Patent Entitlement Syndrome

For many years, a certain syndrome has plagued the ideas that my brain sometimes hatches in its unattended moments. Every year or so, a great (grandiose, Earth-shaking, momentous) inspiration descends into it and settles and moves around. At some point I decide to devote some more time to it, and let it ripen. Finally, when it gets formalized, I do some research and, lo! It has already been invented.

Invented not like 50 years ago. Usually, just a few months have passed since this idea becoming patented. This has happened to the eye-tracking LCD windshield sunscreen... well, this is the only other example that comes to my mind right now (although there have been many, I swear!) apart from the one I want to get at as the main point of this post.

Another such idea that burst forth, Venus-like, from yonder neurons were the kangaroo jumping stilts. Well, by now everybody knows them. But six or seven years ago, that was not the case. One nice morning in Hannover, the idea formed... and well, they became popular shortly after. However, sadly through no part of mine.

Anyways! Life goes on. So finally, I felt the urgent pull of a sense of entitlement to my own invention (ok, even if independently invented, patented, marketed, and popularized by somebody else) and succumbed to the urge to own my own pair of Powerisers.

Standing on them, looking down on creation, one feels... a sense of... well, actually a sense of lack of stability. Although, it needs to be added, they work surprisingly well. The fearsome part is letting go of the handrail, but actual walking or even running is astonishingly simple. Jumping too, I guess, but that is left for later, I'd say. Plus, one needs to pay extreme attention not to get the stilts tangled up with each other. Extreme. Outrageous.




On the first image, I am trying not to crush any small nations or hopeful startups under the stilts. On the second, the dynamics might be lost on the spectator - but I am actually airborne!