Overview
About
The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 requires the government to impose "secrecy orders" on certain patent applications that contain sensitive information, thereby restricting disclosure of the invention and withholding the grant of a patent. Remarkably, this requirement can be imposed even when the application is generated and entirely owned by a private individual or company without government sponsorship or support. There are several types of secrecy orders which range in severity from simple prohibitions on export (but allowing other disclosure for legitimate business purposes) up to classification, requiring secure storage of the application and prohibition of all disclosure.
This page presents year-by-year counts for each activity.
- Click Select activity to focus on a single row.
- Scroll horizontally on small screens to view all years.
Source: https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/invention/stats.html
Data table
| Activity | FY05 | FY06 | FY07 | FY08 | FY09 | FY10 | FY11 | FY12 | FY13 | FY14 | FY15 | FY16 | FY17 | FY18 | FY19 | FY20 | FY21 | FY22 | FY23 | FY24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NASA.DARPA |
0
— (—)
|
0
0 (—)
|
0
0 (—)
|
0
0 (—)
|
—
— (—)
|
0
— (—)
|
0
0 (—)
|
0
0 (—)
|
5
+5 (—)
|
3
-2 (-40.00%)
|
1
-2 (-66.67%)
|
3
+2 (+200.00%)
|
3
0 (0.00%)
|
0
-3 (-100.00%)
|
0
0 (—)
|
0
0 (—)
|
0
0 (—)
|
0
0 (—)
|
1
+1 (—)
|
5
+4 (+400.00%)
|