view was supported in an article in 2014 that suggests that the pejorative term patent troll works in the benefit of large organisations who infringe patents and resent smaller inventors being represented by someone with the clout to take them on. The argument against the use of the term is that NPEs, in the main, return the majority of a settlement to the original inventor. Similarly, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera wrote that legislation on patent reforms considered by the United States Congress that are "allegedly aimed at trolls" often instead "effectively tilt the playing field even further towards big companies with large lobby budget".

Mechanics

Patent trolls operate much like any other company that is protecting and aggressively exploiting a patent portfolio. However, their focus is on obtaining additional money from existing uses, not from seeking out new applications for the technology. They monitor the market for possibly infringing technologies by watching popular products, news coverage and analysis. They also review published patent applications for signs that another company is developing infringing technology, possibly unaware of their own patents. They then develop a plan for how to proceed. They may start by suing a particularly vulnerable company that has much to lose, or little money to defend itself, hoping that an early victory or settlement will establish a precedent to encourage other peer companies to acquiesce to licenses. Alternately they may attack an entire industry at once, hoping to overwhelm it.

An individual case often begins with a perfunctory infringement complaint, or even a mere threat of suit, which is often enough to encourage settlement for the nuisance or "threat value" of the suit by purchasing a license to the patent. In the United States, patent suits previously could be filed in any United States District Court, allowing plaintiffs to "shop around" to find the court with the highest chances of success; in 2015, 45% of all patent cases were filed in the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, as this court was known for favoring plaintiffs and for its expertise in patent suits. However, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a unanimous May 2017 decision in TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC that patent litigation cases must be heard in the state which the defendant is incorporated, shutting down this option for plaintiffs.

The uncertainty and unpredictability of the outcome of jury trials also encourages settlement. If it wins, the plaintiff is entitled as damages an award of at least a "reasonable" royalty determined according to the norms of the field of the patented invention.

Patent trolls are at a disadvantage in at least two ways. First, patent owners who make and sell their invention are entitled to awards of lost profits. However, patent trolls, being non-manufacturers, typically do not qualify. Further, patent owners' rights to bar infringers from manufacture, use, or sale of technologies that infringe their patents has been curtailed in the 2006 court decision eBay v. MercExchange. Rather than automatically granting an injunction, the US Supreme Court stated that courts must apply a standard reasonableness test to determine if an injunction is warranted. Writing in Forbes about the impact of this case on patent trolls, writer Jessica Holzer concludes: "The high court's decision deals a blow to patent trolls, which are notorious for using the threat of permanent injunction to extort hefty fees in licensing negotiations as well as huge settlements from companies they have accused of infringing. Often, those settlements can be far greater than the value of the infringing technology: Recall the $612.5 million that Canada's Research in Motion forked over to patent-holding company NTP, Inc., to avoid the shutting down of its popular BlackBerry service." 

The non-manufacturing status of a patent troll has a strategic advantage, in that the target infringer cannot counter-sue for infringement. In litigation between businesses who make, use or sell patented technology, the defendant will often use its own patent portfolio as a basis to file a counterclaim for infringement. The counterclaim becomes an incentive for settlement, and in many industries, discourages patent infringement suits. Additionally, a patent suit carries with it the threat of an injunction or mutual injunction, which could shut down manufacturing or other business operations. If a patent owner does not make, use or sell technology, then the possibility of a counter-suit for infringement would not exist. For this reason, a patent troll is able to enforce patents against large companies which have substantial patent portfolios of their own. Furthermore, patent trolls may use shell companies.

Responses to patent trolls

Early Woodward light bulb patent purchased by Thomas Edison to preclude challenges

 

Patent trolls are neither using nor marketing the inventions covered by their patents, but instead plan to make money by threatening or filing lawsuits. Using the justice system to make money gives patent trolls a financial advantage because patent troll plaintiffs are typically immune from defense strategies large business employ against legitimate smaller patent plaintiffs (e.g., litigation costs are significantly higher for the defendant or infringer than for a purported damaged plaintiff who has a "no recovery, no fee" contingency-fee lawyer; until recently trolls had an almost-unrestricted ability to choose plaintiff-friendly forums, frequently the Eastern District of Texas).

Strategies used by companies to protect themselves from legitimate competition are ineffective against patent trolls. Defensive techniques include: monitoring patent activities of competitors to avoid infringing patents (since patent trolls are not competitors, productive companies usually have no way to find out about the troll or its patents until after significant investments have been made to produce and market a product); going on the offensive with counterclaims that accuse the patent plaintiff of infringing patents owned by the defendant (the mutual threat often leads the parties to arrive at a mutually beneficial cross-licensing arrangement); or a "scorched earth" defense designed to drive up litigation costs (which is equally ineffective because patent trolls plan for and have the finances to fully litigate a case; in fact, some are able to draw on hedge funds and institutional investors to finance their patent cases). Patent "pooling" arrangements where many companies collaborate to bring their patented knowledge together to create new products are also inapplicable to patent trolls because they do not produce products. It is possible to perform offensive techniques to ward off patent trolls with the open source release of concepts preemptively to prevent patent trolls from establishing intellectual property on building block technology. A Google-led initiative, LOT Network, was formed in 2014 to combat PAEs by cross-licensing patents that fall into the hands of enforcers. Another Google-affiliated organization, Unified Patents, seeks to reduce the number and effectiveness of patent trolls by filing inter partes reviews (IPR) on patents owned by trolls.

