
Patent US5443036 – Method of exercising a cat - chris_wot
http://www.google.com/patents/US5443036
======
WildUtah
Expired in 2007 for failure to pay the year 11 maintenance fee. Feel free to
use this patent in your own products; it's in the public domain!

~~~
jordigh
Public domain is for copyrights, isn't it? Patents are always public. That's
their whole point.

~~~
WildUtah
A patent is in the public domain until it issues and after it expires. It just
means the patent is not yet or no longer in force and therefore the subject
matter is not restricted. 'Public domain' has nothing to do with being secret
or readable by the public either in copyright or patent; it's a matter of
freedom to use or copy.

~~~
jordigh
I mean, is that the actual legal term for expired patents? "Public domain"? I
thought it was a term of art for copyright, not for patents.

~~~
WildUtah
Yes. Also in patents.

------
rock57
For some reason it reminds me of this
[http://www.google.com/patents/US20060071122](http://www.google.com/patents/US20060071122)
Full body teleportation system US 20060071122 A1 ABSTRACT A pulsed
gravitational wave wormhole generator system that teleports a human being
through hyperspace from one location to another. I know, it's an application
only, but still))

------
belorn
How is it that the USPTO and can issue a faulty government decision, and yet
receive no repercussion? If a building inspector fails in his job and a bridge
kills a bunch of people, surely it not just the construction contractors that
will be blamed but also the government?

Maybe the patent office would do a better job if overturned patents gave
ground for suing the government over granting the patent in the first place.

~~~
monochromatic
Do trial judges have to pay fines when their decisions are overturned on
appeal?

~~~
yellowbeard
Maybe they should. MLB has seen significantly better umpiring since linking
pay to performance.

------
TeMPOraL
Are there any meta-patents out there? "Patent on patenting a patent on patent
application", or something?

~~~
robmccoll
I have often thought about trying to patent the patent troll process.

~~~
chris_wot
Yeah, sorry but there is prior art.

~~~
dan_blanchard
But I thought prior art doesn't matter anymore? In 2013 the US patent system
changed from first-to-invest to first-to-file.

~~~
amalcon
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, if you're actually in a situation
where it matters you should check with a real lawyer, etc.

This is a common misconception. First-to-file does not mean that prior art
doesn't matter. First-to-file means that, if I invent something today, you
invent it tomorrow, you try to patent it the next day, and I try to patent it
three days from now, nobody gets the patent. In first-to-invent, I would get
the patent.

The 2013 law explicitly still gives weight to prior art.

------
runjake
This patent gets rediscovered every half decade or so for the past two-ish
decades. I first saw it when George Goble was all the Internet rage[1].

If I recall correctly, the patent applicant patented this to demonstrate the
perceived silliness of the US patent system.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Goble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Goble)

------
Phemist
Apparently a vital part of -
[http://www.google.com/patents/US8181265](http://www.google.com/patents/US8181265)

------
kazinator
"invisible light" is an oxymoron, unless they are talking about IR or UV. They
also call it "bright" in the same paragraph. If it appears bright to the
operator of the beam, it cannot be invisible light.

~~~
marvin
Are you implying that this patent should not have been granted?

~~~
kazinator
I'm suggesting that the USPTO people can't spot glaring errors of logic in a
simple introductory paragraph of text that is devoid of complicated technical
or legal language.

No wonder they grant applications for obvious programming techniques, like oh
... the use of XOR to draw a sprite on a black-and-white pixel display, such
that if it is drawn again at the same location, it is erased, restoring the
original background.

~~~
nacs
You're taking this entirely too seriously. @marvin was very likely joking
also.

~~~
marvin
Kazinator is making a fair point. But yes, I was making a joke ;)

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whoopdedo
That's all well and good, but is it a useful use of a cat?

------
Rambunctious
IIRC, this novel idea has been filed multiple times (and may have been granted
as well) at the USPTO at different times. I believe that this is because the
USPTO sometimes leaves it to the interested/affected parties to raise
complaints and go through these rather than do the donkey's work of exhaustive
prior art search.

------
PhasmaFelis
I wonder if this actually seemed reasonably novel in 1993. When did laser
points get popular in the home market?

~~~
mikeash
Laser pointers date back to the early 80s. I'd wager that the interval between
the first laser pointers getting into the hands of consumers and the first
laser pointer being used with a cat was approximately 3.7 minutes.

------
chris_wot
With this post I wanted to show _novelty_ is important in patents. I actually
had a wide field to choose from though, for instance I seriously considered
the following patents:

\- Patent US3480010 - an anti-snore device that consisted of a "neckband
[that] contains a microphone, a transistor amplifier, a high voltage-producing
transformer, a supply battery, a relay and a pair of spaced electrodes [which]
are in contact with the sleepers skin" [1]

\- Patent US20130239604 - Promotion of peace, love and understanding through
the global proliferation of snowpeople system method and apparatus [2]

\- UK patent GB1047735 - "Arrangements for the transfer of fresh water from
one location on the earth's surface to another at a different latitude, for
the purpose of irrigation, with pumping energy derived from the effect of the
earth's rotation about the polar axis" [3], or in layman's terms it was
basically a plan to position giantpeashooters in the Antarctic pointed at
Australia's deserts which would fire snowballs to irrigate them

\- Patent US6368227 - Method of swinging on a swing. Can't add anything to
this really, that's precisely the patent that was granted. [4]

\- Patent US6025810 - Hyper-light-speed antenna (probably THE most novel of
all the patents granted by the U.S. Patent Office, because it specified a
transmission method capable of "sending the signal at a speed faster than
light.") [5]

\- Patent US6612440 - from the abstract: "A banana protective device for
storing and transporting a banana carefully." [6]

\---

References:

1\.
[http://www.google.com/patents/US3480010](http://www.google.com/patents/US3480010)

2\.
[http://www.google.com/patents/US20130239604](http://www.google.com/patents/US20130239604)

3\.
[http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=...](http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=GB&NR=1047735&KC=&locale=en_ep&FT=E)

4\.
[http://www.google.com/patents/US6368227](http://www.google.com/patents/US6368227)

5\.
[http://www.google.com/patents/US6025810](http://www.google.com/patents/US6025810)

6\.
[http://www.google.com/patents/US6612440](http://www.google.com/patents/US6612440)

