Actually, in case you've been in the dark, the national labs do know how to do scientific advances. Not all batteries are equally hazardous. Obviously they're gearing toward automobile applications. We know a troll when we see one.

Argonne has a lot of pertinent facilities, skill and technology. IIRC, Argonne licenses patents for $100 a piece. They can always demand more funding and from other agencies too in successive years.

Not sure if necessary. It's far better to just protect, and is also effective. Hackers come from everywhere. Martyrdom (of a hacker) is also a path to a revolution. Israel already has one jihad on its hands. Not sure if it needs another.

My choice of words was poor. By mind-altering, I actually meant psychedelic, not psychotropic. Thank you for the correction.

Even the same drug can be helpful vs. psychedelic at different doses. Consider LSD. It can help substantially in a number of ways. If low-dose LSD helps you stay off alcoholism, for example, which is entirely possible, you can now begin to have a more productive life immediately.

I take it that by drugs, you mean mind-altering drugs. Other than that, it is obvious that drugs help. Consider caffeine. Duh. And there are a thousand others that help and are not significantly mind-altering. Let's not mix up the classes.

Typically, patents are meant to be overturned by courts, and not directly by the USPTO. Suing the USPTO to damnation is one of the only paths to shutting it down. They are clearly guilty here, and require massive reform which is not forthcoming. There is a larger picture than the one you've been looking at.

USPTO should be sued by both parties for this nonsense. By Samsung for the lost lawyer fees. By Apple for the lost presumed revenue.

I've got a solution for the whole shebang. Sue the USPTO every time a court rules they issued a bad patent - it's they who screw up the most, after all. Pretty soon they'll have no money left and will either shut down or will make each patent application a 100 million dollars.