Strange Patents

Today I ended up browsing and searching the US Patent Office website.

It's funny how the strangest patents come up for just about any search phrase. I have no idea why most of these odd patents came up during my searches, they certainly don't seem to be relevant. Anyway, most of these get even stranger if you look them up for the details. It's easy to do at uspto.gov.

So, here are a few eye-brow raising patents that I thought that I'd share:

6,428,004
Pregnancy and childbirth educational board game
6,368,227
method to swing side to side on a swing
A few from a good article on patents (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/careers/careerstemplate.jsp?ArticleId=i120204):

A watch for "keeping animal time"—for dogs, it would run seven times as fast as an ordinary watch (U.S. Patent No. 5023850).
An accessory kit for a snowman, including lumps of coal, a carrot, and a corncob pipe (U.S. Patent No. 5380237).
A patent covering a "method of swinging on a swing," which was "invented" by a five-year-old (U.S. Patent No. 6368227).

This fellow has a whole website about silly patents:
http://www.patentlysilly.com/