It must have been waking to this view of my driveway that led me in search of a better snow shovel.

With that my goal, I managed to end up at Delphion’s Gallery of Obscure Patents, where I found the potentially useful method and apparatus for directing a stream of pressurized fluid at a location forward of a wheel to improve the traction of the same and the absolutely irrelevant sun shield for automobiles, but no shovel.

Not to be defeated, I began looking for other sites with obscure patents. I found myself at the IPWatchdog Museum of Obscure Patents. As a parent, I was happy to find here the protective mouth shield. But nothing here would simplify my shoveling.

Next came Patently Silly, where I came upon this handy system for sensing whether an object struck in a collision is a pedestrian. But not even the archives had a shovel.

I tried Wacky Patent of the Month, but all it had was an absolutely useless life raft.

My last hope was Weird and Wonderful Patents, where I fleetingly wondered whether there might be some use to this combined plow and gun.

Are there other repositories of obscure or wacky patents where I should look? Please let me know, before I have to shovel.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.