Word: patentable
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Want to make your mark on the millennium? Better get in line. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been inundated with more than 1,400 applications for millennial trademarks, which could lead to some serious endorsement conflicts at your next New Year's Eve party: Do you reach for the official champagne of the millennium (Korbel) or the official martini (Beefeater)? Our guide to the clash of the trademark titans...
...nothing that scientists are in such a footrace to get the human genome mapped. There's more than just knowledge at stake, after all--there's money. Who walks away with most of the booty won't be decided in labs or universities, however, but in courts and patent offices...
PAPER CLIP The design is perfect. There's been little improvement since Norwegian Johan Vaaler got his American patent in 1901. Only about 20% are actually used to clip papers...
...picnic in 1959, Ermal Cleon Fraze found himself with a can of beer and no can, opener-one of life's major annoyances at the time. The solution came to him "just like that" one sleepless night. In 1963, Fraze, the founder of Dayton Reliable Tool Co., obtained the patent for a removable pull-tab opener for the tops of cans. Continental Can Co. created a nonremovable tab 16 years later...
...Brassiere 1914, popularized by Mary Phelps Jacob, a New York City debutante who later sold the patent...