Perpetual motion inventions

I enjoy reading the IP-KAT blog, which mostly covers British and European court cases in intellectual property. Today a different sort of posting caught my eye.

It is called UK-IPO gets tougher on perpetual motion (the UK-IPO being what used to be called the Patent Office). It is about case O/156/08, an internal hearing at the IPO where the "tetchy" examiner refused to grant a patent for what he considered a perpetual motion machine. The application was published as a Variable volume bouyancy engine. Here is its main drawing.

Very usefully, the examiner listed previous cases in the same court where perpetual motion machines were refused, and the blog has kindly converted them into links to those decisions. Useful reading for anyone interested in the subject -- and yes, many patent applications in the subject do get published, and sometimes as granted patents.

Uniquely, I think, they are described in the patent classification in Latin: "alleged perpetua mobilia". The different varieties are listed together within class F03B17/00.

Comments

[Chris Torrero]

The IPC catchwords (which can be found by visiting http://www.wipo.int/classifications/ipc/ipc8/?lang=en and clicking on the tab, lists four classifications for alleged perpetua mobilia. There are:

PERPETUA MOBILIA
alleged dynamo-electric PERPETUA MOBILIA H02K 53/00

alleged hydraulic PERPETUA MOBILIA F03B 17/04

alleged magnetic or other electric PERPETUA MOBILIA H02N 11/00

alleged mechanical PERPETUA MOBILIA F03G 7/10

All of these are to be found in ECLA, along with a fifth F03B17/00B, which covers, systems where liquids are circulated in a closed loop.

For some reason, these terms are not retrieved when you search the term "perpetua" in the ECLA index.

[John Collins]

I'm in full agreement with the UK-IPO decision but of course this does not effect all so-called perpetual motion machines. Such machines are inevitably classified as 'isolated systems' and as such could not include so-called gravity-wheels. These devices are said to draw energy directly from gravity and cannot therefore be described as 'isolated'.

Not being isolated means that they do not attempt to circumvent the conservation of energy law and are therefore potentially viable.

Of course it will be argued that as a conservative force gravity cannot be so used, but in fact there are many examples of conservative forces which do provide energy to drive machinery. i.e. wind and water.

John Collins

[sean rhind]

can someone get in contact with me i am not a physician however i think i know the theory of demonstrating perpetual motion i have 2 different examples both with the same results i'm sure this would interest someone!!