The Pun Also Rises

"Patently Ridiculous"

    Congratulations on another 12 months without dying. That's what I often tell friends of mine when they celebrate their birthday. Occasionally, I'll do other things like ask them if they feel old and decrepit, or sing the Viking Happy Birthday Song (with lots of stomping), or if everyone else is singing "Happy birthday to you", I will join in and be horribly off-key. But I will not sing "Happy birthday to you" in key, because it's copyrighted by AOL Time Warner.

    Yes, that's right, copyrighted. Maybe you think that a universally known age-old folk song with roughly six notes and six words repeated might be fair and free for anyone to use how they please. Maybe you're more naive than a bottle of Evian in a mirror.

    This is America, where the Golden Rule is that the people with the gold make the rules, to make sure they get more gold. Thanks to laws like the Copyright Act of 1976, even many decades after this well-known song was first written down in 1924, you still technically owe royalties to AOL Time Warner if you perform the song in a public place.

    Happy day to them.

    Still, you could argue that a song is intellectual property, and hence even if it's a song everyone knows and sings it should have legal protection. Maybe even a pair of bodyguards. After all, I'm a writer, so I can appreciate the importance of lyrical copyright. If I ever record my hit Hindu spiritual, "Please Don't Kill Me, Vishnu", I'd want to know people couldn't just use it to make lots of money without giving me some.

    Okay, so you can copyright songs. But what else can you patent? What about ideas, can you patent them? People often tell me that my ideas are patently ridiculous, which has me thinking that maybe I should get a patent for them.

    Here's one of my ideas: Buy a frozen octopus (small, roughly 5 pounds) from a specialty seafood store in a big city, and drive it back to your small town. Thaw it out in a pot of boiling water until it's all slimy and goopy. Then, drape the tentacles over your face with the octopus head centered between your eyes, and run out into the streets screaming, "The aliens are attacking! The aliens are attacking!"

    I think it's a pretty cool idea, but patents do cost money, and I worry that I might not be able to make back my costs in licensing fees if other people don't want to do that. Maybe I should patent an idea more people would use. I really like staying up late working at the computer, where by working I mean playing video games, and then having a midnight snack. This is really satisfying, and I think if I patent this, lots of people would want to play video games and night and make a food run.

    Now, you might argue that obviously people will want to play video games at night and eat food, so I can't just patent something that clearly makes sense to do. And I'd argue that back in 2000, Amazon already did this. They patented a number of technologies that any online merchant would obviously want to use, such as shopping in one click, purchase recommendations based on previous purchases, and buying things without punching yourself in the face. (Other online merchants must currently require customers to punch themselves in the face while shopping, or risk being sued by Amazon.)

    So maybe I could patent late-night gaming. But it'd probably be quicker to just trademark the word "Fun", so nobody could have fun without paying me royalties. After all, a man named Leo Stoller claims he has trademarked the word "stealth", as well as various other words. Sure, they were in the dictionary long before he was born, but these days he sues people who use the word "stealth" in their business or advertising. I really wish I were making this up.

    Actually, I have a few choice words for people like Leo Stoller, but in addition to being unprintable, they've already been trademarked by the estate of George Carlin.

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    Seth Brown® is a local Humor Writer®. His Web site is www.RisingPun.com

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