Patents for perpetual motion machines

Abstract

Perpetual motion machines are back, but then, they never really went away. Set one going, and by definition it will still be running whenever you next look at it—if you can find it, that is, since no self-respecting perpetual motion machine would remain in the same place for ever. One which is unlikely to hang around for long is US patent 6,960,975 (Volfson). Modestly or prudently concealed behind the uninformative title of a ‘Space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state’, this patent describes and claims a space vehicle provided with a superconductive ‘anti-gravity shield’ which distorts the local space-time continuum, thereby tapping into an effectively infinite source of energy for propulsion, and accelerating the vehicle, its inventor, and up to two other occupants to within a fraction of the local speed of light, without requiring a conventional engine, or apparently consuming any fuel. I wonder if the Examiner wishes he was on board. When not exposed to the disorientating effects of ‘quantised vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravimetric field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly’, patent offices everywhere agree that perpetual motion machines are inherently unpatentable for substantially the same reason: that they have no ‘industrial application’, or are not ‘useful’. So the UK Manual of Office Practice states (citations omitted):