Let’s say you invent some potent destro ray device or other super weapon that is not wildly complex or expensive to build. The government gets wind of it when you try to patent it and decides it poses a threat to national security… what can they do? How far can they go in taking away your rights in the name of national security?
Can they keep you from traveling or talking to other people? Can they put you under house arrest forever? Can they keep you from talking to the press?
If you are asking what the entire government can do to you? Probably kill you and erase all your records.
What they may do under the current set of laws it’s anybodies guess, the set of laws is just waay too large, but if the government is determined enough they’ll find enough loopholes to make sure you won’t get to use your weapon and they can keep it.
Something that appears on nearly all the websites dealing with free energy, 100 MPG carbs, etc., etc., etc., is that if you attempt to patent something which the government feels is essential to “national defense” they can deny you your patent and deprive you of any means of getting royalties, etc. etc.
The closest I’ve found to this actually happening (from a semi-reliable source) was an article in a science magazine (might have been Scientific American, might have been Popular Mechanics, I don’t remember) discussing “stealth” paint (i.e. paint like one would find on the B-2, F-117, etc.) where shortly after the researcher announced his discovery, the government stepped in and classified it. The guy didn’t seem to upset about it, and could talk about some of the “theoretical aspects” of such paint, but not any details about his particular formulation.
Odds are, however, that if you’re some kind of basement inventor the Feds have never heard of, they’d take no notice of your patent. Unless, of course, you fired up your prototype and wiped out something of significance. Certainly, the US allowed Gerald Bull to travel around and try to sell his idea of a “super gun” to anyone who’d listen. It was only after he convinced Saddam to fund his research that “spook” types got interested in what he was doing, and it was most likely the Israeli’s who killed him, and not the US.
Along that line wasn’t there some case where the US govt essentially stole a device for coupling undersea cables.
Ah here it is
If you had a weapon which would make you invincible then nothing, your majesty.
I, for one, welcome our new 1920s-style death-ray wielding overlords.
Seriously, if you did invent a death ray your government would give you a multi-million dollar defense contract to supply the military, and instruct you not to patent your design, but keep it a state secret.
I think that would depend on how essential they thought you were to the future development and production of the device; if they thought they could simply reproduce your results for themselves, you might find yourself (at best) locked away in some dungeon where you could cause no trouble, rather than finding yourself the lucky recipient of a clandestine supply contract.
Umm, didn’t you notice astro’s post?