Large companies who use patent litigation as a competitive tool risk losing their patent rights if a defendant claims patent misuse. However, the misuse defense is difficult against a patent troll because antitrust violations typically involved require significant market power on the part of the patent holder. Nevertheless, manufacturers do use various tactics to limit their exposure to patent trolls. Most have broader uses as well for defending their technologies against competitors. These include:

• Design arounds can be a defense against patent trolls. The amount of license fee that a patent troll can demand is limited by the alternative of the cost of designing around the troll's patent(s).
• Patent watch. Companies routinely monitor new patents and patent applications, most of which are published, to determine if any are relevant to their business activities.
• Clearance search. A standard practice is to perform a clearance search for patents or pending patent applications that cover important features of a potential product, before its initial development or commercial introduction. For example, a search by Thomas Edison uncovered a prior patent by two Canadian inventors, Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans, for carbon filament in a non-oxidizing environment, (U.S. Patent 181,613), the type of light bulb Edison wanted to develop. Edison bought the patent for US$5,000 ($129,810 in present-day terms) to eliminate the possibility of a later challenge by Woodward and Evans.
• Opposition proceeding. In Europe (under the European Patent Convention), any person may initiate proceedings to oppose a European patent. There is a more limited process in the United States, known as a reexamination. As an example, Research In Motion, filed reexaminations against broad NTP, Inc. patents related to BlackBerry technology.
• Litigation. Whereas some companies acquiesce to a troll's demands, others go on the offensive by challenging the patents themselves, for example by finding prior art that calls into question their patentability. They may also broadly challenge whether the technology in question is infringing, or attempt to show patent misuse. If successful, such a defense not only wins the case at hand but destroys the patent troll's underlying ability to sue. Knowing this, the patent troll may back down or lessen its demands.
• Early settlement. An early settlement is often far less expensive than litigation costs and later settlement values.
• Patent infringement insurance. Insurance is available to help protect companies from inadvertently infringing a third party's patents.
• Defensive patent aggregation, the practice of purchasing patents or patent rights from patent holders so they don't end up in the hands of an individual or enterprise that can assert them. Increasingly aggregations are focused on purchasing patents and patent rights off the open market, or out of NPE assertion and litigation, which directly impact the businesses of the aggregation's members. The aggregator then provides members a broad license to everything it owns in exchange for an annual fixed-fee. Defensive aggregators purchased 15% of all brokered patent sales in 2014.
• Action for unjustified threats. In Australia, the UK and other countries, a legal action may be brought against anyone who makes unjustifiable threats to begin patent infringement proceedings. Concerning the Australian threats provisions, Lisa L. Mueller says that "if a patent troll is found to have engaged in a threat, the only way it could defend itself against an injunction or an award of monetary damages would be to commence patent infringement proceedings and have the court find that infringement occurred."
• Bounties. Monetary bounties have been offered to the public to find prior art or provide other information, such as arguments showing the obviousness or material defects in a patent application, that would invalidate a patent troll's patents. This tactic has been used not only against the patent in question but also against other patents held by the patent troll in order to undermine its business model.

Patent

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

U.S. patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. A patent gives its owner the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, and importing an invention for a limited period of time, usually twenty years. The patent rights are granted in exchange for an enabling public disclosure of the invention. In most countries patent rights fall under civil law and the patent holder needs to sue someone infringing the patent in order to enforce their rights. In some industries patents are an essential form of competitive advantage; in others they are irrelevant.

The procedure for granting patents, requirements placed on the patentee, and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements. Typically, however, a granted patent application must include one or more claims that define the invention. A patent may include many claims, each of which defines a specific property right. These claims must meet relevant patentability requirements, such as novelty, usefulness, and non-obviousness.

Under the World Trade Organization's (WTO) TRIPS Agreement, patents should be available in WTO member states for any invention, in all fields of technology, provided they are new, involve an inventive step, and are capable of industrial application. Nevertheless, there are variations on what is patentable subject matter from country to country, also among WTO member states. TRIPS also provides that the term of protection available should be a minimum of twenty years.

Definition

The word patent originates from the Latin patere, which means "to lay open" (i.e., to make available for public inspection). It is a shortened version of the term letters patent, which was an open document or instrument issued by a monarch or government granting exclusive rights to a person, predating the modern patent system. Similar grants included land patents, which were land grants by early state governments in the USA, and printing patents, a precursor of modern copyright.

In modern usage, the term patent usually refers to the right granted to anyone who invents something new, useful and non-obvious. Some other types of intellectual property rights are also called patents in some jurisdictions: industrial design rights are called design patents in the US, plant breeders' rights are sometimes called plant patents, and utility models and Gebrauchsmuster are sometimes called petty patents or innovation patents.

The additional qualification utility patent is sometimes used (primarily in the US) to distinguish the primary meaning from these other types of patents. Particular species of patents for inventions include biological patents, business method patents, chemical patents and software patents.

History

The Venetian Patent Statute, issued by the Senate of Venice in 1474, and one of the earliest statutory patent systems in the world.

