April 19, 2002

5:05 PM

A five-year-old kid from Minnesotahas patented a way of swinging on a child's swing. More proof, if anyone needs it, that the government is veering from an institution of reason to an institution of control. At what point is a sufficient degree of absurdity reached that legitimacy is widely recognized to have been abandoned?
posted by rushmc (21 comments total)

MeFi covered it first.
posted by mkn at 5:07 PM on April 19, 2002

Oh dear lord! I just picture this kid's father hanging around the playground with a breifcase fulla subpoena's waiting for some tyke to infringe his little boy's patent. With any luck, the cops will think he's some kinda perv and cart him away.

If this kinda crap keeps up, I may make good on my plan to move out to the Idaho wilderness with my shotgun to await the apocalypse.
posted by jonmc at 5:11 PM on April 19, 2002

Doh! Sorry.
posted by rushmc at 5:19 PM on April 19, 2002

This could only be cool if someone filed the patent to show how easy it is to file bogus patents. Hmm.
posted by birgitte at 5:25 PM on April 19, 2002

I challenge us all to vigorous infringe on this patent this weekend.

Laws deserve as great a magnitude of respect as the magnitude of thought and design that were put into them.

Someone ought to patent the design of the US goverment... and shut them down. Sheesh. Serve 'em right.
posted by dissent at 5:29 PM on April 19, 2002

errr- vigorousLY, that is. Hmmm. Anyone remember the "adverb" song from Schoolhouse Rock? I should go look it up... heh...
posted by dissent at 5:31 PM on April 19, 2002

This probably started out as a semi-prank. "Hey, let's see if I can sneak this by the patent office and get my kid a patent to show off to his friends." But this has ended up being a Very Good Thing. This focuses on what a mess the patent office has become in a way that crying over software patents hasn't. Few outside of the software industry understand the implications of software patents, but everyone understands swings.
posted by dws at 5:36 PM on April 19, 2002

Quite simply, I think just because that a kid had a patent attorney dad was the reason this got through. Having dealt with the patent office myself, I wouldn't say its a totally messed up system and its easy to get bogus patents through.

What it comes down to is that the patent office is extremely overburdened....by law, it has to be entirely self-sustaining, which is totally ridiculous considering the economic importance of the work it does. As a result, they can't hire more examiners if they don't have the fee revenue to do it. As it is, it takes a good 2-3+ years to get a patent through the office; and in actuality getting a patent is not an easy process with all the back-and-forth arguing an agent/attorney has to do defending an invention as something patentable.

Though, I'll be the first to admit that the PTO hasn't made the best decisions on some occasions, overall its a pretty decent system. Also, just because a patent has been issued, its far from being in the clear if someone wants to raise some variety of an invalidity challenge.
posted by dicaxpuella at 6:02 PM on April 19, 2002

I think I'm going to patent the method of double-posting to Metafilter. Then...just watch out!
posted by UnReality at 6:14 PM on April 19, 2002

I had better hurry up and patent my innovative method of sitting on a toilet seat.
posted by fleener at 6:42 PM on April 19, 2002

dicaxpuella is absolutely right, there are many patents that get issued by the PTO which contain bad claims which could end up invalidating registration and/or claims which may infringe. The PTO is not the be all and end all, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is. One of the many reasons that patent attorneys make so much money is because the PTO is so overburdened that it cannot be counted on to find all prior art, therefore leaving it up to the lawyers. Drafting patents is a delicate art. One the one hand you want the patent to be as broad as possible and on the other hand it needs to be narrow enough that it gets through the PTO.
I heard the swing story on "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me" last weekend. It's just a lawyer having fun with his kids. Nothing to get bent about.
posted by anathema at 6:44 PM on April 19, 2002

I agree with anathema and dicaxpuella (nice name btw, [college latin major]).

The PTO needs a hell of alot more money. The salaries should be equivalent or exceeding that of regular patent attorneys, and they should double the number of staff at the PTO. With that and then we'd get decent non-prior art patents. This is a case where more government is more efficient.

thbbbbbt.


cleetus
posted by cleetus at 7:01 PM on April 19, 2002

anathema: there's definitely prior art here. I remember doing this as a kid. Doesn't everyone? It doesn't work very well, IIRC.

It's fairly expensive fun for the lawyer. Isn't filing a patent US$370 now?
posted by Slithy_Tove at 7:08 PM on April 19, 2002

More proof, if anyone needs it, that the government is veering from an institution of reason to an institution of control. At what point is a sufficient degree of absurdity reached that legitimacy is widely recognized to have been abandoned?

Let's see, I think that would have been on or about December 12, 2000.
posted by jjg at 7:11 PM on April 19, 2002

The filing is not the expensive part. The expensive part is the drafting, searching etc. Well, actually, what am I saying...$370 (it may be $355) is a lot of money. But only a drop in the bucket when compared to the whole process. Copyright registration is only $30 (with monopoly rights for lifetime of the author+70 years as opposed to 20 years for patents). I forgot how much a trademark registration is, but it is much less than a patent.
posted by anathema at 7:19 PM on April 19, 2002

dicax--remember, it's not the patent that is invalid, it's the claim.
posted by anathema at 7:50 PM on April 19, 2002

Can I patent pancakes? But seriously...I didn't realize that an "action" could be patented. By this logic, could I patent the manner in which I drive car -- where my hands are placed, the angle of my back, etc?
posted by davidmsc at 10:26 PM on April 19, 2002

> But seriously...I didn't realize that an "action" could
> be patented.

The U.S. Patent Office explains all:

Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof.

Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture.

Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant.

Get cracking. There are rights to claim.
posted by pracowity at 11:33 PM on April 19, 2002

This patent is, of course, utterly unenforceable.
posted by UnReality at 6:51 AM on April 20, 2002

All those in favor of Open Source Knowledge, say aye.
posted by aaronshaf at 2:21 PM on April 20, 2002

aaronshaf--do you really need it explained to you why it might not always be such a bad thing to give someone an economic incentive to protect their creations?
posted by anathema at 4:15 PM on April 20, 2002