Marcus Feld
Marcus Feld writes about the technical and legal corners of the patent record for GreatPatent.com — the engineering that made an idea finally work, the courtroom fights over who got there first, and the gloriously pointless devices that somehow still earned a federal patent.
He has a particular soft spot for the sincere and slightly ridiculous inventions that fill the archive: the machines for patting yourself on the back, the umbrellas for beer, the patents whose only flaw is that no one ever needed them. He is interested in what the strangest filings reveal about how the patent system actually works.
25 stories by Marcus Feld
Bell Called It His Greatest Invention. It Sent Speech on a Beam of Light — in 1880.
Alexander Graham Bell thought the photophone, not the telephone, was his finest work. It transmitted the human voice on a beam of sunlight, with no wires at all. It was also a century early: the world had no use for it until fiber optics arrived.
Read the story →
The Santa Claus Detector
In 1996, the USPTO granted a patent for a Christmas stocking rigged with a light that switches on when Santa arrives. The patent's stated purpose is to give children 'a visual indication' of Santa's visit — filed, apparently, in complete earnest.
Read the story →
Edwin Armstrong Invented Static-Free Radio. Then the Industry He Threatened Destroyed Him.
FM radio was better than AM in every way — no static, higher fidelity, less power. That was exactly the problem. The company that dominated AM spent two decades in court to bury it, and the inventor spent his fortune fighting back before jumping from his apartment window.
Read the story →
The New York Times Mocked Goddard's Rocket. It Apologized 49 Years Later — Mid-Flight to the Moon.
Robert Goddard patented the fundamentals of the liquid-fuel rocket in 1914. When he suggested a rocket could reach the Moon, a newspaper editorial declared he lacked 'the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.' The correction ran during Apollo 11.
Read the story →
The Patent for a Mask That Physically Stops You From Eating
In 1982, a patent was granted for an 'anti-eating face mask' — a cup-shaped cage strapped over the mouth and locked, intended to prevent the wearer from eating between meals. It is one part diet aid, one part muzzle, and entirely real.
Read the story →
The Beerbrella: A Tiny Umbrella Whose Only Job Is to Shade Your Beer
In 2003, the USPTO granted a patent for a miniature umbrella, roughly the size of a saucer, that clamps onto a beer bottle to keep the sun off it. The name in the official patent title is, in full legal seriousness, the 'Beerbrella.'
Read the story →
Chester Carlson Invented the Photocopier. Twenty Companies Said No.
A patent attorney tired of copying documents by hand invented dry photocopying in his kitchen in 1938. IBM, Kodak, GE, RCA, and the US Navy all turned it down. The company that finally said yes became Xerox.
Read the story →
Tesla Patented a Way to Beam Power Through the Earth. Then the Money Ran Out.
Nikola Tesla believed he could transmit electricity wirelessly to anywhere on Earth, using the planet itself as a conductor. He built a 187-foot tower on Long Island to prove it. The patent was granted the same year the tower's funding collapsed for good.
Read the story →
The Patent for Patting Yourself on the Back
In 1986, the USPTO granted a patent for a device consisting of a simulated human hand on a spring-loaded arm, mounted so that a person could reach up, pull it down, and administer a congratulatory pat to their own back.
Read the story →
The Patent for a Machine That Kicks You in the Rear
In 2001, the USPTO granted a patent for a coin-operated amusement device whose entire function is to let a user pay to have a rotating boot kick them in the buttocks. It is real, it is fully illustrated, and it is exactly what it sounds like.
Read the story →
The Patent for Keeping a Dog's Ears Out of Its Food
In 2002, a patent was granted for a set of tubes that slip over the long ears of breeds like spaniels and setters, holding them up and back so they don't drag through the food bowl. It is deeply silly and, if you own such a dog, deeply reasonable.
Read the story →
He Made the First Cell Phone Call to Gloat at His Rival
On a Manhattan sidewalk in April 1973, Motorola's Martin Cooper placed the first handheld cellular phone call. He dialed the head of the competing team at Bell Labs — specifically to tell him he'd lost the race. The patent was filed six months later.
Read the story →
The Patent for Surviving a Fire by Breathing Through the Toilet
In 1982, an inventor received a US patent for a fresh-air breathing device intended for high-rise fires. The device was a snorkel. You inserted it past the water in the toilet bowl and breathed the fresh air drawn down the plumbing's vent stack.
Read the story →
Spencer Silver Invented an Adhesive No One Wanted for Twelve Years
In 1968, a 3M chemist named Spencer Silver was trying to make a stronger adhesive. He accidentally made a weaker one that didn't stick permanently. The product it eventually became — Post-it Notes — did not ship for another twelve years.
Read the story →
Smucker's Patented the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
In 1999, the J.M. Smucker Company received a US patent on a 'Sealed Crustless Sandwich.' For seven years, the company sent cease-and-desist letters to small-town caterers, school lunch programs, and competing sandwich makers, before the patent was finally pulled apart on reexamination.
Read the story →
They Patented the Barcode and Sold It for Fifteen Thousand Dollars
In 1949, two graduate students at Drexel filed a patent for a 'classifying apparatus' that used printed concentric circles to identify items at a checkout counter. The patent expired in 1969 — five years before the first barcode was ever scanned in a grocery store.
Read the story →
He Patented Video Games in 1971. Nobody Knew What They Were Looking At.
Ralph Baer was a senior engineer at a defense electronics company in New Hampshire when he wrote a four-page memo in 1966 proposing that televisions could be used to play games. His employer was the only one who took him seriously. The patent eventually built a two-hundred-billion-dollar industry.
Read the story →
The Patent for Birthing a Baby by Centrifugal Force
In 1965, a New York couple named George and Charlotte Blonsky received a US patent for a machine that spun a woman in labor on a rotating turntable, using centrifugal force to deliver the child. They were entirely sincere. They had detailed engineering drawings.
Read the story →
Philo Farnsworth Sketched Television in a Potato Field at Fourteen
A Mormon farm boy in Idaho realized in 1921 that an electron beam could scan an image one row at a time, just like the rows under his plow. Six years later, at age twenty, he filed the patent. The fight to keep it from RCA consumed the rest of his life.
Read the story →
Doug Engelbart Patented the Mouse and Made Ten Thousand Dollars
In 1967, Douglas Engelbart and William English filed a patent for a small wooden box on wheels with two metal disks underneath. The patent expired in 1987, just as the device was about to become the most-used input mechanism on Earth.
Read the story →
The Patent on Pointing a Laser at a Cat
In 1995, the USPTO granted Kevin Amiss and Martin Greenstein a patent on the act of exercising a cat by getting it to chase a moving spot of light. The patent was real. The cats did not pay royalties.
Read the story →
Tesla Built a Drone in 1898. The Navy Said No.
Nikola Tesla's 1898 patent describes a radio-controlled boat with multi-frequency channel hopping to defeat jamming. He demonstrated it at Madison Square Garden. The military passed. Drones would not become real for another century.
Read the story →
The Comb-Over Patent
In 1977, two brothers in Orlando, Florida received a US patent for a method of combing one's hair to disguise baldness. It is among the most-cited examples of why the patent system needed reform — and a winner of the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize.
Read the story →
The Five-Year-Old Who Patented Swinging on a Swing
In 2002, the USPTO granted Steven Olson, age five, a patent for a 'method of swinging on a swing.' His patent-attorney father had been making a point. The point landed.
Read the story →
A Toilet for Automatically Exhausting Odious Air
An 1898 patent for a self-venting toilet seat that drew foul air directly into the chimney — a Victorian solution to a Victorian problem.
Read the story →