This is my fourteenth IEOR 190G Blog Post. In this post I will be continuing my discussion on Silly Patents.
This selection of patents are pretty out there, so I hope you enjoy the read!
The first patent I would like to talk about is: Banana Suitcase
This invention is made along the line of "no-one likes a bruised banana!' however making a banana a suitcase as if it were a professional photo camera is pretty silly. Apart from the fact that a banana is one of the fruits with complete natural packaging that already features a wall a half of an inch thick, it is a novel, and non-obvious invention as I doubt anyone would normally think of putting their bananas in Samsonites!
The next patent I would like to discuss is: Gas Factory
This patent is a contraption to capture the methane gas that a cow emanates when farting. Now as silly this device is, the main reason for how absurd this device is that the methane produced by a single cow is close to absolutely nothing. To be able to actually do anything with the gas collected, this contraption would have to be harnessed to hundreds and thousands of cows. It doesn't seem very practical and even if it is novel and non-obvious, it is absolutely not useful!
The third patent I want to show you is: Pedal operated mower
This patent is for a lawnmower that is operated by pedals attached to a tricycle! The apparatus is actually novel, but also non-obvious as we are talking about the early 1980s. As nowadays such an invention would be obvious due to the amount of motorized lawnmowers we have, this patent's date is what makes it legitimate (even if it has expired by now).
I hope you enjoyed these hand-selected patents and feel free to watch the video below for a discussion on the above!
Looks like we both touched on the pedal operated mower! I really liked the banana suitcase and how you touched on it having its own natural casing already. I completely agree with you on the fact that should have never been provided a patent in the first place. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteYour gas factory patent was hilarious! At first when I read that, I thought okay ew, but maybe that could be useful... but your analysis quickly cleared things up -- a pretty useless patent if barely any methane is being produced by cows! Thanks for this!
ReplyDeleteThe banana suitcase was very entertaining to read about! Your analysis was also very sound as well. Great Work!
ReplyDeleteHey! Great post! I found the banana suitcase too! Thought it was hilarious. Its interesting that something as ridiculous as this got passed! Anyways, I liked how you said some background information on the patent, and also discussed novelty and obviousness. Everything was very clear and easy to understand. Good job :)
ReplyDeleteHola Oli!! Good work by pushing the blog post into 3 silly patents! I also did the "Gas Factory". The inventor definitely found a resource opportunity, but we all know the math doesn't work out haha. See you in class Oli!
ReplyDeleteGood analysis, and quite thourough way to go for 3 patents. A lot of kids in my highschool used banana suitcases so I can see why that would get a patent and actually not that silly if you think about it
ReplyDeleteNice findings! I particularly loved the banana suitcase! I actually wrote about the same patent too. I've actually seen the product being sold at Daiso, so it was interesting to see it being sold in real life. Thanks for the illustrations too — they helped with understanding what these silly patents entailed!
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