Fake diamond = better than real diamond?

Great Debates
81

lucwarm, I can tell you with some authority that a Patent requires submission of specific technical information allowing a skilled person to actually achieve the desired operational outcome. Otherwise it would be judged “incapable of industrial application”.

Free energy machines and wheat/gold transmogrifiers are not patented.

82

You might want to check out the sci.skeptic faq as it relates to free energy machines:

http://home.xnet.com/~blatura/skep_8.html

You also might want to check out US Patent No. 1997000942824: (at least according to a web site devoted to unusual patents).

(emphasis mine)

83

Here is the US Patent and Trademark Office search engine by patent number. That number generates no hits.

84

hmmm, try this:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&S1=6025810.WKU.&OS=PN/6025810&RS=PN/6025810

85

Oh, and here’s a nice quote from the text of the patent:

(emphasis mine)

:dubious:

86

OK, so holding a patent doesn’t guarantee that your invention does what you say it does. But neither does it guarantee that you are a crackpot. It only gives you legal recourse if someone copies your particular invention. If I built this dumbass FTL wannabe device and tried to sell it, that guy could sue me. So what?

87

Oh, and here’s a page I found by searching on “free energy” and “patent”

88

sentient seemed to be trying to argue that the fact that this diamond generating process is patented suggests that it’s legitimate.

Here’s what he said:

My point was that this argument is (apparently) wrong.

89

Yeah, but Dewar got a town named after him in Oklahoma.

(A very small town, admittedly. And maybe Dewar got his name from the town and not the other way around. But still.)

90

It’s not 5 dollars a stone, it’s 5 dollars a carat, & I think that’s production cost. If you’re paying under $10 for the whole ring, I imagine you’ve got a tiny chip of stone on very shoddy jewelry.

91

Just two nights ago my dad told me about watching a show that showed an immense warehouse in Russia with perhaps hundreds of thousands of diamonds. Apparently they weren’t sold just because it was more worth it to trickle them onto the world market instead of making the price dump.

The whole thing is being managed with a lot of precision.

As for whether it would matter, I’ve decided that really wanting expensive things like rings would be close to a deal breaker for me when thinking of getting engaged.

92

Ok I’m gonna’ need a cite for that one…

93

I always have fun poking at the “A diamond is forever” line because a diamond is not forever. A diamond is an unstable form of pure carbon at normal temperatures and pressures, and as such, will eventually rearrange and turn into graphite, which is the stable form of pure carbon. My pointing out this distinction was not appreciated last time I was in a jewelry store.

94

I always have fun poking at the “A diamond is forever” line because a diamond is not forever. A diamond is an unstable form of pure carbon at normal temperatures and pressures, and as such, will eventually rearrange and turn into graphite, which is the stable form of pure carbon. My pointing out this distinction was not appreciated last time I was in a jewelry store.

95

Looks like I’m not going to find a cite for that story about the Russians. I did find easily through Google, though, that the Russians used to market almost all their diamonds through De Beers, and we all know they were hoarding to prop up the price.

The part I wasn’t told was that this story was aired about 7 years ago. I had thought it was recently.