Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
Patents have the presumption of validity. You can cry all you want but a patent examiner did indeed make an effort to judge if it was patentable or not.
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I bring you...
Method of exercising a cat, US Patent #5443036, "A method for inducing cats to exercise consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus onto the floor or wall or other opaque surface in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way fascinating to cats, and to any other animal with a chase instinct."
For those who don't like to wade through technobabble, that is indeed, "wave laser-pointer dot around so the cat chases it." This is not a patent for the laser pointer, just for the "cat-exercise method" of waving it around on a surface, which is discovered spontaneously by every human who ever waved a laser-pointer in the vicinity of a cat. Which two elements, presumably, the patent judge had never personally brought together, because nobody in their right mind would think this had either "novelty" or "non-obviousness."
Patents in the last thirty years or so have exploded far beyond the ability of patent judges to actually evaluate whether a technological application has an originality; the current system is "if someone else hasn't patented it, you get a patent." If other people want to insist that the patent is *not* a unique and specialized use of technology or applied principles, they're stuck trying to force a lawsuit to prove that.