As reported in U.S. Army Grenade Patent Changed, the US Army obtained Patent No. 6,523,478 (exact-copy PDF version) for a “Rifle-launched non-lethal cargo dispenser” in 2003. According to the report, the patent as issued repeatedly said the “rifle-launched nonlethal cargo dispenser” could be used to disperse aerosolized agents including “chemical agents” and “biological agents.” Some critics said this suggested the grenade was developed in violation of the Chemical and Biological weapons conventions and the U.S. Biological Weapons Antiterrorism Act of 1989, which prohibit development of devices to deliver biological weapons agents or using riot control agents as a method of warfare.
The Sunshine Project advocacy organization has argued the grenade should not be further developed and used. The weapon would be “practically useless in CWC compliant applications,” said Sunshine Project co-director Edward Hammond. “This is not a riot control weapon.”
So the Army said the language in the patent was “in error” and the Army attempted to get the Patent Office to issue a “certificate of correction” asking for “the term ‘chemical/biological agents,'” used four times in the patent, to be deleted from the patent “because it is unnecessary and confusing.” The Patent Office at first denied the request in February 2005; but then “reconsidered and approved the changes on Dec. 22, according to a page on the office Web site. The version of the document posted online has not yet been changed.”
Hammond noted that although they changed the patent, “It doesn’t obviate the fact that they made the claim in the first place and presumably the weapon is capable of doing what they claimed.”
10:58 am on February 2, 2006
