Not that it means much, but they did actually go to the trouble of getting a patent.
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Indeed. For instance, British Rail got a patent for a fusion-powered interplanetary spacecraft. In 1973.
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Right, so lets just pick three very car-centric US cities (Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas/Ft. Worth) and one city that routinely ranks as having the busiest airport in the world (Atlanta).
Now consider that both Texas cities have two major airports and greater LA has many. Let’s also factor in the flight & passenger load at Atlanta. Combine all those “flying cars” with all that air traffic at all four metropolitan areas.
Put me down for one of those cars! I see no risk at all… /s
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Not sure what it was in 1973, but the European term for a patent is currently 20 years. Filing this in 1973 was … optimistic?
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Well, actually fusion power has been just around the corner since 1952. So in 1973, there was already over two decades of experience with that.
Why, just last year renowned expert in the field Jacob Rees-Mogg told us that Britain’s first Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) prototype fusion energy plant will be complete in about 17 years.
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Yeah, it seems like just about once a year, someone has a “breakthrough” in fusion power research, and every time, the media report is basically, “No, this time it’s for real, guys!” And every time, it’s not.
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I don’t have the google-fu for it, but I remember reading an interview with some fusion researchers. They commented that back in the 1970s there was a roadmap for fusion funding and when we could expect results. “This much a year will get you fusion within 50 years, about twice that will get you fusion in 40 years, etc.” The roadmap also had a bare minimum line: “Any funding under this amount means you’ll never actually get fusion.” At the time, the funding had been steadily below that line for decades.
ETA: Ah, here is one instance of it. Scroll down to question 3 to get an explainer on it. This interview was in 2012.
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When I lived in Davis, A few times I took my lunch break and parked near the backyard of Moller International to see if they were doing any progress. All I ever saw was half built prototypes through the windows, but it was fun to pretend one day I’d see the flying car being tested.
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Agreed, but I actually think British Rail’s fusion spacecraft patent was significantly less absurd in 1973 than this ‘aircraft’ and timeline are today. Given the then-current cost and tech trends in fission, and the space race, it wasn’t too absurd that at least one company would think that governments would put in the tens of billions of dollars needed to advance and scale up fusion, at least to the point it was viable for space use, if not commercial power. With enough funding we probably could have done that at any point since the 1990s if we really wanted or needed to, but there was no need or drive for it. And in any case, if and when we do decide to build interplanetary spacecraft to carry people, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they end up using the descendants of today’s prototype fission SMRs as a power source for electric propulsion.
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Yup. You can patent almost anything, as long as someone else hasn’t filed one first. And you can patent the most stupidest and most obvious things, because the patent office in the US doesn’t really bother to check things in depth first- it’s more of ‘issue it and let the patent lawyers deal with it later’. /cynical
While it is silly, could it work any other way? The patent office can’t employ supreme experts in every field, particularly cutting edge ones. They also can’t act as an entire scientific peer review body.
I might argue instead that patents have had their day and we should get rid of them. They no longer serve their purpose anyway, since every invention will be copied by someone in another country. All they are nowadays is a revenue stream for big tech companies who sue each other over vague descriptions of software.
I had a friend who invented a new kind of fidget spinner. He patented it and was making them in the US. A factory in China knocked it off in a week, sells it for a tenth of the price, and his business was over. What’s he supposed to do? Call the State Department and ask to speak to the manager? 
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It used to. It used to require a prototype.
I mean, okay, sure, but that ended in 1880. Patents back then were all cotton gins and cream separators. I’m talking about now. Even in 1880, they ended the model requirement because they didn’t physically have the space to store all the prototypes and it wasn’t serving any useful purpose to require them (they didn’t have to be verified working, they just had to exist). It would be orders of magnitude harder to do it now than it was when they decided it was already too hard in 1880.
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They just don’t make patent office clerks like Einstein anymore.
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Even without going to a court, patent portfolios are a contracting tool:
“I have this 10000 patents in this specific field, I’m sure you are using one of these”
“Yes, probably, as we are sure you are using one of our 10000 in this other field”
Shake hands, and compete on other stuff.
The 10⁴ order of magnitude is in the right ballpark, if not underestimated.
A couple of them are in my name, are they going to actually implement and deploy them?
Maybe one of them, the other is just a “vague software description”, though it defeats a limitation of some existing protocol - they both are used as negotiating assets.
Of course, this tool is only available to large organizations.
For a small firm, as you said, the protection is next to none - I have witnessed this with a colleague’s brother, who has a car workshop: they had patented a innovative small tool to ease repainting of car doors (IIRC).
It took very little time to see clones used by others, small and large.
Their lawyer advised them not to waste money.
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