 

Although there is some evidence that some form of patent rights was recognized in Ancient Greece in the Greek city of Sybaris, the first statutory patent system is generally regarded to be the Venetian Patent Statute of 1474. Patents were systematically granted in Venice as of 1474, where they issued a decree by which new and inventive devices had to be communicated to the Republic in order to obtain legal protection against potential infringers. The period of protection was 10 years. As Venetians emigrated, they sought similar patent protection in their new homes. This led to the diffusion of patent systems to other countries.

The English patent system evolved from its early medieval origins into the first modern patent system that recognized intellectual property in order to stimulate invention; this was the crucial legal foundation upon which the Industrial Revolution could emerge and flourish. By the 16th century, the English Crown would habitually abuse the granting of letters patent for monopolies. After public outcry, King James I of England (VI of Scotland) was forced to revoke all existing monopolies and declare that they were only to be used for "projects of new invention". This was incorporated into the Statute of Monopolies (1624) in which Parliament restricted the Crown's power explicitly so that the King could only issue letters patent to the inventors or introducers of original inventions for a fixed number of years. The Statute became the foundation for later developments in patent law in England and elsewhere. 

James Puckle's 1718 early autocannon was one of the first inventions required to provide a specification for a patent.

 

Important developments in patent law emerged during the 18th century through a slow process of judicial interpretation of the law. During the reign of Queen Anne, patent applications were required to supply a complete specification of the principles of operation of the invention for public access. Legal battles around the 1796 patent taken out by James Watt for his steam engine, established the principles that patents could be issued for improvements of an already existing machine and that ideas or principles without specific practical application could also legally be patented. Influenced by the philosophy of John Locke, the granting of patents began to be viewed as a form of intellectual property right, rather than simply the obtaining of economic privilege. 

The English legal system became the foundation for patent law in countries with a common law heritage, including the United States, New Zealand and Australia. In the Thirteen Colonies, inventors could obtain patents through petition to a given colony's legislature. In 1641, Samuel Winslow was granted the first patent in North America by the Massachusetts General Court for a new process for making salt.

U.S. patents granted, 1790–2010.

 

The modern French patent system was created during the Revolution in 1791. Patents were granted without examination since inventor's right was considered as a natural one. Patent costs were very high (from 500 to 1,500 francs). Importation patents protected new devices coming from foreign countries. The patent law was revised in 1844 - patent cost was lowered and importation patents were abolished. 

The first Patent Act of the U.S. Congress was passed on April 10, 1790, titled "An Act to promote the progress of useful Arts". The first patent was granted on July 31, 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for a method of producing potash (potassium carbonate). A revised patent law was passed in 1793, and in 1836 a major revision to the patent law was passed. The 1836 law instituted a significantly more rigorous application process, including the establishment of an examination system. Between 1790 and 1836 about ten thousand patents were granted. By the Civil War about 80,000 patents had been granted.

Law

Effects

A patent does not give a right to make or use or sell an invention. Rather, a patent provides, from a legal standpoint, the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent, which is usually 20 years from the filing date subject to the payment of maintenance fees. From an economic and practical standpoint however, a patent is better and perhaps more precisely regarded as conferring upon its proprietor "a right to try to exclude by asserting the patent in court", for many granted patents turn out to be invalid once their proprietors attempt to assert them in court. A patent is a limited property right the government gives inventors in exchange for their agreement to share details of their inventions with the public. Like any other property right, it may be sold, licensed, mortgaged, assigned or transferred, given away, or simply abandoned.

A patent, being an exclusionary right, does not necessarily give the patent owner the right to exploit the invention subject to the patent. For example, many inventions are improvements of prior inventions that may still be covered by someone else's patent. If an inventor obtains a patent on improvements to an existing invention which is still under patent, they can only legally use the improved invention if the patent holder of the original invention gives permission, which they may refuse. 

Some countries have "working provisions" that require the invention be exploited in the jurisdiction it covers. Consequences of not working an invention vary from one country to another, ranging from revocation of the patent rights to the awarding of a compulsory license awarded by the courts to a party wishing to exploit a patented invention. The patentee has the opportunity to challenge the revocation or license, but is usually required to provide evidence that the reasonable requirements of the public have been met by the working of invention.

Challenges

In most jurisdictions, there are ways for third parties to challenge the validity of an allowed or issued patent at the national patent office; these are called opposition proceedings. It is also possible to challenge the validity of a patent in court. In either case, the challenging party tries to prove that the patent should never have been granted. There are several grounds for challenges: the claimed subject matter is not patentable subject matter at all; the claimed subject matter was actually not new, or was obvious to experts in the field, at the time the application was filed; or that some kind of fraud was committed during prosecution with regard to listing of inventors, representations about when discoveries were made, etc. Patents can be found to be invalid in whole or in part for any of these reasons.

Infringement

Patent infringement occurs when a third party, without authorization from the patentee, makes, uses, or sells a patented invention. Patents, however, are enforced on a nation by nation basis. The making of an item in China, for example, that would infringe a U.S. patent, would not constitute infringement under US patent law unless the item were imported into the US.

Enforcement

Patents can generally only be enforced through civil lawsuits (for example, for a U.S. patent, by an action for patent infringement in a United States federal court), although some countries (such as France and Austria) have criminal penalties for wanton infringement. Typically, the patent owner seeks monetary compensation for past infringement, and seeks an injunction that prohibits the defendant from engaging in future acts of infringement. To prove infringement, the patent owner must establish that the accused infringer practises all the requirements of at least one of the claims of the patent. (In many jurisdictions the scope of the patent may not be limited to what is literally stated in the claims, for example due to the doctrine of equivalents). 

