From the Shitty Patent File ⇥

If you look at the 8,011,991th United States Patent, you will see the “Apparatus for Facilitating the Construction of a Snow Man/Woman,” granted to inventor Ignacio Marc Asperas of Melville, NY. The patent was filed on New Year’s Eve, Jan. 31, 2006 but was just granted on Sept. 6, 2011.

I want you to read the word “granted” again, and again, and again, until it sinks in.

And don’t go thinking this is a joke, because Asperas makes it perfectly clear in the beginning of the patent that it’s not. He includes a warning saying that “the following is not a joke patent.”

But of course.