Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know your elevator lies on the whispering wind?
Thoth Technology, Inc., just received a patent for its heavenly elevator. Well, not quite, but an elevator 12 miles tall certainly gives the Tower of Babel a run for its money. Thoth has indicated that it would be useful as a docking station for spaceships and is referring to it as a space elevator. You didn't know a space elevator existed, did you? Well, technically it doesn't. A prototype is soon to be in the works. You can read more on Huffington Post.
The question is, how does Thoth now have a patent on the tallest base jumping platform in the world without ever having built it? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
In the U.S., invention requires conception and reduction to practice.
Conception is the touchstone of inventorship, the completion of the mental part of invention. It is the formation in the mind of the inventor, of a definite and permanent idea of the complete and operative invention, as it is hereafter to be applied in practice. Conception is complete only when the idea is so clearly defined in the inventor's mind that only ordinary skill would be necessary to reduce the invention to practice, without extensive research or experimentation.
Looks like we've got conception: "Ah ha! An elevator to the stars! We'd use gyroscopes to balance it and fill it like a balloon to keep it flexible, strong, and light."
How did they reduce this to practice without a functioning space port though? Here is the fun part. Reduction to practice may be "actual" reduction or "constructive" reduction to practice. Actual reduction to practice means: I built it and it works. Constructive reduction to practice is more like a math proof: I worked it out and proved it works.
In fact, in the U.S. preparation and filing of a patent application that satisfies the disclosure requirements is evidence of constructive reduction to practice. So, for patent purposes, Thoth's 19-page patent application – assuming it provides enough data to build the thing – is just as good as the $5 billion dollars Thoth estimates it will actually cost to build it.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
