Patently Odd is my June Web Watch column for Law Technology News (free registration required). It is a guide to sites that compile offbeat patents. Here is the first graf:

“Necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention. Sometimes, however, invention appears to come first. How else do you explain U.S. patent 3984595, an inflatable rug? Or U.S. patent 05356330, an apparatus for simulating a ‘high five’? As Rutherford Hayes, 19th U.S. president, is reported to have said after first seeing a telephone in 1876: ‘An amazing invention — but who would ever want to use one?'”

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.