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Questions
1) Are these patents for real?
2) How do you choose which patents to put on the site?
3) Why are those questions on your logo and all around the site, "Useful", "Unique", "Unobvious"?
4) Aren't you just taking cheap shots at inventors who work hard to make our lives easier?

1) Are these patents for real?
All of the patents on this site were found on the United States Patent and Trademark Office web site. The patent titles are real and the images used are the actual images submitted with the patent application. Truth is stranger than fiction.

2) How do you choose which patents to put on the site?
Each week there are thousands of new patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Every week I sort through them and to find new ones to put on the site. The patents I pick are usually a) really weird, b) really cool, c)really scary.

3) Why are those questions on your logo and all around the site ("Useful", "Unique", "Unobvious")?
Those are the basic tests of patentability in the US. How nice that they can each be summed up in one word!

4) Aren't you just taking cheap shots at inventors who work hard to make our lives easier?
Hey, I have no idea which of these patents will catch on and which ones will be remembered only by the afficianados of the trivial. Ben Franklin once said:

"One would not therefore, of all faculties, or qualities of the mind, wish for a friend, or a child, that he should have that of invention. For his attempts to benefit mankind in that way, however well imagined, if they do not succeed, expose him, though very unjustly, to general ridicule and contempt; and if they do succeed, to envy, robbery, and abuse."

It can take a long time for inventions to catch on. At first, each invention can undergo a long period of mockery. At Patently Silly, I try to be the first one to ridicule, so that this phase of the invention's life can end sooner. Then, hopefully it will grow up and change the world.