Many people don't know it, but USPTO can apply a secrecy order
to a patent if patent office staff and their military advisers
think the idea could be used to threaten national security. Once
the USPTO decides that a technology is no longer a threat, it
can publish the patent and pave the way for commercialization.
Some patents may remain cloaked under a secrecy order for one or
two years; others languish for decades. More than 5,000 patents
-- inventions we may never know or see -- currently have secrecy
orders attached to them [source: Marks]. That's not the end of
hush-hush inventions. Each year, the Pentagon sets aside
billions of dollars to develop top-secret military weapons. This
so-called "black budget" has grown tremendously since the Sept.
11 attacks, surpassing even the funds spent at the height of the
Cold War. Some of that money has gone toward the development of
nano air vehicles (NAVs), remote-controlled micro-drones that
could easily infiltrate enemy territory. We all know how the
U.S. military