Patent the Funny

Surely you remember when I told the tale of the MBA speaker I listened to in what seems like ages ago. Come on, he was the intellectual property expert that told the story about the formula behind Listerine belong to the Archdiocese of New York? No?

Well what about when I wrote about the very same intellectual property expert when he was brought in by my professor the next semester and I made him pay for telling the very same stories he told the first time around? Really? No?

Oh, Mr. McLawyerson, how quickly fame can evaporate.

While you can only learn about intellectual property in MBA school (twice), inventions are for everybody. Anyone with a good idea and too much free time can invent something. If it’s weird enough, you can go on ABC’s American Inventor, and show it off to Pat Croce. For the record, he feels great. But wait, what if somebody invented your idea long before you even got the chance???

Enter Google Patent Search.

I just found about this a few hours ago, and I’m already hooked. Google, those titans of the internet, have created a search engine that indexed patents held by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (in Alexandria), and allows you to see all the ideas that people have felt were worth a few years and a couple hundred dollars to protect. YAB has little use for the USPTO, since we’ve not really entered the inventing game. We were once forced to invent something for 6th grade, and the best thing we came up with were kitchen gloves that helped open jars. (So if you even think about gluing strips of sandpaper the fingers of rubber gloves, we’ll call you on it.)

We’re in the funny business here, and the USPTO insists there be no more funny business. Just to make sure, we typed “funny” into the almighty Google Patent Search to see what attempts have been made in the past to patent the funny. After all, they do have over 7 million of ‘em on file – and with a full-text search tool, we should find thousands of historically chronicled ideas of hilarity, right?

Try 10.

Yes, only ten people in seven million have submitted patent paperwork that has included the word funny. (Unless of course, Google is truncating my search results. If that is the case, I’m going to assume the omnipotent Googlites are display the ten funniest as well.) And of these ten funny ideas, three of them totally miss the punch line.

Apparently funny is a term in electronics that refer to “a sequence of pictures and associated text.” So as for Microsoft’s and Nokia’s submissions, they are about as hilarious as According to Jim. Yech. And a third is a camera built especially to look like a funny car, the car that for lack of a better description, is funny looking. No dice.

What about this funny font that incorporates animals into the letters? Take a look at it. The animals correspond with the letters! Alligator Bat Cat Dog Eagle Frog Giraffe Horse Iguana Jaguar Kangaroo Lion Mouse N-

What the hell is that? A Nnail? Nlug? A Nermit Crab?

Moving on, our favorite funny patent (and by funny, we’re inferring “OUSTANDINGLY CREEPY”) is this baby pacifier. What makes it new and patent-worthy? It seems that Dieter Berndt has placed a “funny face” on the actual rubber part of the paci that goes in the infant’s mouth. However, Mr. Berndt’s art skills leave something to be desired.

“Here, kiddo, put this in your mouth. Shhhh… It’s okay. Yeah, there’s a funny face on the rubber part. It’ll be fine. Just don’t look into its dead, dead eyes.”