An accused infringer has the right to challenge the validity of the patent allegedly being infringed in a counterclaim. A patent can be found invalid on grounds described in the relevant patent laws, which vary between countries. Often, the grounds are a subset of requirements for patentability in the relevant country. Although an infringer is generally free to rely on any available ground of invalidity (such as a prior publication, for example), some countries have sanctions to prevent the same validity questions being relitigated. An example is the UK Certificate of contested validity. 

Patent licensing agreements are contracts in which the patent owner (the licensor) agrees to grant the licensee the right to make, use, sell, and/or import the claimed invention, usually in return for a royalty or other compensation. It is common for companies engaged in complex technical fields to enter into multiple license agreements associated with the production of a single product. Moreover, it is equally common for competitors in such fields to license patents to each other under cross-licensing agreements in order to share the benefits of using each other's patented inventions.

Ownership

In most countries, both natural persons and corporate entities may apply for a patent. In the United States, however, only the inventor(s) may apply for a patent although it may be assigned to a corporate entity subsequently and inventors may be required to assign inventions to their employers under an employment contract. In most European countries, ownership of an invention may pass from the inventor to their employer by rule of law if the invention was made in the course of the inventor's normal or specifically assigned employment duties, where an invention might reasonably be expected to result from carrying out those duties, or if the inventor had a special obligation to further the interests of the employer's company.

The plate of the Martin ejector seat of a military aircraft, stating that the product is covered by multiple patents in the UK, South Africa, Canada and pending in "other" jurisdictions. Dübendorf Museum of Military Aviation.

 

The inventors, their successors or their assignees become the proprietors of the patent when and if it is granted. If a patent is granted to more than one proprietor, the laws of the country in question and any agreement between the proprietors may affect the extent to which each proprietor can exploit the patent. For example, in some countries, each proprietor may freely license or assign their rights in the patent to another person while the law in other countries prohibits such actions without the permission of the other proprietor(s). 

The ability to assign ownership rights increases the liquidity of a patent as property. Inventors can obtain patents and then sell them to third parties. The third parties then own the patents and have the same rights to prevent others from exploiting the claimed inventions, as if they had originally made the inventions themselves.

Governing laws

The grant and enforcement of patents are governed by national laws, and also by international treaties, where those treaties have been given effect in national laws. Patents are granted by national or regional patent offices. A given patent is therefore only useful for protecting an invention in the country in which that patent is granted. In other words, patent law is territorial in nature. When a patent application is published, the invention disclosed in the application becomes prior art and enters the public domain (if not protected by other patents) in countries where a patent applicant does not seek protection, the application thus generally becoming prior art against anyone (including the applicant) who might seek patent protection for the invention in those countries. 

Commonly, a nation or a group of nations forms a patent office with responsibility for operating that nation's patent system, within the relevant patent laws. The patent office generally has responsibility for the grant of patents, with infringement being the remit of national courts. 

The authority for patent statutes in different countries varies. In the UK, substantive patent law is contained in the Patents Act 1977 as amended. In the United States, the Constitution empowers Congress to make laws to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..." The laws Congress passed are codified in Title 35 of the United States Code and created the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

There is a trend towards global harmonization of patent laws, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) being particularly active in this area. The TRIPS Agreement has been largely successful in providing a forum for nations to agree on an aligned set of patent laws. Conformity with the TRIPS agreement is a requirement of admission to the WTO and so compliance is seen by many nations as important. This has also led to many developing nations, which may historically have developed different laws to aid their development, enforcing patents laws in line with global practice.

Internationally, there are international treaty procedures, such as the procedures under the European Patent Convention (EPC) [constituting the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg)], that centralize some portion of the filing and examination procedure. Similar arrangements exist among the member states of ARIPO and OAPI, the analogous treaties among African countries, and the nine CIS member states that have formed the Eurasian Patent Organization. A key international convention relating to patents is the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, initially signed in 1883. The Paris Convention sets out a range of basic rules relating to patents, and although the convention does not have direct legal effect in all national jurisdictions, the principles of the convention are incorporated into all notable current patent systems. The most significant aspect of the convention is the provision of the right to claim priority: filing an application in any one member state of the Paris Convention preserves the right for one year to file in any other member state, and receive the benefit of the original filing date. Another key treaty is the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), administered by WIPO and covering more than 150 countries. The Patent Cooperation Treaty provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in each of its contracting states. A patent application filed under the PCT is called an international application, or PCT application.

Application and prosecution

A patent is requested by filing a written application at the relevant patent office. The person or company filing the application is referred to as "the applicant". The applicant may be the inventor or its assignee. The application contains a description of how to make and use the invention that must provide sufficient detail for a person skilled in the art (i.e., the relevant area of technology) to make and use the invention. In some countries there are requirements for providing specific information such as the usefulness of the invention, the best mode of performing the invention known to the inventor, or the technical problem or problems solved by the invention. Drawings illustrating the invention may also be provided. 

The application also includes one or more claims that define what a patent covers or the "scope of protection". 

