I often wonder where we would be in terms of technology, if it were not for patent secrecy laws. I'm my country, if an inventor come to the patent office with something that would disrupt the countries technological strangle hold of profit (not that profit is bad, I am an anarcho-capitalist), they either offer them a military contract and/or scrap it. A gentle man made a car that separated hydrogen from water and ran on it. They did exactly this and he ended up dying of suspicious means.