CRITICS of the patent system argue that it encourages inventors to make simple ideas look complicated by dressing them up in long-winded language. Sandra Wyzykowski, of Pocono Summit in the US, excels in this respect.
She has filed a patent application in 90 countries on a “personal carrier for partially consumed confections” (WO 95/31916). The technical description of her lollipop carrier runs to 19 pages, with extra drawings and legal claims.
The patent helpfully defines a lollipop as a “hard sucking candy adapted for partial or total placement in the mouth for progressive dissolution”. The document then explains how children take a suck and put it down so often that “the total time taken to consume a lollipop may frequently approach infinity”.
The “transportable retaining means for used lollipops” is shaped like a miniature violin case. Two matching halves snap together to seal a lollipop inside. It has a cord at one end for hanging round the neck. If people will only use these devices, half-sucked lollipops will no longer “mysteriously show up on chairs,” says Wyzykowski.
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