Post 28: Silly Patents: Voice Communication Concerning a Local Entity

Continuing on with the trend of silly patents, I encountered a patent filed with the USPTO that pertains to "voice communication concerning a local entity," which in this case, deals with talking to a nearby plant that will notice you being within a certain vicinity. The plant then has a remotely connected person via telephone who can respond to you as if you were having a dialogue with the plant. The image is included below.

I really found it amusing that this patent exists and doesn't seem very useful... but on the other hand, I wouldn't say this is an obvious invention by any means, because it takes a certain amount of imagination to conjure up an invention like this.

Post 27- Silly Patents: Doggie Porthole

For our last formal week of our patent engineering blog, we decided to focus on some of the many silly or absurd patents that have been granted by the USPTO. I found a website that listed some pretty funny ones.

In particular, the one I want to focus on is the "Doggie Porthole," which is shown below. I thought it was pretty obvious of an invention, as well as useless. The invention claims that it helps dogs in helping them satisfy their curiosity as to what is on the other side of the fence, and now they can simply look through their porthole as opposed to digging under the fence and running away. Overall, found this pretty amusing that this exists.