~~~
nissehulth
If only the banana had some kind of built-in protective shell. :)

------
madaxe_again
I wonder if one could patent, say, "a means for ambulatory locomotion
utilising appendages of bipedal mammals" \- I.e. walking.

It's worth noting that having a patent doesn't mean it's enforceable, or even
valid.

~~~
brlewis
It's also worth noting that the burden of proof is on the alleged infringer to
convince a court that the patent is invalid. Invalid patents can still cause
pain.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/282](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/282)

~~~
oneJob
Indeed. Attention is given to patent trolls, but not so much (that I'm
familiar with anyhow) the incentives around awarding (there are incentives in
place to bias the granting of a patent, as opposed to denying one or claw back
clauses regarging wrongly granted patents) or voiding patents.

------
nimrody
Brought back memories of Phil Karn (AKA KA9Q) discussing this very patent
fifteen years ago:

[http://www.ka9q.net/patents/](http://www.ka9q.net/patents/)

------
seltzered_
On a similar front, there was recently a kickstarter (that failed) trying to
make a cat exercise/play device using a visible red laser:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danprovost/obi-a-
smart-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danprovost/obi-a-smart-laser-
toy-for-pets)

They also had a couple podcast episodes on the product:
[http://www.relay.fm/tc](http://www.relay.fm/tc)

------
prompt_critical
...beam of invisible light

~~~
mcnamaratw
Yeah seems to me they purposely excluded visible light. Hard to see why.

~~~
louisswiss
Chapeau.

------
nefitty
This is the first HN headline to ever make me snort out loud!

~~~
chris_wot
I originally considered making the title "Patent US5443036: method of inducing
aerobic exercise in an unrestrained cat", which is what it says in claim 1.

------
viggity
"a beam of invisible light"... invisible? can feline eyes see a larger section
of the electromagnetic spectrum than humans?

------
ankurdhama
I am sure the idea of patents must be originated by rich people of old time
for obvious reasons.

~~~
madaxe_again
Actually, the idea of patents was the exact inverse of what it has ended up
as. Patent law came about to _limit_ the period of exclusivity of inventions,
and to bring them to the public domain sooner than otherwise, through the
necessary acts of disclosure in patenting an idea. Until patents companies and
inventors hoarded their ideas as they had no legal protection.

Patents have now ended up enforcing exactly that which they were supposed to
oppose - corporate monopolies on thought.

~~~
exDM69
One should question whether the patent system has ever worked in the way that
it was intended to. There are examples of a dysfunctional patent system from
centuries ago.

Just to name a few examples... The often quoted example of steam engines and
the patents of James Watt: the power output of steam engines (an objective,
quantitative measurement) stagnated during the period Watt's patents were
valid. Only after they expired, steam engines started improving.

Another example: the contributions of the Wright brothers to modern aviation.
The Wrights filed for a lot of patents but most of their inventions fell into
obscurity as aircraft manufacturers opted to use patent-free inventions from
the Wrights' competitors, such as De Havilland's rear stabilizer design which
is still common in modern aircraft.

I'm not convinced that the patent system has ever worked to genuinely promote
innovation and invention. There are numerous examples of how it has done the
exact opposite by stagnating a field of science and technology (e.g. video
codecs today).

Several high profile inventors such as Thomas Edison have spent the latter
days of their lives as businessmen and lawyers protecting their patents and
financial interests, not inventing and innovating.

~~~
vlehto
You could claim that the patent system was raging success.

The Wright brothers tried to hinder development of airplanes, but De Havilland
managed to circumvent their patent. Creating entirely new technology in the
process.

Watt on the other hand managed to protect his steam engine patent and went on
to invent a copying machine with the money.

And Edison, mediocre inventor who luckily made some patent money early with
the quadruplex telegraph. Then he could concentrate to his true calling of
enslaving scientists.

I'm half joking here. But we really can't know how history would have turned
out if patents would not exist. So far I'm not convinced with any of the
alternatives. Even with the glaring flaws of the current patent system.

~~~
throwawaykf05
Edison gets a lot of flack for some things he did (especially in the context
of Tesla) but he certainly was a great inventor. Many of his inventions did
come from working with the people he employed, but they were nowhere near
"enslaved". No more than employees at Google or Facebook are.

Furthermore, a lot of the accusations levied against him are just outright
false. For instance, the "electrocution of an elephant":

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_%28elephant%29](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_%28elephant%29)

Edit - more about Edison:
[http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2013/02/oatmeal_comic_...](http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2013/02/oatmeal_comic_about_tesla_and.html)

~~~
vlehto
It was joke, but thanks for the correction. I'd like to point out that leading
scientists to make big bunch of inventions would be great feat in it's own
right. Leadership alone is diffucult, scientists don't accept just anybody as
their superior and you need expert level hunch about technology too.

------
trm42
Maybe I'm a bit tired but read first "Patent US5443036 - Method of exorcising
a cat". Well, either way it's funny ;)

~~~
chris_wot
Stop stealing my ideas!

