Atari's Amazing Clothesdryer

[Laemeur]

So I was looking for patent drawings for the XL series computers, but wasn't finding any and I thought perhaps the USPTO just had some holes in their online database regarding assignee information or something. I thought if I could just pull the patent numbers off of an XL and look them up, I'd be sure to find them.

 

I remembered a thread on AA with pictures of serial number tags, so I dug that up and got just what I was looking for, from the likes of hunmanik and pepax:

 

The first two design patent numbers reference our old friend, the CX40 joystick, but... something's not quite right here. Take a look at that last patent number, D255,315.

 

Then take a look at what that patent number is for :

[Rybags]

But some are "Patent Pending".

 

Maybe they get assigned a number, then if the Patent request is withdrawn or rejected the number gets recycled.

[Laemeur]

Well, the clothesdrier patent was issued in 1980 (filed in '77) and Atari printed those serial number tags in, what, 1983 or later? They should have known the number was invalid by then.

 

I should note that the clothesdrier patent number does not appear on all XL tags, so the situation was eventually corrected, but it did appear on three tags which were posted in the other thread.

 

I just thought it was an amusing error.

[Ransom]

That's hilarious. I wonder how often that sort of thing happens.

[sloopy]

wow, my 800xl is one of the clothes dryer models too... sweet... my absolute favorite patent is US Patent 5237698 - Microcomputer, i wanna see him coloect royalties for all those commodores/ataris/apples... would be one rich mofo if he could...

 

sloopy.