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I don't know....NIST, anyone? Oh, wait. How about the incredible lust for patents as a reason we don't invest more in government research?

There. One reason why we should invest. And one reason why it doesn't happen as often as it should.

About your sig..

Did you actually look at the patent description?
US Patent #5425497 is about an invention of a new type of cup-holder that takes up less volume.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5425497.PN.&OS=PN/5425497&RS=PN/5425497

The sig would be funny had it actually been true.

If you need a list of silly patents to come up with a better sig, go here: http://www.patentlysilly.com/archives.php

Using patents as a scoreboad are stupid though. I expect USA is over represented in http://www.patentlysilly.com/. To use patents as a meaningful indicator needs better analysis than just raw numbers. Rather you need to look at the rate of patenting high quality (impoortant and non-duplicate) ideas.

Personally I'd love to see us progress to the point where it was possible to grow just the meat itself without the animal.

No big shocker, it's already been patented!:
Method for Producing Tissue Engineered Meat for Consumption

I was curious about how the 1.75 million kWH produced by a single 1500-cow farm stacked up, so I checked the Hoover Dam - that facility produces "over 4 billion kWH," or roughly the output of 2285 such farms. So, how many of these bovine bioreactors do they have in Vermont? According to the Vermont State House of Representatives, there were 160,000 dairy cows in the state in 2001. If they were all participating in the project (an unattainable goal, unless the technology can scale to the individual cow), it would still be less than 5% of the output of the Hoover Dam, at 186 million kWH.

But we need more distributed, small sources of power like this. This 5% plus another 5% from solar rooves and another 5% from landfill gas and another 5% from windmills and another 5% from tidal power and another 5% from somewhere else...that's lots of redundancy, and lots of hands-on, local knowledge of how to produce power, that would secure the energy supply if widespread.

A failure or, sadly, an attack could take out power to over a million people if it shut down the Hoover Dam. If one dairy's local methane power plant goes out temporarily in a world where nearly everything is used as a source of energy, it's no big deal (well, except to the farmer who's losing money every minute he's out of operation, and that's a motivation to every power producer to keep things going).

Venutian cows.

If only they had a way to capture the methane like we do.
http://www.patentlysilly.com/patent.php?patID=6982 161

Does this one come close? http://www.patentlysilly.com/patent.php?patID=6785 577

Totally Absurd Patents

IP funny

Patent of the week

I am sure there are more, but it gives you a glimpse of the absurdity in patents. Some of the patents are funny too .. so enjoy :) (just don't spill coffee while reading)

http://www.patentlysilly.com/patent.php?patID=6749 882

Patently Silly

Totally Absurd Inventions America's Goofiest Patents!

Why go hungry when you can wolf down some recently patented, space-brewed maggot powder. Mao Zhang is the inventor's name, sounds Chinese: http://www.patentlysilly.com/patent.php?patID=6938 574

Why go hungry when you can wolf down some recently patented, space-brewed maggot powder. Mao Zhang is the inventor's name, sounds Chinese: http://www.patentlysilly.com/patent.php?patID=6938 574

This is where coders who patent frivoulous inventions end up: alone on the patent playground.

Patent #6,846,670: Genetically engineered herpes virus for the treatment of cardiovascular disease

Courtesy of Patently Silly

By far the best one I've seen is this one: 1. Article Of Clothing With A Novel Attachment Means patent#: US 6832983

You're most welcome.

Thanks for the link SlashDot! I was wondering why my traffic shot up over the last few days!

Daniel Wright
www.patentlysilly.com

Unfortunately, this is real and getting realer. I see patents for this kind of stuff all the time. It's frighteningly laughable that this kind of technology is always justified as being "for the children". Check out: http://www.patentlysilly.com/patent.php?patID=6747 562 and http://www.patentlysilly.com/patent.php?patID=6788 200

Unfortunately, this is real and getting realer. I see patents for this kind of stuff all the time. It's frighteningly laughable that this kind of technology is always justified as being "for the children". Check out: http://www.patentlysilly.com/patent.php?patID=6747 562 and http://www.patentlysilly.com/patent.php?patID=6788 200