Patents Hiding in Your Everyday Life

The zipper on your jacket traces to Sundback 1913. The ballpoint in your drawer descends from Biro 1938.

Your phone touches thousands of patented inventions: LED backlights, lithium-ion chemistry, GPS timing, WiFi protocols, camera sensors based on the CCD. Breakfast cereal boxes, safety razors, and the road home over barbed-wire fenced fields all carry patent numbers.

Once you start reading patent numbers on objects, the invisible lattice of expired and active monopolies appears everywhere around you..