The Weirdest Patents Ever Granted by the USPTO

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants roughly 350,000 utility patents a year. Most are sober improvements to washing machines, semiconductors, and industrial chemistry — but every once in a while a patent slips through that makes you stop and re-read the claim language. A method of exercising a cat with a laser pointer. A device for treating hiccups with electric shocks. A coin-operated machine that kicks you in the buttocks. These aren’t internet hoaxes — every patent on this page has a real publication number you can pull up on USPTO’s public search and read for yourself.

The 7 weirdest patents ever granted

Every entry below is verifiable. Click any patent number to open the full filing on Google Patents — figures, claims, prosecution history, and the assignment chain.

1. US 5,443,036 — Method of exercising a cat

   Filed 1993. The claim: shine a laser pointer on the floor and move it around. The cat will chase it. The patent does not joke — it specifies the wavelength range (visible spectrum), the recommended distance from the cat, and the surface characteristics that produce optimal feline interest. Expired in 2005, which is why every cat-toy company on Amazon sells a clone today.

2. US 4,022,227 — Method of concealing partial baldness

   Better known as the "comb-over patent." Inventor Frank Smith claims a specific three-section parting and folding technique that uses existing hair to cover a bald spot. It won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2004. The claims read like a barber’s manual translated into legalese.

3. US 3,216,423 — Apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force

   Filed 1963. A motorized table that spins the mother fast enough to deliver a baby by centrifugal force. The claim includes a net to catch the infant. Granted, never commercialized — and a recurring example in patent-law textbooks of why the "useful" requirement under 35 U.S.C. § 101 doesn’t demand practical utility, only theoretical operability.

4. US 6,360,693 — Animal toy

   The dog stick. Specifically: a stick. With handles. The claim adds molded gripping surfaces and a slight curvature to differentiate it from any actual stick you’d find in the woods. Pet-product patents are surprisingly active — see our full pet inventions hub for the lucrative ones.

5. US 6,004,596 — Sealed crustless sandwich

   Smucker’s patent on the Uncrustables peanut-butter-and-jelly pocket. The claim covers the sealed crimped edge and the specific ratio of fillings. Smucker’s has actually sued over this one — the patent was upheld on the "sealed edge" method but later narrowed.

6. US 7,062,320 — Device for the treatment of hiccups

   An electronic device that delivers a small, controlled electric shock to your tongue and the roof of your mouth simultaneously, on the theory that the shock resets the vagus-nerve loop responsible for hiccups. There’s actual peer-reviewed research backing the mechanism. It just looks bananas.

7. US 6,293,874 — User-operated amusement apparatus for kicking the user’s buttocks

   A coin-operated machine where you put your butt against a pad and a rotating arm with foam shoes kicks you. The patent argues this is "a unique form of entertainment." It was granted in 2001 and remains a fixture in law-school casebooks on what "useful" means.

Why does the USPTO grant inventions like these?

The U.S. patent system was designed to maximize disclosure. The deal between an inventor and the public is: you tell the public exactly how your invention works (down to the figures and the claim language) and in exchange you get 20 years of exclusivity. The system doesn’t want examiners adding personal taste filters on top of the statutory test, because every "that’s ridiculous" rejection chills disclosure of weird-but-real innovations.

So the bar an examiner actually applies is narrow:

1. Patentable subject matter (35 U.S.C. § 101). The invention must be a machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or process. Abstract ideas, laws of nature, and natural phenomena are excluded — but a stuffed animal that blows itself inside out is a manufacture, and a method of exercising a cat is a process.
2. Utility. The invention must do something. The bar is not "commercially useful" — it’s "operably useful for any specific purpose." A coin-operated butt-kicker is operably useful for kicking butts.
3. Novelty (35 U.S.C. § 102). No prior art exactly matches the claim. This is where most rejections happen — but if no one has previously patented or published a method for exercising a cat with a laser pointer, that method is novel.
4. Non-obviousness (35 U.S.C. § 103).The claim must be more than a trivial combination of existing elements. This is the squishiest test, and it’s why even "weird" patents need careful claim drafting to clear it.

What you don’t see in the test: dignity, marketability, taste, or social value. That’s the design. We have a separate process for sorting wheat from chaff — it’s called "the market." The USPTO just protects your right to find out whether your idea has a market.

What "weird" doesn’t mean

A patent being granted is notevidence that the invention works, that it will sell, or that it’s safe. The USPTO does not test prototypes. The centrifugal-force baby-delivery apparatus was granted because the mechanics are theoretically operable, not because the inventor convinced an examiner to spin a pregnant volunteer. The hiccups-shock device was granted because the electrical system is novel, not because the FDA said it was safe.

This is the single biggest misconception about patents: a granted patent is a property right, not a stamp of approval. It tells the world, "If you make this thing for the next 20 years, you have to deal with me." It does not tell the world, "This thing is a good idea."

From our spoke library: real patents that border on weird

Most of the patents on this page are pre-2010 and have expired into the public domain. Our internal library tracks ~2,000 active and recently-granted USPTO records across 10 consumer-product clusters. A handful of those toe the line between "serious industrial filing" and "wait, what":

• US 5,354,250 — Apparatus for training the muscles of the female pelvic diaphragm. A medical-device patent that became surprisingly mainstream.
• US 5,806,676 — Device for packaging binding elements. An office-supplies patent that’s a study in how thick the claims can get when you’re patenting something boring.
• US 5,168,605 — Method and apparatus for securing a tarp. The most-cited furniture patent in our entire library, and it’s for tying down a tarp.
• US 5,897,899 — Cartridges containing substances for beverage preparation. Foundational K-Cup-era prior art, with surprisingly aggressive claims for what is, mechanically, a small plastic cup.

The full library — sorted by category and ranked by forward-citation count — lives at /patents.

What the strangest patents in the database actually teach you

If a coin-operated butt-kicker can clear all four statutory tests, then your idea probably can too. The single most common reason first-time inventors don’t file is the assumption that their invention "isn’t serious enough" or "isn’t novel enough." The catalog above is the empirical answer to both worries: the USPTO does not gate on seriousness, and novelty is measured against actual prior art, not your imagination of what someone else might have done.

What weird patents can’tteach you is whether your specific idea has real prior art sitting in the USPTO database that would block it. That’s a search problem, not a creativity problem. The fastest way to answer it is to run your idea through our free scanner — it pulls the closest matches from 11.4 million USPTO records in 15 seconds, so you stop wondering and start filing.

When you’re ready to lock in your filing date, our companion guides walk through the next steps: how to patent an idea, how much it costs, and provisional vs utility.

File a provisional patent in under 24 hours through LegalZoom

Related guides

More patent stories worth a read:

• Famous patented products you use every day — Velcro, Post-it, Slinky, LEGO, and the unlikely paths from prototype to USPTO grant.
• The history of patent law — from the 1474 Venetian Statute through Alice v. CLS Bank, the legal evolution that decided which weird ideas got through.

Sources

• USPTO — Patent Basics (statutory test for patentability)
• MPEP § 2107 — Guidelines for Examination of Applications for Compliance with the Utility Requirement
• USPTO Patent Public Search (verify any patent number on this page)
• Annals of Improbable Research — Ig Nobel Prizes (curated list of weird grants)