Christmas traditionally is more than a religious and cultural holiday celebrated by billions of people around the world, time for lighting Christmas trees, the hanging of wreaths, Christmas stockings, candy canes, Christmas pudding and roasted turkey and other special food.
So how does the patent community celebrate Christmas? Not much different than others, one would suppose. So let’s check out what patent applications are filed with Christmas as the main theme?
** UK patent application 2 328 762 (1997) for a “Condom Advent Calendar”. As we know, and advent calendar is a special calendar used to count the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. This application claims that it “fills in a gap in the market, for adults around Christmas” and “promot(e)s safe sex, portraying it in a fun way”, It never made it to a patent:
** Dutch patent 1032838 (2008) for a process for making Frozen Decorations. From the description: “The decorations in this patent consist of frozen balls specifically for the Christmas Tree outside, however, can be renewed indefinitely as long as water is available (…)”:
** US Patent 5,523,741 (1996) for a “Santa Claus Detector”. From the patent description:
** US Patent 7,757,435 (2010) for a “Christmas Tree Watering Ornament”, which describes the background of the invention as follows:
and then to suggest:
** US patent 7,976,343 (2011) for an “Automatic Fire Extinguishing system for an existing Christmas Tree and associated method”:
**PCT patent application WO 2011/085308A1, for a “Presurized Christmas Tree Watering System”:
but also Chinese celebrate Christmasn and do now want to be known as copiers, so filed,
** PCT patent application 2011/088746A1 for a: “Combined Christmas Ball”
With many thanks to Toon Groenendaal