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Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

This is disgusting. It's disgusting that just the other day I saw kids probably no older than 6 violating this very patent in a public playground of all places. Six year olds violating patents, what has society become? They were smiling and giggling with their friends swinging on the swingsets, hopefully the criminals responsible for violating this patent are dealt with to the full extent of the law.

In all seriousness though, it's patents like this that are the reason the patent system is as broken and messed up as it is. You can patent anything if you use enough convuluted words in a couple of paragraphs it would seem.

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Did you attempt to assertain if they had or had not in fact liscensed this patent? Let's not make assumptions after all.

This patent is for side-to-side swinging. IANAL, but if they were doing the traditional forward-backward swinging they should be okay.

It will however require the services of a competent patent attorney at a cost of around $1mm and approximately 3 years in a court in Eastern Texas to prove that they are in fact "okay".

Don't worry, we can start out by getting a judge to enjoin the probable infringement. We'll make sure no kids are allowed to attend elementary school during those 3 years.

This patent is also for tree branches. With chains.

Regular metal frames in playgrounds are exempted and so too are tree branches with ropes.

Wondeful! Lots of room for follow-on patents! (said the patent lawyer)

Before pulling the end of world pickets from the attic, just have a look at the last page of the patent.

None of the claims are granted.

If anything, this shows the level of crap the patent examiners have to deal with everyday.

The patent was granted in 2002, then claims revoked in 2003 after bad press. So it's still fairly damning on the system.

Exactly. The very fact it was approved in the first place proves the system is massively flawed. If it took bad press for it to be revoked, that just makes the patent system look even worse.

Those monsters. Have they no sense of the society they are spitting on.

As you said though, this really is the perfect example of what's wrong with the patent system. There needs to be an overhaul of what can be patented and how to go about it, but the companies with the influence to do so have no real incentive to do so, as most of them own the patents that they need.

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