After filing, an application is often referred to as "patent pending". While this term does not confer legal protection, and a patent cannot be enforced until granted, it serves to provide warning to potential infringers that if the patent is issued, they may be liable for damages.

Once filed, a patent application is "prosecuted". A patent examiner reviews the patent application to determine if it meets the patentability requirements of that country. If the application does not comply, objections are communicated to the applicant or their patent agent or attorney through an Office action, to which the applicant may respond. The number of Office actions and responses that may occur vary from country to country, but eventually a final rejection is sent by the patent office, or the patent application is granted, which after the payment of additional fees, leads to an issued, enforceable patent. In some jurisdictions, there are opportunities for third parties to bring an opposition proceeding between grant and issuance, or post-issuance.

Once granted the patent is subject in most countries to renewal fees to keep the patent in force. These fees are generally payable on a yearly basis. Some countries or regional patent offices (e.g. the European Patent Office) also require annual renewal fees to be paid for a patent application before it is granted.

Costs

The costs of preparing and filing a patent application, prosecuting it until grant and maintaining the patent vary from one jurisdiction to another, and may also be dependent upon the type and complexity of the invention, and on the type of patent.

The European Patent Office estimated in 2005 that the average cost of obtaining a European patent (via a Euro-direct application, i.e. not based on a PCT application) and maintaining the patent for a 10-year term was around €32,000. Since the London Agreement entered into force on May 1, 2008, this estimation is however no longer up-to-date, since fewer translations are required.

In the United States, in 2000 the cost of obtaining a patent (patent prosecution) was estimated to be from $10,000 to $30,000 per patent. When patent litigation is involved (which in year 1999 happened in about 1,600 cases compared to 153,000 patents issued in the same year), costs increase significantly: although 95% of patent litigation cases are settled out of court, those that reach the courts have legal costs on the order of a million dollars per case, not including associated business costs.

Alternatives

A defensive publication is the act of publishing a detailed description of a new invention without patenting it, so as to establish prior art and public identification as the creator/originator of an invention, although a defensive publication can also be anonymous. A defensive publication prevents others from later being able to patent the invention.

A trade secret is information that is intentionally kept confidential and that provides a competitive advantage to its possessor. Trade secrets are protected by non-disclosure agreement and labor law, each of which prevents information leaks such as breaches of confidentiality and industrial espionage. Compared to patents, the advantages of trade secrets are that the value of a trade secret continues until it is made public, whereas a patent is only in force for a specified time, after which others may freely copy the invention; does not require payment of fees to governmental agencies or filing paperwork; has an immediate effect; and does not require any disclosure of information to the public. The key disadvantage of a trade secret is its vulnerability to reverse engineering.

Benefits

Primary incentives embodied in the patent system include incentives to invent in the first place; to disclose the invention once made; to invest the sums necessary to experiment, produce and market the invention; and to design around and improve upon earlier patents.

• Patents provide incentives for economically efficient research and development (R&D). A study conducted annually by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) shows that the 2,000 largest global companies invested more than 430 billion euros in 2008 in their R&D departments. If the investments can be considered as inputs of R&D, real products and patents are the outputs. Based on these groups, a project named Corporate Invention Board, had measured and analyzed the patent portfolios to produce an original picture of their technological profiles. Supporters of patents argue that without patent protection, R&D spending would be significantly less or eliminated altogether, limiting the possibility of technological advances or breakthroughs. Corporations would be much more conservative about the R&D investments they made, as third parties would be free to exploit any developments. This second justification is closely related to the basic ideas underlying traditional property rights. Specifically, "[t]he patent internalizes the externality by giving the [inventor] a property right over its invention." A 2008 study by Yi Quan of Kellogg School of Management showed that countries instituting patent protection on pharmaceuticals did not necessarily have an increase in domestic pharmaceutical innovation. Only countries with "higher levels of economic development, educational attainment, and economic freedom" showed an increase. There also appeared to be an optimal level of patent protection that increased domestic innovation.
• In accordance with the original definition of the term "patent", patents are intended to facilitate and encourage disclosure of innovations into the public domain for the common good. Thus patenting can be viewed as contributing to open hardware after an embargo period (usually of 20 years). If inventors did not have the legal protection of patents, in many cases, they might prefer or tend to keep their inventions secret (e.g. keep trade secrets). Awarding patents generally makes the details of new technology publicly available, for exploitation by anyone after the patent expires, or for further improvement by other inventors. Furthermore, when a patent's term has expired, the public record ensures that the patentee's invention is not lost to humanity.
• In many industries (especially those with high fixed costs and either low marginal costs or low reverse engineering costs — computer processors, and pharmaceuticals for example), once an invention exists, the cost of commercialization (testing, tooling up a factory, developing a market, etc.) is far more than the initial conception cost. (For example, the internal rule of thumb at several computer companies in the 1980s was that post-R&D costs were 7-to-1.)

One effect of modern patent usage is that a small-time inventor, who can afford both the patenting process and the defense of the patent, can use the exclusive right status to become a licensor. This allows the inventor to accumulate capital from licensing the invention and may allow innovation to occur because he or she may choose not to manage a manufacturing buildup for the invention. Thus the inventor's time and energy can be spent on pure innovation, allowing others to concentrate on manufacturability.

