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Blacklight Power: sci-fi science rejected by UK-IPO

By David

The rather mysteriously-named Blacklight Power, Inc. has come to the attention of the IPKat through a decision that was issued recently by the UK-IPO. The decision (BL O/076/08) resulted in refusal of two of Blacklight's UK patent applications relating to a computerised atomic modelling system, on the grounds that any contribution made was only that of a discovery or scientific theory, in line with the (by now very familiar) Aerotel/Macrossan approach.

This in itself was fairly unremarkable, and the IPKat would normally not think of bothering his readers with it. However, what piqued the Kat's interest was how far the UK-IPO went in reaching their decision, given the rather bizarre subject matter involved. The applications, both of which derived from international application WO 2005/067678, related to a very unusual scientific theory that, among other things, claims to be able to produce virtually limitless amounts of power (bringing to mind various other fantastical perpetual motion-type claims such as those made by Steorn). The hearing officer was, however, much more diplomatic in saying "the physics underlying the invention as disclosed in the applications and comprehensively explained by Dr Mills at the hearing is at the very limit of my understanding".

All this is the work of inventor and scientist Randell Mills (pictured), who has for many years been developing his theory of 'Classical Quantum Mechanics' (see Wikipedia for more details and links). The theory has been widely discredited by many conventional physicists for being, among other things, quite clearly wrong. Dr Mills is not to be dissuaded, however, and continues in his valiant efforts to convince the world that a new energy breakthrough is just around the corner thanks to his new 'hydrino' energy source. Blacklight, which appears to be a commercial vehicle for Dr Mills' ideas, has even been able to obtain investment money to pursue these ideas and attempt to get some patent protection. So far, it seems that Blacklight is not doing particularly well. Even the USPTO realised (eventually) that some of their claims were a bit too outlandish to justify granting a patent on.

As a slight aside, all this brings to the IPKat's mind the work of Arthur Pedrick, well known in patent circles for his outlandish ideas, which he publicised by means of many and various GB patent applications (see here for a selection). Dr Mills' claims look quite tame compared with some of Arthur's ideas.

Full post as published by IPKat on March 29, 2008 (boomark / email).