Fact Check: Did Bill Gates Planned COVID-19 to Insert Patent 666 Microchips in People?

Since the COVID-19 coronavirus has evolved into a global pandemic, the surge of infodemic of rumors, misinformation, and misinterpretation have grown.

The worldwide spread of the coronavirus disease in 2020 burned a flurry of conspiracy theories regarding its origin, how it spread, and who was responsible for it. One of the theories blamed Bill Gates, former CEO of Microsoft, claiming that he started the pandemic so that he could insert microchips into people's bodies around the world under the guise of providing vaccination or for other purposes.

This theory is supported by some coincidences and misinterpretation. In April 2020, a link to a patent presumably owned by Microsoft that pertained to the insertion of microchips to the human body for financial gain has been shared by social media users.

Users claimed that the patent was especially insidious, because it carried the number "666", which is a biblical mark of the devil, and the letters WO, which are claimed to stand for "World Order".

The patent was genuinely filed by Microsoft but does not involve the plan to microchip individuals, nor WO stands for World Order, and one has to ignore the existence of the other 11 characters in order to come up with a conclusion that the patent carries the devil's mark.

In June 2019, Microsoft Technology Licensing applied for the patent and was published in March 2020 under the number WO2020060606A1. The said patent is for the cryptocurrency system that makes use of the body activity data. This patent, which has not been granted as of this writing, has not mentioned microchipping of individuals or even microchips.

The diagrams in the patent show how the person, user device, and sensor are all discrete items. The text further explains that the user device in the diagram may include wearables, like cellphones, smartwatch, laptops, or tablets.

Two options for the sensor are provided by the patent. First, the sensor could be integrated into one of the aforementioned devices, such as a smartwatch. Second, the sensor may also be a standalone component.

At no point in the patent, Microsoft poses that the sensor would be implanted into a person's body.

The patent was published under the number WO2020060606A1, this contains the number 666. However the aforementioned patent number is not the same as "patent 666".

Furthermore, the WO at the beginning of the patent is a shorthand for WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, which issued the patent, and does not stand for World Order. The A1, the kind code at the end of the patent, signifies that it is only a published patent. While B1 is applied to patents that have been granted.

Microsoft applied for a patent which includes the development of a cryptocurrency system based on tracking body-activity data. Nevertheless, this focuses on wearable technology, such as cellphones, smartwatch, laptops, or tablets, and does not include implanting of microchips on the human body. Though the patent number WO2020060606A1 contains three 6's, this appears to be more of a coincidence.