US8736085B2, Method and apparatus for direct energy conversion, is the United States patent that issued on 27 May 2014 from Eddie Sines's application US12/308,049, the filing first published as US20090315337A1 (see US20090315337: Eddie Sines's Patent Application for Direct Energy Conversion with Superconducting Vortex Tubes (filed 2007)). The Google Patents record for the grant adds things the published application could not show: what happened to the invention's foreign filings, the earlier patents and books listed as citations, the 18 claims it was granted with, and how it eventually lapsed. It also shows what the grant leaves out, which is any statement of how much electricity the device puts out compared with the light that drives it.
What the granted patent describes
The granted specification keeps the mechanism of the application. It describes a solid-state generator that uses light to switch a superconductor on and off and so steer the steady field of a magnet. The patent's stated aim is to turn the energy of an outside light beam into electricity, and it builds the device around the way Type II superconductors respond to magnetic fields and light. A laser sends light down fibre optics through a bore along the axis of a magnet, preferably cylindrical. The granted text allows that magnet to be either permanent or an electromagnet. A diffusing lens spreads the beam across the face of the vortex channel, a bundle of coated tubes. The magnetic circuit has two routes: path A through the magnet and coil A of a two-winding transformer, and path B through the magnet, the vortex channel and coil B.
According to the patent, when the YBCO film on the tubes is superconducting, the channel acts like an ideal inductor of unlimited permeability, and the flux returns through path B. When laser light breaks the Cooper pairs, a process the patent calls photon Cooper breaking, the channel is said to turn back into an ordinary ceramic with the permeability of air. That adds a large air gap to the circuit and pushes the flux onto path A. The patent says the repeated swing of flux between the two coils produces an electrical signal through the laws of induction and Lenz's law, without moving armatures.
The exemplary build is the same as in the application. It uses about 500 tubes, each at most 0.0125 inch across and 1.0 inch long; the general description names glass as one possible tube material. Each tube carries a Y2O3 buffer stabilised with ZrO2, a cerium oxide layer said to reduce the lattice mismatch to below 0.5%, a YBCO film and a very thin Parylene insulating layer. The patent again asserts that YBCO has "a very sharp resonance at 930 nm" and gives no measurement for it. The device runs in liquid nitrogen inside a Dewar vessel. A battery powers the laser and a control circuit that pulse-width-modulates the laser and regulates output for a load. In the patent's six-step process, the light breaks the pairs, the flux is shunted, current appears in the windings, and the cycle repeats until the nitrogen has boiled away.
The energy balance the patent never gives
The patent specification gives no laser power, no electrical output and no ratio between them. On the laser it says only that its wavelength and power output are chosen to make the photons as effective as possible at acting on the electrons. It describes the nitrogen as boiling off from "waste heat manufactured from the production of electrical energy" but never puts a number on that heat. It speaks of the potential energy stored in paired electrons, which it likens to compressed springs released when photons strike, but it does not calculate whether that energy could exceed what the laser supplies. The application's figures on output and efficiency were already labelled hypothetical. The grant does not replace them with measured ones. Nothing in the document reports that the device was built or tested.
What the examination record shows
The patent lists 17 patent citations and 6 non-patent references. Among the patents are a 1967-priority United Aircraft Variable coupling dc superconducting transformer, a US Navy Laser activated superconducting switch from 1974, an IBM superconductive switching device, NGK Insulators' superconductive magnetic-shielding tube, two Pawlowski permanent-magnet energy storage patents, and Craig Travers's Engine using the transition state of a superconductor to produce energy. Judging by their titles, earlier patents addressed related ideas of switching a superconductor and of drawing on its change of state; the record does not show how they bore on examination. The non-patent references are textbooks and general works: Tinkham's Introduction to Superconductivity, Griffiths's Introduction to Electrodynamics, Moskowitz's permanent magnet handbook, Jensen's Self-Organized Criticality, a Wikipedia entry on Faraday's law and an EGSA on-site power text. None of them reports a test of this device.
The patent carries the classification H02N11/00. That group gathers generators and motors not provided for elsewhere, and its heading also takes in claimed perpetual-motion devices worked by electric or magnetic means. The second classification, H10N60/84, covers superconducting devices that switch between superconducting and normal states.
Family, assignment and lapse
The invention was also filed abroad, and the grant record shows how each filing ended. The European application EP2030260 is listed as withdrawn. The Canadian application CA2655137A1 is listed as abandoned and the Mexican one, MX2008015902A, as discontinued. Australia granted AU2007269995B2, dated 23 January 2014, which is now listed as ceased. In the United States, a continuation-in-part, US14/151,722, was filed on 9 January 2014 and became US9080557B2 in 2015. The original application is listed as filed by an individual. On 30 August 2018 the patent was assigned to AQEDD, INC of Virginia.
The fee history is the most up-to-date part of the record. The 4th-year maintenance fee was paid as a micro entity on 25 January 2018, together with a surcharge for late payment. The 8th-year fee followed on 9 November 2021. A reminder notice for the next fee was mailed on 12 January 2026. The patent was recorded as expired for non-payment on 29 June 2026, effective 27 May 2026. The header still shows an adjusted expiration of 2028-12-31, which the lapse makes irrelevant.
Later citations
The record lists 59 later documents citing this patent, most of them superconducting photon detector, switch and logic patents from PsiQuantum Corp. These citations show only that later patent searches turned it up. They say nothing either way about whether the generator works.
Place in the dossier
The record shows the patent was granted, with 18 claims and earlier work on superconducting switches among its citations, and then maintained through the 4th-year and 8th-year fee payments before it lapsed. As Patent as Evidence explains, being granted does not show that a device works. And on the dossier's central question, how much electricity comes out for the light that goes in, the granted document is as silent as the application.
Source notes & attribution
- https://patents.google.com/patent/US8736085B2/en