There's the "sealed crustless sandwich" (U.S. Patent No. 6,004,596 ), patented in 1999 by two independent inventors and subsequently purchased by J.M. Smucker. The invention is described in part as a sandwich with two fillings, such as peanut butter and jelly, that can be prepacked for storage in "lunch box type of situations."
Other odd patents include a tree-branch-shaped chew toy for a dog (No. 6,360,693), a bird feeder for "religious meditation" (No. 6,837,185) and "method of exercising a cat" using a laser beam that the feline chases (No. 5,443,036).
In a book published last year titled "Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It," co-authors Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner trace the patent system's problems back to 1982.
That's when Congress made two crucial alterations to patent law. Politicians created a special federal court for patent appeals and decided that the size of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's budget would depend on the number of patent applications it receives.
At the time, those changes seemed merely procedural. But Jaffe and Lerner argue that the changes created a cadre of judges so focused on patents that they have lost sight of the larger picture, instead strengthening the rights of patent holders and making it easier to seek court injunctions.
Altering the Patent and Trademark Office's funding mechanism, according to the book, altered the agency's incentives and made it more likely to approve patents. The more applications it received, of course, the more money it would make.
"Now that it is possible to get a patent on unoriginal ideas, many more dubious applications are being filed," according to Jaffe and Lerner. "And with success now more likely for patent holders who sue their competitors, more such suits are filed or threatened. Increasingly, the firm with the best lawyers or the greatest capacity to withstand the risk of litigation wins the innovation wars--rather than the company with the brightest scientists or most original, valuable ideas."