Another effect of modern patent usage is to both enable and incentivize competitors to design around (or to "invent around" according to R S Praveen Raj) the patented invention. This may promote healthy competition among manufacturers, resulting in gradual improvements of the technology base. This may help augment national economies and confer better living standards to the citizens. The 1970 Indian Patent Act allowed the Indian pharmaceutical industry to develop local technological capabilities in this industry. This act coincided with the transformation of India from a bulk importer of pharmaceutical drugs to a leading exporter. The rapid evolution of Indian pharmaceutical industry since the mid-1970s highlights the fact that the design of the patent act was instrumental in building local capabilities even in a developing country like India.

Criticism

Legal scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, industries, and trade organizations have held differing views on patents and engaged in contentious debates on the subject. Critical perspectives emerged in the nineteenth century that were especially based on the principles of free trade. Contemporary criticisms have echoed those arguments, claiming that patents block innovation and waste resources (e.g. with patent-related overheads) that could otherwise be used productively to improve technology. These and other research findings that patents decreased innovation because of the following mechanisms:

• Low quality, already known or obvious patents hamper innovation and commercialization.
• Blocking the use of fundamental knowledge with patents creates a "tragedy of the anticommons, where future innovations can not take place outside of a single firm in an entire field.
• Patents weaken the public domain and innovation that comes from it.
• Patent thickets, or "an overlapping set of patent rights", in particular slow innovation.
• Broad patents prevent companies from commercializing products and hurt innovation. In the worst case, such broad patents are held by non-practicing entities (patent trolls), which do not contribute to innovation. Enforcement by patent trolls of poor quality patents  has led to criticism of the patent office as well as the system itself. For example, in 2011, United States business entities incurred $29 billion in direct costs because of patent trolls. Lawsuits brought by "patent assertion companies" made up 61% of all patent cases in 2012, according to the Santa Clara University School of Law.
• Patents apply a "one size fits all" model to industries with differing needs, that is especially unproductive for the software industry.
• Rent-seeking by owners of pharmaceutical patents have also been a particular focus of criticism, as the high prices they enable puts life-saving drugs out of reach of many people.

Boldrin and Levine conclude "Our preferred policy solution is to abolish patents entirely and to find other legislative instruments, less open to lobbying and rent seeking, to foster innovation when there is clear evidence that laissez-faire undersupplies it." Abolishing patents may be politically challenging in some countries, however, as the primary economic theories supporting patent law hold that inventors and innovators need patents to recoup the costs associated with research, inventing, and commercializing; this reasoning is weakened if the new technologies decrease these costs. A 2016 paper argued for substantial weakening of patents because current technologies (e.g. 3D printing, cloud computing, synthetic biology, etc.) have reduced the cost of innovation.

Debates over the usefulness of patents for their primary objective are part of a larger discourse on intellectual property protection, which also reflects differing perspectives on copyright.

Anti-patent initiatives

• The Patent Busting Project is an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) initiative challenging patents that the organization claims are illegitimate and suppress innovation or limit online expression. The initiative launched in 2004 and involves two phases: documenting the damage caused by these patents^{[citation needed]}, and submitting challenges to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
• Patent critic, Joseph Stiglitz has proposed Prizes as an alternative to patents in order to further advance solutions to global problems such as AIDS.
• In 2012, Stack Exchange launched Ask Patents, a forum for crowdsourcing prior art to invalidate patents.
• Several authors have argued for developing defensive prior art to prevent patenting based on obviousness using lists or algorithms. For example, a Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, has demonstrated a method to protect DNA research., which could apply to other technology. Chin wrote an algorithm to generate 11 million "obvious" nucleotide sequences to count as prior art and his algorithmic approach has already proven effective at anticipating prior art against oligonucleotide composition claims filed since his publication of the list and has been cited by the U.S. patent office a number of times. More recently, Joshua Pearce developed an open-source algorithm for identifying prior art for 3D printing materials to make such materials obvious by patent standards. As the 3-D printing community is already grappling with legal issues, this development was hotly debated in the technical press. Chin made the same algorithem-based obvious argument in DNA probes.
• Google and other technology companies founded the LOT Network in 2014 to combat patent assertion entities by cross-licensing patents, thereby preventing legal action by such entities.

History of perpetual motion machines

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An engraving of Robert Fludd's 1618 "water screw" perpetual motion machine.

 

The history of perpetual motion machines dates at least back to the Middle Ages. For millennia, it was not clear whether perpetual motion devices were possible or not, but modern theories of thermodynamics have shown that they are impossible. Despite this, many attempts have been made to construct such machines, continuing into modern times. Modern designers and proponents sometimes use other terms, such as "overunity", to describe their inventions.

History

Kinds of perpetual motion machines

Perpetuum Mobile of Villard de Honnecourt (about 1230) 15th-century wheel by Taccola Orffyreus' Mersseburgische Perpetuum Mobile Boyle's perpetual motion scheme

There are two types of perpetual motion machines: Perpetual motion machines of the first kind are those devices that violate the first law of thermodynamics, the principle of conservation of energy, creating energy out of nothing. Most attempts fall into this category. Perpetual motion machines of the second kind are devices that violate the second law of thermodynamics. Even though they obey the principle of conservation of energy, they attempt extraction of work from a single heat reservoir, violating the principle of no entropy decrease in an isolated macroscopic thermodynamic system.

