HOME	Where the World's Views of America Come into Focus

By Chidanand Rajghatta

April 7, 2005

Original Article (English)

If you think you have your own unique, secret way of making that bhel puri or vada pao or dhokla or idli [Indian foods], you might want to hurry up and patent the process. Sure, you might have copied the recipe from your aunt, and your neighbor or your cousin might have snitched it from you and claimed it to be his/her own, or everyone might be cooking it up pretty much the same way, but we can let the courts decide that. That's what's happening in the U.S., the land of frivolous lawsuits and absurd patents.

In a landmark ruling this week on a truly ludicrous appeal, a U.S. court rejected an effort by the American food company, JM Smucker, to patent a process by which it makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, that staple of American lunchboxes. Smucker argued that the way it sealed the P-B-J into a crustless sandwich was unique. Having initially granted a patent (No. 6,004,596) for Smucker's "Uncrustables," the U.S. Patent Office denied the company's request for a broader protection of the sandwich's structure and process, whereupon the firm went to court.

Fortunately, the court had no appetite for the appeal, even as John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who in 1762 asked for meat to be served between slices of bread to avoid interrupting a gambling game (thus inventing the sandwich), must have gagged in his grave. Montagu died in 1792; just two years after the first U.S patent statute became law.

America's penchant for patents is almost as old as the republic. The first U.S. patent was granted in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins of Philadelphia for "making pot and pearl ashes"-- a cleaning formula used in soap making. The country's founding fathers encouraged patents to the extent that Thomas Jefferson sat on the first patent board to review applications.

The early years of the American republic are full of engaging stories about great patent applications and battles, involving such legendary inventors as Edison and Ford. But in recent times, the patent process has become a source of laughter and mirth as success has begotten stupidity.

The U.S. Patent Office now processes some half a million applications each year, including such outlandish ideas as a bird diaper, an anti-eating facemask, and a motorized ice cream cone. The Smucker punch belongs to one such category.