The U.S. government can legally suppress any patent
Under a Cold War era law, federal agencies can classify private inventions as national security threats, preventing inventors from sharing or selling their own work.
The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 grants the U.S. government the power to impose secrecy orders on patent applications that federal agencies deem a threat to national security. While the law was originally designed to protect sensitive defense technologies like radar or nuclear secrets during the Cold War, its reach extends to any innovation in fields like cryptography, weaponry, or energy. Once an order is issued, the inventor is legally barred from disclosing their work to the public or seeking to profit from it.
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