Gil, in a recent post in an old thread that asked, "Should religious discussion/debate be restricted to the Off Topic section?" wrote the following:
Patent laws states that a phenomenon of nature cannot be patented.Gil wrote:It is the 90 plus percent of posts appertaining to patents/patenting that should be placed off topic especially in light of the obvious fact that the secret we seek is a phenomenon of nature (GOD if you wish) & can therefore never be patented.
Definition of Natural Phenomenon - a noun: all phenomena that are not artificial
Examples of phenomenon of nature or natural phenomenon:
wind, rain, snow, fog, comets, lightning, gravity electricity, sound, rock formations, tidal waves, grass, flowers, trees, granite, sandstone, hail, fire.
The list is very extensive. I listed a few simple quick examples that came to mind.
Companies patent plants all the time. They cannot patent the genetically original plant, but they can and do patent the genetically modified plant.
Electric motors, lights, and generators are patentable, but if electricity were to be discovered today, you could not patent it or prevent people from "making, using, or selling" electricity, which is the only rights that a patent grants to an inventor.
So, if an inventor discovers a way to cause a wheel to rotate perpetually, is it a phenomenon of nature, is it a naturally occurring phenomenon and thus not patentable? Would it be like electricity that occurs naturally? You cannot patent lightning. But you can patent lightning arresters and lightning collectors and even lightning powered electric motors. The machinery for using electricity is patentable.
In the same way, if you discover how to cause perpetual motion, and if it is the result of some natural phenomenon such as gravity or centrifugal force or whatever, you cannot patent the gravity or centrifugal force that causes the perpetual motion. But you most certainly can patent the machine and you can patent it as a process of how to extract continuous energy from the natural phenomenon, just as you could patent a new waterwheel or some new method that extracts energy from the natural phenomenon of falling water.