this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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The job of the patent office is to determine whether that’s a valid patent application or not. As in, can you actually patent that thing, has someone else already patented it etc. As long as it’s technically valid, it gets approved. It’s up to the patent holder to test if its actually useful or not. If they choose to build the thing IRL, it’s up to the courts to determine if that breaks any laws. Every step along the way, the general public is there to judge the moral integrity of said invention, but usually that has no impact on the validity of the patent. Depending on jurisdiction, the patent office may need to follow some moral guielines, but the threshold of rejection is very high. My guess is, you won’t be able to patent a gas chamber for exterminating “illegal immigrants”, but patenting wild Meta BS is technically fine.
See also: this abomination