Funny Patents

I have a book review up over on the What the Funny…Patents website, reviewing Scott Seegert’s book “It’s a Guy Thing: awesome real innovations from the underdeveloped male mind.” Check it out.

Related Posts:

• “What the Funny…Patents” blog (wtfpatents.com) goes live
• What is YOUR expired patent worth?
• David Allen’s GTD “43 Folders” and an old patent

Fore Inventors Only — Golf Channel

In case you missed it, the Golf Channel has a new show “Fore Inventors Only” directed towards inventors of golf related inventions. 

[It] will uncover the next big thing in golf. Aspiring inventors will showcase their inventions and compete for prizes as they attempt to be the last person standing in the competition. This series will give inventors the opportunity to share their designs with the world, and at the culmination, one product or idea will be selected as the top invention…

The prize package includes: shelf-space for the winning invention within a major national golf-retail outlet; a Golf Channel-produced infomercial; air time for the infomercial on Golf Channel.

More than a thousand inventors auditioned, 103 made it onto the show, and now they are in the process of narrowing the field down 39 inventions that will advance to the “field testing stage” of the competition.  It looks like the most recent episode (covering day two of the narrowing) will be reshown tonight, Saturday and Sunday.  Here’s a link to the Tivo “record this show” page.  The live finale, where the winner is announced, will be September 4. 

What interests me about this show the most is the fact that a local Boise inventor (Dean Thompson, Z Factor Sports, U.S. Patent No. 6,893,356) made the second day cuts, making it into the final 39 and the “field testing stage.”  The Golf Channel page spotlighting his invention can be found here.Additional information about his product can be found at www.perfectputtingmachine.com.  Good luck Dean!

Related Posts:

• Fore Inventors, Part Deux!
• Boise Inventor Makes it to the Finals of the Gold Channel’s Fore Inventors Only Show
• Black American Inventors…can you help?

“What the Funny…Patents” blog (wtfpatents.com) goes live

For a few years we have irregularly updated one of our side projects…the patent humor site “IP Funny.” Thanks to those of you who have put up with our childish senses of humor (and provided your own funny patents for us to post) over the past couple years.

Recently, we decided it was time to finally get the project its own domain, namely www.wtfpatents.com. The “What the Funny…Patents” site is up already. As soon as I get caught up at home and work, maybe I’ll start irregularly posting again. [The RSS feed remains the same, no need to update.]

Related Posts:

• Funny Patents
• New Kids on the IP Block
• Four Years!

I’m back…with a question from a reader

Sorry for the light posting…I took some vacation and have been buried in other projects.

I did receive the following question from a reader today:

I have my grandmother’s old hand-operated meat grinder.  On it is imprinted:

PAT.MCH. 4.’02.

Does this mean that it was the fourth patent issued in 1902?

I’ll appreciate any information you can provide.

My response would be:  I doubt it.  To the best of my knowledge, I don’t know how you’d even easily determine what the fourth patent issued in 1902 was, let alone would that have necessarily been information the Patent Office would have provided to a patentee.

If Buchanan is done standing in the bathroom taking pictures, maybe he (patent marking plate expert) can answer it.  Or…perhaps one of my readers can decipher the marking (the comments are open).

Related Posts:

• David Allen’s GTD “43 Folders” and an old patent
• Tablet PCs (the anonymous fax)
• “What the Funny…Patents” blog (wtfpatents.com) goes live

By chance?

Via Blawg Review 65, a post on David Jacobson’s External Insights blog called “Designing for ‘accidental innovation’” which points to a Harvard Business School Working Knowledge article on “The Accidental Innovator”

Accidental Innovation is not to be confused with yelling “Here, hold my beer” before doing something stupid. That is called natural selection.

Related Posts:

• Cue Willard Scott…someone’s 100!
• The easy way to read law blogs…Blawg Review
• Other ways to find new blawgs to read

Patents v. Trademarks v. Copyrights…which is most valuable?

Patent attorneys (being the self centered snobs we are) like to say “patents are the broadest protection you can have, then trademarks…and copyrights are really narrow.”