Pre-19th century

There are some unsourced claims that a perpetual motion machine called the "magic wheel" (a wheel spinning on its axle powered by lodestones) appeared in 8th-century Bavaria. This historical claim appears to be unsubstantiated though often repeated. 

Early designs of perpetual motion machines were done by Indian mathematician–astronomer Bhaskara II, who described a wheel (Bhāskara's wheel) that he claimed would run forever.

A drawing of a perpetual motion machine appeared in the sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt, a 13th-century French master mason and architect. The sketchbook was concerned with mechanics and architecture. Following the example of Villard, Peter of Maricourt designed a magnetic globe which, if it were mounted without friction parallel to the celestial axis, would rotate once a day. It was intended to serve as an automatic armillary sphere.

Leonardo da Vinci made a number of drawings of devices he hoped would make free energy. Leonardo da Vinci was generally against such devices, but drew and examined numerous overbalanced wheels.

Mark Anthony Zimara, a 16th-century Italian scholar, proposed a self-blowing windmill.

Various scholars in this period investigated the topic. In 1607 Cornelius Drebbel in "Wonder-vondt van de eeuwighe bewegingh" dedicated a Perpetuum motion machine to James I of England. It was described by Heinrich Hiesserle von Chodaw in 1621. Robert Boyle devised the "perpetual vase" ("perpetual goblet" or "hydrostatic paradox") which was discussed by Denis Papin in the Philosophical Transactions for 1685. Johann Bernoulli proposed a fluid energy machine. In 1686, Georg Andreas Böckler, designed a "self operating" self-powered water mill and several perpetual motion machines using balls using variants of Archimedes' screws. In 1712, Johann Bessler (Orffyreus), claimed to have experimented with 300 different perpetual motion models before developing what he said were working models.

In the 1760s, James Cox and John Joseph Merlin developed Cox's timepiece. Cox claimed that the timepiece was a true perpetual motion machine, but as the device is powered by changes in atmospheric pressure via a mercury barometer, this is not the case. 

In 1775, the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris made the statement that the Academy "will no longer accept or deal with proposals concerning perpetual motion."

Industrial Revolution

19th century

In 1812, Charles Redheffer, in Philadelphia, claimed to have developed a "generator" that could power other machines. The machine was open for viewing in Philadelphia, where Redheffer raised large amount of money from the admission fee. Redheffer moved his machine to New York, after his cover was blown in Philadelphia, while applying for government funding. It was there that Robert Fulton exposed Redheffer's schemes during an exposition of the device in New York City (1813). Removing some concealing wooden strips, Fulton found a catgut belt drive went through a wall to an attic. In the attic, a man was turning a crank to power the device.

In 1827, Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet devised a machine running on capillary action that would disobey the principle that water seeks its own level, so to produce a continuous ascent and overflow. The device had an inclined plane over pulleys. At the top and bottom, there travelled an endless band of sponge, a bed and, over this, again an endless band of heavy weights jointed together. The whole stood over the surface of still water. Congreve believed his system would operate continuously.

In 1868, an Austrian, Alois Drasch, received a US patent for a machine that possessed a "thrust key-type gearing" of a rotary engine. The vehicle driver could tilt a trough depending upon need. A heavy ball rolled in a cylindrical trough downward, and, with continuous adjustment of the device's levers and power output, Drasch believed that it would be possible to power a vehicle.

In 1870, E.P. Willis of New Haven, Connecticut made money from a "proprietary" perpetual motion machine. A story of the overcomplicated device with a hidden source of energy appears in the Scientific American article "The Greatest Discovery Ever Yet Made". Investigation into the device eventually found a source of power that drove it.

John Ernst Worrell Keely claimed the invention of an induction resonance motion motor. He explained that he used "etheric technology". In 1872, Keely announced that he had discovered a principle for power production based on the vibrations of tuning forks. Scientists investigated his machine which appeared to run on water, though Keely endeavoured to avoid this. Shortly after 1872, venture capitalists accused Keely of fraud (they lost nearly five million dollars). Keely's machine, it was discovered after his death, was based on hidden air pressure tubes.

1900 to 1950

In 1900, Nikola Tesla claimed to have discovered an abstract principle on which to base a perpetual motion machine of the second kind. No prototype was produced. He wrote:

“

A departure from known methods – possibility of a "self-acting" engine or machine, inanimate, yet capable, like a living being, of deriving energy from the medium – the ideal way of obtaining motive power.

”

David Unaipon, Australian inventor, had a lifelong fascination with perpetual motion. One of his studies on Newtonian mechanics led him to create a shearing machine in 1910 that converted curvilineal motion into straight line movement. The device is the basis of modern mechanical shears.

In the 1910s and 1920s, Harry Perrigo of Kansas City, Missouri, a graduate of MIT, claimed development of a free energy device. Perrigo claimed the energy source was "from thin air" or from aether waves. He demonstrated the device before the Congress of the United States on December 15, 1917. Perrigo had a pending application for the "Improvement in Method and Apparatus for Accumulating and Transforming Ether Electric Energy". Investigators report that his device contained a hidden motor battery.

Cover of the October 1920 issue of Popular Science magazine

 

Popular Science, in the October 1920 issue, published an article on the lure of perpetual motion.

