Issued in 1995, U.S. Patent No. 5,443,036 is titled â??Method of Exercising a Cat.â? If you move the light from a laser pointer around on the floor, it says, your cat will chase it.Thatâ??s right â?? itâ??s patented.
Yet when medical professor Janet Mertz applied for a patent on a new diagnostic test for breast cancer in 2002, she waited five years for a ruling â?? and was rejected. The hormone-based test, developed and refined for more than a dozen years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was deemed too obvious to merit patent protection.