From Keith Franklin
Jeff Hecht was told by the US Patent and Trademark Office that fictional
inventions do not invalidate patents
(23 October, p 59).
But this isn’t necessarily the case elsewhere.
A couple of years ago I attended a presentation by the British patent office
where they gave an example of a patent for a “cat doorbell”, which was refused
because the idea had previously appeared in The Beano comic’s Dennis
the Menace cartoon strip. Am I to take it that The Beano is not
fictional? If so, why isn’t Billy the Whizz in the Olympic team?
Tokaimura, Japan
