from the because-with-that,-who'd-have-the-incentive dept
Via
Sarah Burstein and the Design Law Blog, we discovered that
just this week the US Patent Office
granted a design patent... on a toothpick:
You can see
D714,495 here, if you'd like, or you can look at the full patent embedded below. It's important to note that this is a
design patent, rather than a utility patent. Design patents are a lot more like
trademarks than what many people think of as a regular "patent." But still. It appears the unique "design" element is that this toothpick has those lines up top. But I've had toothpicks like that many times in the past. It's hardly a new design. Just doing a super quick search, I came across
this page, which includes this picture:
But, thanks to the geniuses at the USPTO, anyone now selling a toothpick "substantially similar" to the design in the image above can be stopped and have to pay up.
Filed Under: design patents, patents, toothpicks, uspto
