Anyone can conjure up a patent for the Next Best Thing, including these four absurd gizmos

If you’ve read the news lately, or perused the weekly Law & Apple column, you’re probably familiar with Apple’s latest patent clashes in the courtroom. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are embroiled in disputes that are focused more on keeping each other from getting the upper hand rather than encouraging progress and innovation in the technology world.
 
The problem with the patent system is that it allows anyone with a vague idea to file a piece of paper denoting that “idea” as his or her property–no actual product is required to lay claim to it. As soon as you begin to delve into the patents that have been awarded, you begin to realize just how flawed the system is. No one has to actually create these devices or technologies, they just have to think them up and hire a batch of lawyers.

To help illustrate the insanity, we thought we’d look beyond the technology world and search through some of the weirder patents currently filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Seriously, you won’t believe that some of this stuff actually exists.

Time Travel

Publication Number: US 2006/0073976 A1

While the possibility of time travel is technically still up for debate–although if it could ever exist, you’d think someone would’ve come back to tell us about it by now–that didn’t stop Marlin B. Pohlman from filing a patent for a “method of gravity distortion and time displacement.” By modifying gravitational fields, Pohlman’s device hoped to change the curvature of space-time and allow travel across time. It’s not as cool, or as stylish, as the DeLorean, but it makes sense. Kind of. Then again, if this had worked he would have filed a patent for the working version of the device and Back to the Future would have been based on a true story.

Teleportation

Publication Number: US 2006/0071122 A1

Whether you’re traveling by plane, train, or automobile, trying to get anywhere can be stressful, especially when you factor in the cost of airfare and fuel. That’s why teleportation is the real future of travel–no fuss, no fuel, and instant gratification. Luckily, John Quincy St. Clair has filed a patent for a “full body teleportation system.” Thank goodness he stipulated that it’s for a “full body.” No one wants to arrive in New York missing a leg or an ear–it’d put a damper on the trip. The device uses pulsed gravitational waves to create a magnetic vortex–basically, a wormhole. Like a Stargate without all the weird hieroglyphics and space aliens.

Force Field

Publication Number: US 7482154

Of all these pie-in-the-sky patents, this one seems the closest to actually becoming a reality. Well, we’d like to think so, anyway. There are lots of people who’d really like a force field to protect them from the meanies out there. The device uses magnets to create a “diamagnetic force field at all points in space at which a magnetic field-field gradient product of the magnet has a value greater than or equal to a threshold value.” Uh, what? It gets more confusing as the patent progresses further into science speak. At no point in the patent does the inventor discuss protecting against bullets. If a force field doesn’t stop bullets, then what’s the point?

Perpetual Motion Machine

Publication Number: US 6960975

While the other patents are at least plausible in the loosest sense of the term, this one goes against the laws of the universe. It’s a spaceship, but that’s not the crazy part. Boris Volfson filed a patent for a “space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state” with a superconductor shield that changes the space-time continuum to defy gravity. Everyone seems to think that changing the space-time continuum is totally easy when drawing up patents. But this ship is basically a perpetual motion machine, which means that once it gets going, it’s never gonna stop. Kind of like the lawsuits that have sprung up around patents in the past few years.

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I found this gem on the front page of the App Store and it’s a delight. This universal app takes you through a virtual picture tour of the world’s most beautiful sights and lets you pinpoint your favorites for future adventures. Fotopedia Heritage also offers high resolution photos for use as wallpapers on any of your iOS devices, as well as interactive maps to see where everything is in the world in relation to where you’re located. It’s a fun little free travel journey and sure to instill a sense of adventure.

Download Fotopedia Heritage [iTunes link]

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In this week’s Law & Apple, we see a lawyer begin to explain how it is not his client’s fault that she walked into a wall. Also, the leftover crumbs from a company that went bankrupt three years ago have decided to sue everyone that has ever made a decent, or even not so decent, smartphone.

Another fun trip on Apple’s legal roller coaster, so let’s cue up the “dun dun”, and go for a ride to crazy land.

Paswell vs. Apple

Apple is known for a dedication to design, but to hear New York attorney Derek T. Smith tell it, apparently some designs are just too risky and potentially hazardous. In a lawsuit recently filed on behalf of Queens resident Evelyn Paswall, Smith states that Apple must “appreciate the danger that this high-tech modern architecture poses to some people.”

