Quick answer: no!
The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals recently tangled with a patent application for an invention that did not have scientific support. The court affirmed a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board rejecting a patent application on these grounds. While this is not a common occurrence, in this case, it’s an easy conclusion to reach.
In In re Huping Hu, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 7776, the inventors applied for patents for inventions related to “quantum entanglement.” According to the inventors, quantum entanglement is “quantum spins of photons, electrons and nuclei.” The inventors explained that “quantum spins of photons, electrons and nuclei have now been successfully entangled in various ways for purposes of quantum computation and communication.” The inventors said that quantum entanglement is a phenomenon that happens if particles, such as photons and electrons, become linked, and, when separated, the mechanical states of the molecules are still linked such that if the state of one particle is changed, the linked particle is affected. The PTO explained the inventors’ method as using quantum entanglement “to change the characteristics of one substance via the manipulation of a completely physically separate substance.” The PTO did not dispute the existence of quantum entanglement, but said that the phenomenon has been seen in very specific conditions for only a fraction of a second.
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