Patent filings raise questions

The debate over the potential connection between cell phones and health problems has been fueled by the discovery that even as major cell phone manufacturers argued that phones pose no health risks, the companies were filing patents for devices designed to protect users from radiation emitted by the phones.

The Network World discovery of the patents, which date back to the early 1990s, heats up the debate about whether cell phones cause health problems ranging from brain tumors to eye cancer to fatigue and memory loss.

The patents are for devices that include an alarm, an antenna that extends above the user's head and an antenna shroud.

While the patents seem to indicate the manufacturers were looking for ways to reduce radio frequency emissions for safety reasons, some companies insisted they were simply trying to make the devices more efficient while others said they were unaware of the patents filed by individual employees.

"When they talk about the health risks [in] corporate documents and then say there are no health risks . . . how could there be such a glaring inconsistency?" asks Dr. George Carlo, who at one time worked for the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, a Washington, D.C., trade group. Carlo headed up a six-year, $25 million research effort into the question of whether the use of cell phones causes genetic, biological or health effects.

Norman Sandler, director of global strategic issues for Motorola, one of the cell phone manufacturers that has patented such technology, says: "It should not be . . . implied that we think there's any health risk associated with the use of phones. Quite frankly, patent applications are often written by engineers and patent attorneys and don't necessarily [address] particular concerns of the company."

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