Patently Rediculous
 

Cordless Jump Rope


Psychic Seeds Entertaining Growth System


www.patentlysilly.com

I may have found a new site to make love to.

Make love to the site eh? I hope you aren't talking about thisthen. :eek:

Holy Cow Tramspotter. (I don't know that I've ever used that phrase before but I think that link merits it! Just how does one invent something like that? I'd like to see their thought process... was he smokin' out one day and having sex at the same time and the light bulb went off - somehow- lol ?

This is a strange world

I recall reading in law school how someone had patented the combover.

Well, since I'm in the patent business, I've seen more than my share of silly and stupid patents. They range from the "How to Lift A Box" patent to the one an attorney in our office wrote the application for, "musical condom" (it played among other tunes, stars and stripes forver at the climax, that must have been impressive) and everything else in between. Some patents are incredibly laughable, especially some of the older patents. Back in the day I used to keep a file of some favorites. When I left my 10 year law firm when I moved to VA, they got pitched in error. One, was a particular favorite. It was a patent for a device that would induce a criminal to confess their crime. The device was a machine that would take up one wall of a room (sort of like a one way mirror), the police would interrogate the criminal suspect, the room would be dark, and on this wall, in the machine resided a skeleton, a police detective would turn on the machine, the ghostly form would illuminate, and the result would be to scare the poor criminal into confessing his crime, the cops would book him and the world would be a safer place. I've tried periodically to find this online at the PTO without success, it's there, it was issued in 1930 and the inventor was a woman from Oakland, CA. The drawings for this patent were hysterical. I'll have to keep looking, it's a keeper.

One of the more interesting things to see were the actual patent models for inventions. Another firm I worked at briefly (my attorney was a genius, triple Ph.D., but no people skills whatever) but along the long hallway (they were in the Ferry Building, great to hear the ferries and be able to open the windows and get fresh air off the bay, heaven) they had a collection of patent models for things including a coffin with a glass aperture so you could view the dearly departed, a prosthetic arm, all sorts of machinary I could never identify, but everything worked. They were endlessly fascinating and all pre-1920.

Okay, back to the boring PCT application on my desk.

Ha! Given inspiration of LoT and the European Patent Office to search on query terms (USPTO only has full text back to 1976) and EPO you can search in the abstract (summary of the invention in quick and dirty text) and I remembered the year of the issuance of the patent, voila, I give you the invention entitled "Apparatus for Obtaining Criminal Confessions and Photographically Recording Them" invented by Helene A.Shelby. It was filed in 1927 and issued in 1930. No record of it being licensed or constructed.

Here's the first two paragraphs of the description in patent-speak:

No doubt, a noble effort. If you are interested, PM and I can email you the PDF of the patent and the figures.

it's silly, it's dumb, it makes me happy to have found this again. :D

The skeleton thing is 1,749,090. It was filed by Helene Adelaide Shelby and the patent was issued March 4, 1930.

You can view it more conveniently than at the USPTO site here.

ETA: Google Patent Search is full text all the way back as well so you might find it useful.

Well, that works! Now I know about Googling patents, silly me! Honest, I didn't know!

According to people I know who work regularly with the commercial patent databases, Google Patents leaves something to be desired. But as a non-professional I've found it very handy.