April 3rd, 2006
Patent Law Gone Wild: String-Phone Granted a Patent
By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
Not long ago we covered the uproar over the fact that the emoticon was being patented by Cingular. Most experts agree that current patent law is dangerously out of control - from RIM’s battle with NTP over the Blackberry’s email technology, to Amazon snaring the “one-click” payment system - it seems like everything even remotely technical is being granted a patent by someone who obvioulsy hasn’t done much more than fire up a typewriter.
But just when you thought it could get no worse, today I found out that even the lowly string and tin can phone has being patented. Yes, that means you as a child probably violated this patent whitout even knowing it.
United States Patent 4,195,707
Kupperman , et al. April 1, 1980Communicating Device
A device for communicating in which a hollow frustum extending outwardly from a flat base has tabs at the ends thereof for holding a relatively rigid diaphragm having spaced apart apertures therein. A pair of these devices are interconnected by a cord or string, whereby conversation or sound projected into one of the devices is reproduced at the other device. Two devices are molded as a single integral unit and merchandised as an in-pack item with children’s breakfast cereals.
Read the Full Patent Here
Via Right to Create
We Say: At leasat this one expired, but c’mon already. Who’s going to patent the paper airplane?
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Alice says:
This is a test
April 3rd, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Rob says:
“Who’s going to patent the paper airplane?”
Hey, word it nice enough and I’m sure it’d work. “Aerial device constructed from dried cellulose pulp.”
On another note, I never realized there were so many social bookmarking sites.
April 3rd, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Alice says:
I know. I tried this new plugin and now I have to figure out how to kill off some. Talk about overkill.
April 3rd, 2006 at 3:58 pm
Bob says:
This is either a great April Fools on your readers, or you didn’t check the date on that patent.
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:03 pm
Dennis says:
Actually, if you read the patent application it’s for a specific TYPE of phone design that can fit into a cereal box compactly. A narrow patent that seemed valid to me. It even acknowledges the
paper cup/string design as prior art.
I’m not saying the patent system doesn’t have problems, but
this is not a good example of one.
April 3rd, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Wulf's News says:
Patent Law Gone Wild: String-Phone Granted a Patent @ Alice Hill’s Real Tech News - Independent Tech
I’ve been ranting for over a year now about how insane the U.S. patent system is. As proof of this, I submit the following: There is a patent for the ‘2 tin cans and a piece of string’ telephone.
Patent Law Gone Wild: String-Phone Gr…
April 3rd, 2006 at 5:10 pm
jack says:
Oh, come on. It’s a good patent because the applicant had the genius idea of putting the string phone in a cereal box? I’m sorry, but I don’t see how that particular tiny change helps to “promote the useful arts and sciences.”
If you asked me, we (the public) are getting a really raw deal with the patent system. The exchange is supposed to be: inventor reveals something of value that would have otherwise remained a trade secret, society grants a temporary monopoly. We’re getting screwed on this.
April 3rd, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Gerontius says:
Jack, you need to read what Dennis said:
it’s a patent “for a specific TYPE of phone design”. In normal paper cup phones, the base of the cup acts as a tympanum for amplifying the vibrations of the string to audible levels. This patented device includes an additional tympanum, or diaphragm and AS A CONSEQUENCE, it is easier to include in a cereal box in bits which even a small child can then put together without having to tie complicated knots - at least that’s what the patent says.
That doesn’t mean that the patent covers the idea of putting phones in cereal boxes, only that this was the inventor’s motivation for changing the standard design. Be careful not to confuse the motivation behind an invention with the actual invention that has been patented.
April 4th, 2006 at 1:22 am
Mitch says:
really … are you arguing over whether or not the string phone deserves a patent … surely you jest.
April 4th, 2006 at 4:00 am
Gerontius says:
Mitch, if you can give me a reason why a patent shouldn’t have been granted for this new design of string phone, then we might have something to talk about. At present, I see no good reason why this patent shouldn’t have been granted.
And before you say that string phones are known and this patent stops kids from playing games they would have played in the past, it is not a patent on “a string phone”. I made them myself as a kid and I’ve taught physics to kids and I’ve never made anything that comes close to infringing this patent. It’s not a giant leap forward, I agree, but it is different and it’s useful in a limited way and I’ve seen nothing else quite like it, so why shouldn’t the inventor have got a patent?
You should make sure to take everything you read on the Internet with a pinch of salt. For example, the article mentioned above (also by Alice Hill) about Cingular getting a patent on the emoticon was itself very misleading if not plain wrong - not only did the patent application not cover “emoticons” themselves but a mobile device with a special “emoticon” button, but it was only a published patent application, not a granted patent and therefore could not be used to stop anyone doing anything.
G
April 4th, 2006 at 5:42 am
Jack says:
Gerontius,
I think anyone reading these comments (aside from those that profit from the broken patent system: lawyers, the USPTO, etc) would be astonished that you are defending this patent. It is absurd.
Here’s a reason why the string-phone-in-a-cereal-box patent shouldn’t have been granted: IT DOESN’T CONTRIBUTE ANYTHING TO SOCIETY.
Patents exist for only one reason: to give an incentive to inventors to disclose secrets that would have otherwise remained hidden. It is very clear that the framers of our constitution viewed government-granted monopolies over ideas (patents) in this light. Here’s the deal they set up: inventor discloses secrets of his invention, society grants a temporary monopoly. IF THE INVENTION HAS NO SECRETS TO REVEAL, the transaction is one-sided, and society gets a raw deal. The patent applicant in cases like this is essentially stealing from the rest of us, robbing us of 20 years during which we normally would have the *right* to use the idea ourselves. Of course, we don’t call it stealing because we’ve set up the patent system to encourage this type of insanity, and we sanction the applicant’s abusive and corrupt behavior. In fact, we reward such behavior.
