Slashdot Mirror
8-Year-Old Receives Patent
Knile writes "While not the youngest patent recipient ever (that would be a four year old in Texas), Bryce Gunderman has received a patent at age 8 for a space-saver that combines an outlet cover plate with a shelf. From the article: '"I thought how I was going to make a lot of money," Bryce said about what raced through his brain when he received the patent.'"
Considering how long it takes to get a patent, he must have been in diapers when he submitted it. Kudos to him.
And the invention is a good idea too. My cell usually rests on the kitchen floor while it charges.
Something about this story just makes me want to cry soo hard. Faith in humanity lost yet again..
These things have been available for years. Also the link to the patent is wrong.
to bad billy mays is not around to sell this!
Now you can take an 8 year old to court.
The age seems pretty irrelevant. He actually invented an useful contraption, which he intends to produce and sell. This is actually a patent working as it should.
right...
Would this pass U.S. electrical codes? I am not an electrician, but wonder if the hazard of weight busting the cover would present a problem.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Convict?!? What would happen is that the kid's father, probably the one who really "invented" this, would sue and then settle out of court for tens of thousands of dollars. Rinse - repeat. Considering how expensive it is for us hoi polloi to defend ourselves in court, the kid's father will clean up with out of court settlements.
Let's face it, our legal system is corrupt. He who has the most money, or free legal advice, wins!
http://xkcd.com/827/
The market segment, sales and production can be the most difficult.
Good thing he has supportive parents in more ways than one.
Maybe this will set Bryce off on a lifelong career?
He was 6 when the patent applied for. I guess it also helps that his father is a lawyer that founded a law firm actually named Patent Technologies LLC.
If you read the articles, you'll see that his father is actually the founder of a patent law firm. An 8 year old gets a patent extremely fast as compared to the years many corporations wait for just as legitimate patents, and no one sees that maybe his father pulled a TON of strings for it? In the real world, he would wait as long, if not longer, for that patent to roll through the patent office as a major corporation would have to wait. His father is teaching him about patents the wrong way. Sure, the kid has some success coming for him, but when he's older, he'll learn the hard way that it is NEVER that easy.
Not on the 8-year-old and their patent, but on the patent mentioned that was issued to the 4-year-old. You don't really expect us to believe that a patent was issued to someone in Texas for an invention that had nothing to do with killing people, do you?
Sheesh, I wasn't born yesterday.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I hope he earns enough to cover the class-action suit after someone trips on this thing and starts an electrical fire.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I saw one of these demo'd a while back on Dragons Den as the "inventor" tried to get funding.
The dragon nearly showed that while it looks like a shelf, it's really a lever for exposing high voltage electrical wiring.
So we appreciate the idea behind it, but it's so obviously got dangerous and potentially operational modes that can occur in normal (not intended) use.
Better to tie your phone to a piece of string and tie the string to the charger - then if anyone yanks or kicks it, it'll just pull the charger out. I realise that this won't work on flimsy US sockets, I also realise that a half-out plug can be a fire risk as well as cause damage to the connectors that can make it a permanent fire risk, so it's still a bad idea - even making a shelf out of the charger is a bad idea
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Next week's headline: "Eight year old's patent invalidated over prior art."
You have to sue people to make money from patents. Your daddy is the lawyer. He's the one who's going to makes money from your idea, not you.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
http://www.slipperybrick.com/2009/06/the-power-shelf-holds-your-gadgets-while-they-charge/
I have had a device EXACTLY like this for over 10 years now. I bought one in 1999 at a strange thrift/junk store.
Glad to see the patent system not checking to see if something exists already.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not only have products like this been on the market for some time -- even big enough for laptops -- ThinkGeek sells a better one that keeps your phone from falling.
At the age of 12 he will be patent trolling.
Here is a kid with developing engineering an entrepreneurial spirit, and you are poo-pooing it.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Had to go there... sorry... carry on...
