The Navy report released this month confirms cold fusion.
Most of those attacking cold fusion have other reasons.
If you are serious, and most pathologic critics are not,
the NAVY reports is here
I've seen the report. The gist of the report is that the government should give the author more funding.
While I personally don't doubt that researchers have found something, I think the jury is out concerning just what that something is. Cold fusion advocates have yet to demonstrate a system that achieves reproducable results -- much less a system that achieves practical results. Several labs have tried to reproduce cold fusion, but it doesn't seem to work. Whether there is some conspiracy among scientists to discredit cold fusion, or whether the cold fusion advocates aren't giving enough details about their experiments, or whether there ain't no such animal as cold fusion, I don't know.
At any rate, you certainly cannot expect a patent on a method that doesn't work or that only seems to work when no one else is around. The purpose of a patent is to increase the public knowledge. To disclose to the public how something is done so that, after the patent expires, the public can practice the invention. If no one can reproduce your results, then the patent fails to serve its purpose.
Does cold fusion exist? Sure, it's been a known phenomenon since the days of Niels Bohr. Does that mean you can get an exergenic reaction out of it and solve the world's energy problems? Nope. And what all the cold fusion adherents _say_ is that.
The PTO gives some stupid patents, but at least they haven't succumbed to that snake-oil yet.