January 28, 2002

4:25 PM

License for love.Although some might call it a license for stalking. This is a patent for a method to request a date with a someone knowing only their vehicle license plate number. Quite a concept. I wonder what Mr. Wertheim will name this service.
posted by borgle (12 comments total)

Hey! Now I can get a date with "SXY GRDMA"!

Thank you borgle!!!!
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:32 PM on January 28, 2002

STR ANG
posted by ejoey at 4:36 PM on January 28, 2002

Hmmm... Then I'll be able to look up who was driving (I kid you not) "OKTHXBI".

Seriously. With rainbow sticker and all.
posted by majick at 5:05 PM on January 28, 2002

Can someone say "lawsuit?"
posted by aacheson at 5:17 PM on January 28, 2002

Can someone say "lawsuit?"

Judging from my reading the description in the patent, it would appear participation is completely voluntary. In fact, it appears to be merely yet another date-matching database with an extra field to allow yourself to be found by license plate number.

Not the most tremendous invention, but far more ridiculous patents have been granted in the past.
posted by majick at 5:22 PM on January 28, 2002

Although it shouldn't, it amazes me how someone can take a trivial concept and make it sound much bigger than it is by adding diagrams and appropriate wording. The concept here is:

1. someone gives me their license plate number and i enter it into a database.


2. someone else pays me money to tell them who owns that license plate.

posted by milnak at 5:57 PM on January 28, 2002

I swear I read about this a couple of years ago. Person A registered with the dating agency and put a numbered sticker in their window. Person B would see the sticker and would phone the agency; giving the number on the sticker and signing up with the agency if they weren't already a member. The agency would pass along the message to the Person A, who could then get in touch with Person B.
posted by Monk at 6:23 PM on January 28, 2002

Aren't license plate numbers public record?
posted by kirkaracha at 6:55 PM on January 28, 2002

Monk, I remember a system similar to that, except that it was wardrobe-based: you bought clothes from this particular company that had your unique tag number on them, and anyone whose fancy you struck could enter that number into the database on the site of the clothing manufacturer to find out your vital stats.

I wish I could remember the name of the site to provide a link, but I was too stunned by the utter hopelessness of the endeavor to record it for future retrieval.
posted by pudders at 9:19 PM on January 28, 2002

To take this to a whole new plane of nerdiness, there's always the people who actually tried to build a Gaydar apparatus. I'm guessing nothing came of that seeing as the highest hit on Google was to the USA-freaking-Today.
posted by jaek at 10:18 PM on January 28, 2002

pudders is referring to skim (warning: you might need to log in).
posted by sarelicar at 8:24 AM on January 29, 2002

I wonder what Mr. Wertheim will name this service.

How 'bout Dates by Taillight?
Or Drive-by Loving?

The theme song for the commercial could be yet another gag-inducing rendition of "Get Out of My Dreams (And Into My Car)."
posted by me3dia at 1:37 PM on January 29, 2002