Stealing baby ideas

TEMPLE BAR -- Based on the amount of press coverage surrounding the concept of "derivative works," Irish gallery visitors will see fewer piss-takes on original work. Xeni Jardin described how a "reality-TV human baby giveaway pissed-off Uri Geller." Geller alleges breach of trademark. Irish viewers won't see the ABC-TV program 20/20 when it airs "Be My Baby", a contest between five couples on the show, because that TV feed isn't part of any broadcast package in the Republic. As Jardin prepares her viewing schedule, she note, "the winners of the show get to adopt a real-live, pooping, crying baby." And the viewers get "a reality show with a human life on the line--all disguised as news programming."

The updated article on Boing Boing gets interesting. BoingBoing reader Kevin T. Keith says: "As a matter of fact, Uri Geller does hold a patent for a reality TV show that involves competing to adopt a baby. You can view the patent by going to the Patent and Trademark Office's Applications search page and entering the phrase "in/geller-uri" (without quotation marks) in the large search window."

But BoingBoing reader Marc Ascolese, who is a patent attorney, points out the search page is for applications, not for approved patents. "This does not mean that a U.S. Patent has been granted. Under certain circumstances, the USPTO requires applications to be published. In fact, if you go here, and enter the application number for Geller's patent application (09/757609) you can see some current status information. Basically, the application has not been examined yet. Because this application has been classified in U.S. Class 705, we can expect that it will be examined pretty rigorously. It may be a long time before Geller has an issued U.S. Patent he can enforce. Class 705 is where most "business method" type applications end up.

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Xeni Jardin -- "Let me get this straight. You can't say 'fuck,' but you can broadcast a raffle for a human being?" Jardin owns the patent on any reality-TV show involving live mudwrestling smackdowns between Uri Geller and Barbara Walters, and will personally bend the spoon of anyone who forgets it.
Mike Cassidy -- "Adoption contest may be new reality-TV low"
Marc Acolese -- "Intellectual Property"
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