Monday, August 31, 2009

Superluminal propagation: nine years later

In a post on 12:01Tuesday titled Patented: Formula for Computing Wind Chill about US 7,578,615, there is a comment about a DIFFERENT patent, US 7,126,691:

I like to think of it more as an "exercise" or an "experiment" than a "joke". I believe that the U.S. patent system is badly broken, and I thought I could demonstrate how broken it was by getting a patent on a device that violates the laws of physics. Unfortunately, the system is so badly broken that no one noticed.

A commenter referred to this as a device for performing super luminal communication although the title of the patent (filed January 6, 2003 ) is Communications method and apparatus using quantum entanglement .

The comment, however, ignores all the press coverage of superluminal propagation which appeared in the year 2000, three years BEFORE the application was filed. See for example:

Lawrence B. Ebert, Anatomy of a Superluminal Technical Story;
FASTER THAN A SPEEDING PHOTON?, Int. Prop. Today, p. 14 (Sept. 2000), which included the text:

The coverage by Associated Press n15 stated: "Scientists have
apparently broken the universe's speed limit . . . Researchers say it is the most
convincing demonstration yet that the speed of light - supposedly an
ironclad rule of nature - can be pushed beyond known boundaries, at least under
certain laboratory circumstances."


See also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/09/more-on-magnus-bard-reprised.html

Neither the popular stories nor the technical articles were retracted or modified. And the commenter wants to blame the USPTO?

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