How does that crude logic stack up when you look at what they are worth–dollar value?

James E. Hawes has analyzed that question…and has some interesting results: IPThoughts–Values of IP

Related Posts:

• Google Image Labeler … Community Intellectual Property Cops?
• Explain Patents v. Copyrights
• Trademark FAQ

What is YOUR expired patent worth?

Apparently, this one is up for auction on eBay for $20,000,000. Its listing indicates that the auction is for:

US Patent Number 6161005 for Licesing [sic] to a person or company. This Patent is for a Cell Phone that will unlock any door lock for the car or home or office at any distance utilizing any of the following methods of operation: PIN codes, speech recognition, infrared, Rolling Codes RF, and trainable systems. Email me for more information we have an extensive web page and business plan.

Funny thing though…

Doah!

Related Posts:

• “What the Funny…Patents” blog (wtfpatents.com) goes live
• If you can’t beat them…part II
• Funny Patents

David Allen’s GTD “43 Folders” and an old patent

I’m not sure if any of you have ever read David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD), but via a recommendation from Buzz, I have.  GTD is a system of organizing information in your life to help you get more things done.  Although I only use 1/3 of David’s system (it is probably time to reread it and implement more of it), the lessons that the book has taught me have been invaluable.  A highly recommended book.

One of the things GTD teaches you to use is a "43 Folders" tickler system.  Ernie Svenson even had a post once mentioning his (with a photo).  Essentially, you create a tickler file having 12 monthly tabs plus 31 daily (days of the month) tabs for keeping track of your personal deadlines, tasks and to-dos.

Well…I was surfing around earlier today and stumbled on mention of an article ("Keeping Tabs:  The History of an Information Age Metaphor") talking about the history of folder/index card tabs.  It turns out that back in ~1896, a gentleman by the name of James Newton Gunn had a flash of brilliance.  What if someone added tabs to folders/index cards so it would be easy to subdivide piles of cards???  His patent issued in 1897.  The article relates an interesting story that goes on to talk how such a simple invention (to which every one of us today thinks is obvious in hindsight) went on to show up everywhere (including the 43 folders).  So…next time you pull out your tickler file, open a new file for a client, click a tab in your browser, etc….thank James Newton Gunn.

[updated to fix a couple of typos in the dates]  SMN 1/1/6

Related Posts:

• Recommended Reading: The “Legal Andrew” Blog
• Apple patent in the Spotlight
• Patents are worthless

JPEG gets a Markman Date

The Unofficial Apple Weblog reporting that a Markman hearing has been set for Feb. 13, 2006 in the CLI case (JPEG compression). The Defendants include…Acer, Apple, Canon, Creative Labs, Dell, Eastman Kodak, Fuji Photo Film, Fujitsu, Gateway, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, JASC Software, JVC, Kyocera, Matsushita, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Onkyo, PalmOne, Panasonic Communications, Panasonic Mobile, Ricoh Corporation, Savin, Sun Microsystems and TiVo. It has been reported that to avoid this suit, thirty other potential defendants settled the case for around $90,000,000 total.

This old Wired article has some pretty good background on the case, as does the JPEG Wikipedia entry.

Related Posts:

• Cease & Desist Letters –> Declaratory Judgment Lawsuits
• Social Networking or Theft of Trade Secrets?
• Microsoft v. Research Corporation Technologies, Inc. to go to the jury

Apple patents or Microsoft patents….which are more interesting?

Have you checked out patentmojo.com yet?

It allows you to set up RSS feeds of patent searches (i.e., every time company A receives a patent…send me an email).  Pretty slick concept.  They have a number of "sample" RSS feeds set up…a great way to try out their services. 

Surprisingly, there are (as of this second) 93 people subscribed to the Apple patent feed and only 26 subscribed to the Microsoft patent feed.  Does that mean that more people find Apple/Mac/iPod patents Interesting than Microsoft/Windows patents?

Related Posts:

• Apple patent in the Spotlight
• Microsoft and the patently absurd
• JPEG gets a Markman Date