Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Painful Patents

On Monday, May 11th, Greg Aharonian of Internet Patent News Service reported the following:                                

"NO GERMAN PATENT FOR A SAUDI KILLER CHIP"


"Newswires report that the German Patent Office last Friday rejected a patent application from a Saudi inventor which tried to claim implanting semiconductors under the skins of visitors and remotely killing them if they misbehave.  The chip would allow GPS tracking to prevent immigrants from overstaying, with some chips containing cyanide to be released by remote control to "eliminate" people if they become a security risk."

Gruesome...

But during a recent search focused on wearable technology we found US Patent 3,885,576. Inventor Eliot Symmes's 1975 patent, "Wrist Band Including a Mercury Switch To Induce an Electric Shock" discloses, "a wrist band including a normally open mercury switch is worn by a person so that when the  person raises his arm to put a cigarette to is lips...the mercury switch closes to connect a source of power ad induce an electrical shock in the person in order to deter the person from smoking, drinking or the like."

Ouch... 


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