Kid or not, the undeniable fact is this is a previously existing "invention" that has been on the market for about a decade (at least). 10 seconds with google produced a half dozen variations, so I doubt the kid, or parents were unaware of prior art.
The fact that the patent office actually awards patents on things that are extraordinary slight variations on existing products is just showing how broken our patent system is. THAT is the story here, not some tinkering kid (although I would encourage him to keep at it, the world needs more As Seen On TV crap).
*double facepalm*
Either his father encouraged his son to make the patent as a sign of goodwill to educate his child on how to become an entrepreneurial inventor, or he owns a patent troll company and needed to file a patent and used his son.
I'll let ./ readers make up their mind.
I'm hoping it was not the latter. Patent doesn't seem broad enough for a troll.
You know it's sad when the most interesting part about the article was that he wants to buy hockey skates and Buffalo Sabres tickets...
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Ya know, kids invent useful things all the time. People in general often invent useful things all the time. Just that almost no one has a patent attorney for a dad that's willing to force a patent through on the inventor's behalf. Ladies and gentlemen, we are not looking at the next Mozart or Da Vinci -- we are looking at the next Bill Gates whose real success wasn't a brilliance with computers, but having a shifty lawyer for a dad to teach his kid how to manipulate and leverage the laws in his favor, regardless of the merits of the actual invention.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Does this look familiar to anyone. They have been around for years. It looks like the kid patented a minor change to an outdoor cover plate so the door opens perpendicular to the wall.
./ != /.
$ make available
It's most likely the former. Pretty much every child thinks of a few things like this (the idea is prety obvious but it takes a mind not encoumbered by "life experience", to think "why isn't there a shelf here? maybe I should put a shelf here." rather than "damn I need a longer cord" ), but since no one takes children seriously the only time anything comes of all those ideas is when their parents happen totake the inmitiative and add their voice supporting the child's (in this case by filing a patent).
Yes, I can pronounce it, but are you sure you know what that means? Also, do you know what an outlet cover plate is? Because I'm pretty sure you don't cover all the outlets in your house with phone chargers and if you do you might want to look into switching as it's probably the reason your little kids keep dying from electrocution.
The fact that his dad is a Patent lawyer and founder of a patent company is quite important here.
The actual patent references Westmeister, who is referred to at buypowershelf.com, the company behind the product at Amazon.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=9&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=gunderman&OS=gunderman&RS=gunderman
http://buypowershelf.com/Photos/Times%20At%20Home%20With%20Lynn%20Fetzer%20Westmeister.pdf
Searching for Westmeister in the patent database brings up the Gunderman patent.
Outlet plate covers with a little place to put your cell phone already exist. Just not a 'shelf', it's more of a 'bowl' or a 'cup'. We've got a couple of them.
the idea is prety obvious but it takes a mind not encoumbered by "life experience", to think "why isn't there a shelf here? maybe I should put a shelf here."
And I’m not sure whether to blame Tetris or my engineering degree for the idea “hey, why not just set my phone on top of the charger itself?”
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
Yay for free advertising, I guess?
Speaking of an 8-year-old and a lot of money... the costs associated with filing a patent are "a lot of money". The cost is right at the pinnacle of what a "reasonable man" can afford for such extravagances - but chump change to a large corporation. There really needs to be a fee structure associated with patent filing.
and did you seriously expect that the patent office would objectively search for prior art before just granting the patent?
all we need now is a patent on patents and the world will explode.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
the thing about all this is, i could almost swear i saw this exact thing for sale in a catalog over a year ago.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I always have my doubts when I read these kind of reports because far to often after reading more details it usually is the parent that often pushes their super 'protégé' children and amazingly in the same field as they themselves work.
Instinctively I'd call it a ploy to use the child's age to create public interest in the product they are selling.
If it were not for the 'child wonder', would it have raised this level of interest?
Follow the money!
There are naturally exceptions but often enough it is not so crystal clear.