I’m not trying to debate whether this is how the system currently works or not (it obviously is the way it currently works) — we’re just trying to point out how absurd it is to stick with such an obviously broken system. It is surprising that you can’t see how ridiculous this all is.
April 4th, 2006 at 7:45 am
Jim says:
Gotta defend Gerontius’ position, Jack. No one was stealing from society. A toy company (RB Toy Development) invested in developing a particular design of toy string phone. The reason to patent is so, if the toy is a success, it design be freely copied by other manufacturers. The patent holder can engage in contracts with other firms to offer specific to market and/or manufacture the toy. The holder can be emboldened by the granting of the patent to invest in manufacutiong faciltites and distribution costs. Alternatively, the patent can award use rights to other firms. Society gains in jobs and commerce. It happens all the time. The US has been a creative powerhouse since its birth. This is due in large part to the protection of intellectual property rights. BTW, doll designs get patented, too. No one is going to stop little Betty Sue from making her own little rag doll, but someone will prevent her from manufacturing and marketing Barbie.
April 4th, 2006 at 9:32 am
AC says:
Hmmm, I’ll patent the following: a library of symbols, comprising a symbolic library, with each symbol representing a phonetic component of verbal communication.
ABC, DEFG, HIJK, LMNOP, QRS, TUV, WXY and Z, now you all get to pay me.
April 4th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
Gerontius says:
Thanks, Jim, for your well reasoned words. I think the most important thing you said is that “no-one is stealing from society”.
If this toy-maker hadn’t come up with his new design, it’s possible that no-one else would have either. There might have been nobody else who found themselves in perhaps a unique position of wanting to make new toys for cereal boxes and came up with the idea to modify a popular toy so that it could be used in that way. In that respect, the toy-maker has GIVEN to society in that we are able to see his new variation of the string phone idea. If he hadn’t patented this new version, we’d have nothing to argue about.
He also hasn’t taken anything from society. What has this patent stopped you from doing? Over the twenty years or so of its life did you ever even contemplate making a string phone of the type described in that patent? I doubt it very much unless you’re the head of a cereal company wanting to put a string phone in your cereal boxes. If that’s the case, then you’re exactly the sort of person who this patent would and should be used against because you are illegally using somebody else’s idea to do nothing more than further your own business.
However, now that this patent has expired, everyone is free to use the idea as they wish. Mr Cereal CO can decide that the time is ripe for string phones again and use this design of string phone to be able to distribute them in millions of cereal boxes around the country, putting his profits up by a few fractions of a percent.
How has society “lost” anything?
Oh, and AC, don’t be silly. The letters A-Z are well known and you can’t get a patent on them. In the Cingular Emoticon thread I’ve already mentioned a case where someone tried to patent 1 and 0 in the UK and failed miserably.
Having said that, you could possibly get a patent on a new programming language. If this new language was particularly useful for certain programming tasks, then you might persuade programmers that it’s worth using and to pay you for the privelige. The programmers gain in that they have been given a new and better programming language, and you gain the financial rewards for your hard work in developing it.
The important thing is, programmers aren’t FORCED to use your new language and, if the fee you want to charge is too high, they’ll use the other languages available even if they aren’t quite as good. Of course, if you’re Microsoft, you might force everyone to switch to your new language somehow, but that’s a flaw with anti-competition laws that are supposed to stop people abusing patents, not with patents themselves. Any tool can be abused, but you don’t ban hammers just because someone might break a window with it, you just make sure that anti-vandalism laws are in place to punish that someone.
G
April 5th, 2006 at 1:19 am
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April 7th, 2006 at 7:51 am
Motorola Patents a New Theraputic Vibrating Phone @ Alice Hill’s Real Tech News - Independent Tech says:
[…] t it would be so entertaining and infuriating at the same time? We have covered patents on the cup and string phone, the emoticon, and today, a new type of vibrating phone from Motorola that would […]
April 21st, 2006 at 6:28 am
Jeff says:
I gotta say that patent looks reasonable, in that if you look at the descriptive text, they acknowlege(sp?) that the can and string phone pre-exists and that this product os designed to be small, lightweight, foodsafe, and reliably assembled. The string/can phones of youth all fail at no lees than one of those, usuallt several.
April 21st, 2006 at 6:56 am
Lockergnome's Tech News Watch says:
Motorola Patents A New Therapeutic Vibrating Phone
Alice Hill of RealTechNews writes: Ah patent law… who knew that writing about it would be so entertaining and infuriating at the same time? We have covered patents on the cup and string phone, the emoticon, and today, a new type of vibrating phone fr…
April 21st, 2006 at 3:33 pm
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July 7th, 2007 at 6:40 am
SillyMe says:
Would you believe I was contacted by someone trying to patent the idea of using a paper airplane as an ad and wants me to remove my website because I have my own paper airplane designs, do you think it’s even possible to patent the idea of a paper airplane advertisement? Any thoughts?
July 26th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
ZS says:
I know this is way after the fact but Jack is holding the patent office to a standard that we are not legally bound to uphold. “IT DOESN’T CONTRIBUTE ANYTHING TO SOCIETY.” is not one of the statutes patent examiner’s use to determine patentability. Even if I think something is a stupid invention or completely obvious, I can’t reject a patent because I think so. I have to use the laws that are in place and find prior art which establishes at the time of invention that the application was something that was known. So yes, stupid patents are out there, but the people are the ones abusing it. Anytime we try to fix up loopholes that people exploit, they fight those changes in court because they enjoy being able to exploit them. So stop blaming us, blame society.
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 pm