A chap in Monaghan has filed a patent which includes the following:
"When a store manager or owner
Wishes to take all the goods from one shelf
And place it on another shelf,
While in turn taking the goods from the second shelf
And placing them on the first shelf,
Somebody from the staff
Has to manually take all the goods from the first shelf
To clear the shelf,
Then take the goods from the second shelf
And place these goods on the first shelf,
And then take the goods that were removed from the first shelf
And put it on the second shelf."
source: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP1724234.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Boggle is right. How is this a patent?? What was patented?
It's a system for switching stuff around on supermarkets shelves.
Click Here to see the whole thing.
Oh dear, that way madness lies, I fear. Imight send it to B'dum though :)
Do. B'dum's thoughts on this would be most welcome.
me: ...someone's patented swapping shelves?
Jo: I don't get it myself
me: no shop ever just swaps shelves
Jo: I think they've patented taking stuff off one shelf and putting it on another...
me: they move one thing to one place, to make room for it they move another to another spot, which means another thing...
they've patented a direct swap
Jo: ah
ok...
me: involving one staff member
Jo: I'm still not convinced by it though
as a patentable thing
my mother in law hangs her sheets sideways to dry
me: seems about as logical as patenting hand washing
I've removed some lines of dialogue to make it a bit confusing.
B&J, thanks for sharing that exchange. It's the design of the mechanism in the shelf-swap machine that has the patent rather than the idea of swapping things around on shelves. But, as B'dum says, no shop ever seems to do this.
Most odd.
Post a Comment