The dangerous architecture in question is the iconic Apple retail store. According to a report in the New York Post, Paswell approached an Apple store in Long Island on December 13, 2011, and failed to realize the exterior of the store was made of glass. She unfortunately walked right into the wall and broke her nose. Paswall, 83 and once one of the top dealers in expensive Russian sable furs, perhaps assumed the entire exterior of the store was open to the 40 degree NYC winter air. Regardless, she is now suing Apple for the clear, cool sum of $1 million.

Perfect.

The lawsuit claims that Apple is “negligent . . . in allowing a clear, see-through glass wall and/or door to exist without proper warning.” Smith goes on to state that, “My client is an octogenarian. She sees well, but she did not see any glass.”

As crazy as this lawsuit sounds, it is not as crazy as some previous attempts to get at Apple’s cash horde, including the guy who is suing Apple because Siri is only beta, or the guy who sued Apple claiming that Cupertino and the mafia were sending him death threats through his iPod. Nor is the first time our society has sued big companies over the inherent evils of glass. However it turns out for Ms. Paswell, we hope her injuries have healed and wish her all the best.

Graphics Properties vs. Apple

If you are stuck holding the reins of a company that went belly up, maybe the best thing to do is to double-down and sue everyone in the industry. Or not, actually; maybe that is not the best thing to do. Either way, when a group of investors claiming irreparable harm from the biggest smartphone manufacturers in the world files a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, we’re going to follow along.

Reuters reports that Graphics Properties Holdings Inc has launched a lawsuit agains Apple, Sony, HTC, LG, Research In Motion, and Samsung, claiming that all five companies are infringing upon patents that relate to a computer graphics process that turns text and images into pixels and displays them on screens. The lawsuit is specifically targeting the iPhone, the HTC EVO4G, the LG Thrill, the BlackBerry  Torch, the Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy S II, and the Sony Xperia Play smartphones.

By executing my “sue everyone” plan, we expect to see global revenues skyrocket!

Graphics Properties was originally Silicon Graphics Inc, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and sold most of its operatings assets to another company. The lawsuits, filed by the private investment firms and investors who now control what is left of Graphics Properties, claim that unless “the alleged infringements are halted, it will suffer irreparable harm.” The lawsuits seek to stop the sale of infringing products as well as royalties and other monetary damages, and have all been filed in U.S. District Court, District of Delaware (if you are playing along at home, that would be Graphics Properties Holdings Inc v. Apple Inc, No. 12-00385).

Though at first glance this seems to be a group of investors trying to score some cash, it will be interesting to see how the court treats the validity of their claims. We’ll certainly be watching to see where this one goes.

Adrian writes the weekly Law & Apple column for MacLife.com. Follow him on Twitter, or subscribe to him on Facebook.

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Add spice to Pages documents with color-shaded shapes and backgrounds

Apple’s aesthetic consists of white space and minimalist design. It even applies to the templates in Pages. Your projects don’t have to be quite so black and white, however, and Apple provides plenty of tools within Pages to help you add color. Using shapes is one such route to spicing up your designs, but many users don’t look further than the simple color fill available from the tool bar.

There are many ways to enhance this basic color selection and one of the best is to apply a gradient to a shape. A gradient is a simple merge between two colors at either end of the shape, with the simplest gradient being a gradual transition from black, through grey to white. Pages provides an option to apply a two-color gradient as the fill color for a shape, with the user selecting the two colors from the color wheel. Beyond that, the Advanced Gradient Fill – the focus of this tutorial – allows for more than one color to be used and a number of blending options to be applied. A gradient of this type can produce a colorful and attractive backdrop to a Pages document that features the colors you are already using or intend to use in your project. Rather than just a plain white background, a shape filled with a colored gradient can make text and images really stand out as well as enhancing your document as a whole. Gradients within shapes can also be used for banners or as sidebar backgrounds in newsletters, among other uses.

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to apply an Advanced Gradient Fill to a shape and use that shape as a background for your Pages document. You can work with an existing project and use colors that match it as you follow the steps, or simply launch a blank project and use the same colors we’ve used.

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