Modern era

1951 to 1980

During the middle of the 20th century, Viktor Schauberger claimed to have discovered some special vortex energy in water. Since his death in 1958, people are still studying his works.

In 1966, Josef Papp (sometimes referred to as Joseph Papp or Joseph Papf) supposedly developed an alternative car engine that used inert gases. He gained a few investors but when the engine was publicly demonstrated, an explosion killed one of the observers and injured two others. Papp blamed the accident on interference by physicist Richard Feynman, who later shared his observations in an article in Laser, the journal of the Southern Californian Skeptics. Papp continued to accept money but never demonstrated another engine. 

On December 20 of 1977, Emil T. Hartman received U.S. Patent 4,215,330 titled "Permanent magnet propulsion system". This device is related to the Simple Magnetic Overunity Toy (SMOT). 

Thesta-Distatica electrical circuit as explained in Potter's "Methernitha Back-Engineered" article.

 

Paul Bauman, a German engineer, developed a machine referred to as the "Testatika" and known as the "Swiss M-L converter" or "Thesta-Distatica".

Guido Franch reportedly had a process of transmuting water molecules into high-octane gasoline compounds (named Mota fuel) that would reduce the price of gasoline to 8 cents per gallon. This process involved a green powder (this claim may be related to the similar ones of John Andrews (1917)). He was brought to court for fraud in 1954 and acquitted, but in 1973 was convicted. Justice William Bauer and Justice Philip Romiti both observed a demonstration in the 1954 case.

In 1958, Otis T. Carr from Oklahoma formed a company to manufacture UFO-styled spaceships and hovercraft. Carr sold stock for this commercial endeavour. He also promoted free energy machines. He claimed inspiration from Nikola Tesla, among others.

In 1962, physicist Richard Feynman discussed a Brownian ratchet that would supposedly extract meaningful work from Brownian motion, although he went on to demonstrate how such a device would fail to work in practice.

In the 1970s, David Hamel produced the Hamel generator, an "antigravity" device, supposedly after an alien abduction. The device was tested on MythBusters where it failed to demonstrate any lift-generating capability.

Howard R. Johnson's US Patent 4151431

 

Howard Robert Johnson developed a permanent magnet motor and, on April 24, 1979, received U.S. Patent 4,151,431.[The United States Patent office main classification of his 4151431 patent is as a "electrical generator or motor structure, dynamoelectric, linear" (310/12).] Johnson said that his device generates motion, either rotary or linear, from nothing but permanent magnets in rotor as well as stator, acting against each other. He estimated that permanent magnets made of proper hard materials should lose less than two percent of their magnetization in powering a device for 18 years.

In 1979, Joseph Westley Newman applied for a patent on a direct current electrical motor which, according to his book The Energy Machine of Joseph Newman did more mechanical work than could be accounted for by the electrical power supplied to it. Newman's patent application was rejected in 1983. Newman sued the US Patent and Trademark Office in US District Court, which ordered the National Bureau of Standards to test his machine; they informed the Court that Newman's device did not produce more power than supplied by the batteries it was connected to, and the Court found against Newman.

1981 to 1999

Dr. Yuri S. Potapov of Moldova claims development of an over-unity electrothermal water-based generator (referred to as "Yusmar 1"). He founded the YUSMAR company to promote his device. The device has failed to produce over unity under tests.

CETI claimed development of a device that outputs small yet anomalous amounts of heat, perhaps due to cold fusion. Skeptics state that inaccurate measurements of friction effects from the cooling flow through the pellets may be responsible for the results.

2000s

Motionless electromagnetic generator circuit as explained in US Patent 6362718

 

The motionless electromagnetic generator (MEG) was built by Tom Bearden. Allegedly, the device can eventually sustain its operation in addition to powering a load without application of external electrical power. Bearden claimed that it didn't violate the first law of thermodynamics because it extracted vacuum energy from the immediate environment. Critics dismiss this theory and instead identify it as a perpetual motion machine with an unscientific rationalization. Science writer Martin Gardner said that Bearden's physics theories, compiled in the self-published book Energy from the Vacuum, are considered "howlers" by physicists, and that his doctorate title was obtained from a diploma mill. Bearden then founded and directed the Alpha Foundation's Institute for Advanced Study (AIAS) to further propagate his theories. This group has published papers in established physics journals and in books published by leading publishing houses, but one analysis lamented these publications because the texts were "full of misconceptions and misunderstandings concerning the theory of the electromagnetic field." When Bearden was awarded U.S. Patent 6,362,718 in 2002, the American Physical Society issued a statement against the granting. The United States Patent and Trademark Office said that it would reexamine the patent and change the way it recruits examiners, and re-certify examiners on a regular basis, to prevent similar patents from being granted again.

In 2002, the GWE (Genesis World Energy) group claimed to have 400 people developing a device that supposedly separated water into H₂ and O₂ using less energy than conventionally thought possible. No independent confirmation was ever made of their claims, and in 2006, company founder Patrick Kelly was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing funds from investors.

In 2006, Steorn Ltd. claimed to have built an over-unity device based on rotating magnets, and took out an advertisement soliciting scientists to test their claims. The selection process for twelve began in September 2006 and concluded in December 2006. The selected jury started investigating Steorn's claims. A public demonstration scheduled for July 4, 2007 was canceled due to "technical difficulties". In June 2009, the selected jury said the technology does not work.