Oh, The Onion. You are so wonderful and your take on the world of patents is so spot on that it hurts.
What are patents for, anyways?
Here's a bit of an excerpt from their 11 Step Program. Drop by the site to see the rest. Brilliant.
Step 1: First, come up with something really cool, like a cheese grater that works in both directions. Oh shit, don’t steal that one! That’s mine!
Step 2: Research the marketplace to find out if your idea is original or if some asshole has already stolen it from you
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Step 11: Spend remainder of bitter, unnaturally truncated life filing lawsuits to protect patent
For your edification, here are a couple of readings on the state of the patent world.
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Thanks John,
Thought I would share a couple of my favourite patents:
Centrifugal Birthing Table, just look at the pictures!
http://www.google.ca/patents/US3216423
User-operated amusement apparatus for kicking the user's buttocks:
http://www.google.ca/patents/US6293874
Catflap that detects the colour of the cat and if it is not the right colour, sends down a nuclear bomb from orbit to kill the cat.
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio;jsessionid=kqS…