The Patent for a Machine That Kicks You in the Rear
In 2001, the USPTO granted a patent for an amusement device whose entire function is to let a user crank a wheel of boots that kick them in the buttocks. It is real, it is fully illustrated, and it is exactly what it sounds like.
US6293874 was filed on January 4, 2000, and granted on September 25, 2001, to Joe W. Armstrong. The title is "User-Operated Amusement Apparatus for Kicking the User's Buttocks." There is no euphemism in that title and no hidden technical meaning. The patent describes, in full and earnest detail, a machine that kicks the person operating it in the rear end.
The drawings show the apparatus clearly: a platform with two posts. The first post carries a crank, set at a height that makes the user bend forward and grip it with both hands. The second carries a rotating shaft with a set of arms, each with a shoe on the end. Turning the crank turns the shaft through belts and pulleys, and the shoes swing around and strike the user's posterior in succession. The user is both the operator and the target.
The claims
The patent's language is a small masterpiece of formal seriousness applied to an absurd object. It describes the mechanism with the same rigor a patent attorney would apply to a turbine: the posts, the shaft, the arms, the belts and pulleys, all numbered and accounted for. As for why anyone would want it, the patent offers "entertainment and comic relief."
How it gets onto the lists
The buttock-kicking machine is a permanent resident of "strangest patents ever granted" compilations, and it earns its place differently from most entries. It is not a method patent of dubious obviousness, like the comb-over or the cat-laser. It is not an earnest solution to a real problem that happens to look absurd, like the toilet-snorkel fire device. It is a fully mechanical apparatus — a real machine, properly engineered and illustrated — whose entire purpose is silly. The seriousness of the engineering is precisely what makes it funny. Someone drew careful figures of the hinged kicking-shoe assembly. Someone calculated the geometry of the rotating hub. Someone paid the filing fees and prosecuted the application to grant.
There is no evidence the machine was ever manufactured or sold commercially, which places it in the large category of patents that exist purely as documents — granted, recorded, and never built. But unlike most never-built patents, no one particularly laments this one's failure to reach the market.
The patent stands as a reminder of one of the quiet truths of the patent system: novelty and non-obviousness are the legal tests, not usefulness in any sensible sense and certainly not dignity. If a thing is new, and not obvious, and you describe it clearly enough, the office will grant you a patent on it — even if the thing is a machine for kicking yourself in the rear.
See the original
The full text and figures of US6293874 are on Google Patents.
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