Joho the Blog
|
|
|
« The wisdom of the crowd...12 months too late || Back to Blog | Norton beats AVG at detecting or at reporting? » November 04, 2005
As it becomes increasingly difficult to separate real news from The Onion, the US Patent Office will today publish the first application for a patent for a story line. This particular story line — and note that the patent is not for the story but for the idea of the story — involves a college student who falls asleep for thirty years and discovers upon waking that he's been living a zombie-like life in the interim. The only requirement for patenting your story line is that it be novel and nonobvious. Talk about your chilling effects. Patenting story lines is the stupidest idea since Nero appointed his horse to the Senate™ [Tags: UnbelievableStupidity] Posted
by D. Weinberger at November 4, 2005 07:33 AM
|
Comments
Sounds derivative of Rip Van Winkle to me.
What's most troubling is, as you note, that the patent application is for the idea without the story. The hard of work of a story is the telling, and the possibility that someone could cash in by claiming rights to an idea when someone else does that hard work is sickening. Fingers crossed this bird won't fly.
On the other hand, I come up with several ideas I never intend to develop each day. Hmm...
Posted by: steve | November 4, 2005 07:51 AM
I have a great story line: A patent examiner awakens from a 30-year sleep only to discover he's been granting patents for story lines that involve patent officers who awaken from 30-year sleeps only to discover they've been granting patents for story lines that involve patent officers ....
Hmm, or did Borges already right something like that?
Posted by: adamg | November 4, 2005 09:27 AM
That wasn't Nero, it was Heliogabolus.
Posted by: Nick Douglas | November 4, 2005 10:42 AM
wow, crazy, what's next...
Posted by: john s | November 4, 2005 11:42 AM
Actually, it was Caligula, although Wikipedia reports that the Britannica says the story is false...an early urbanus legendus?
(I know the Latin is wrong.)
Posted by: David Weinberger![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/nav-commenters.gif)
|
November 4, 2005 05:41 PM
Time to patent the classic storyline: boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy registers girl with trademark office and nobody else is able to date girl.
Posted by: Rob Cottingham | November 5, 2005 07:30 PM
Since we’re getting all nit-picky, there’s a distinct trend toward calling him “Gaius” nowadays, since that was his name and “Caligula” was a derisive nickname.
That does evoke the faint hope, though, that millenia from historians will have to remind popular audiences that the president’s name was ”George W. Bush,” not “Dubya” or “Shrub.”
Posted by: AKMA | November 5, 2005 11:26 PM
what a clever bunch we have here. :-D
but, patenting storylines bugs the heck out of me, since the greeks and billy shakespear together have cornered every plot ever come up with.
and patenting stories are even worse than patenting dna sequences.
sheesh.
Posted by: charlie | November 15, 2005 09:54 AM