I didn't believe it at first either, but they're all validated. Prolly cos it conflicts with the western educational curriculum, which also claims Chris Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci discovered the Americas. Don't beLIEve. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pointing_Chariot
Big oil owns a technology patent that enables automobiles to get 80 miles per gallon using a paint roller type fuel feeder. Nope, we'll never see that one either.
There is a loophole to patent law, whereby the owner can utilize it into a new "machine" that incorporates that patent, and then patent that again, endlessly.
I can honestly say I've never had this thought before: for some people, literacy is dangerous. Seriously, TM, get out and live a little. Among the things you'll find out: people don't do things that are against their own economic interests. And, if something like what you say exists actually does, and (this is the important part, pay attention: remember, people don't do things that are against their own economic interests) it could be mass-produced so that the price of it wouldn't raise the price of an average car past the ability to pay of your average middle-class American, well, it would have been mass-marketed already.
I had said it stifles innovation. A blockbuster change such as the transistor or DNA sequencing or mass production can easily explain mass jumps in productivity. Something usually revolutionary will create this effect. Revolutionary advances circumvent the patent system, incremental advances are often held back. (Drug discovery is a big one) I remain in the camp that the patent system right now is broken. Incremental innovation with a shared knowledge base would go a lot farther than knowledge stored in silo's guarded by lawyers. The open source movement has proven that. I hope one day drug discovery becomes a community/open project. It will definitely improve the world. I also believe that pharmaceutical companies have depended too long on patent protection and tried too often to hit black swans, and it has only benefited the shareholders, executives and corporate coffers. I am not a communist, I believe in the free market, patents are not a free market mechanism.
Crude oil would be at sub 50 if such a technology was mass produced. You missed the point.. so did the other guy. They are not mass produced because it is not in the interests of oil co's to have them available in the free market. This is an example of patents stifling innovation. They own a technology which will NEVER be manufactured. Rank Country IQ estimate Rank Country IQ estimate Rank Country IQ estimate 23rd United States 98