With so much information online, coders can cook up scrapers to gather all sorts of data and present it in an interesting format. Even a topic as boring as patents can become a curious novelty just by looking up the ones expiring, say, today and making them browsable to the world at large. And that’s Expatents in a nutshell.
Due to the possibility of uneventful days, Expatents actually shows current and recent expired patents.
The site is, understandably, limited to US patents, but that basically covers anything you’d reasonably care about. Rather than being a one-stop informative source for everything patent-related, Expatents is more a fascinating look into the minds of uh, able tinkerers and their not-million dollar ideas.
For example, there’s the “power actuated toilet seat”… a dangerous sounding apparatus indeed. After something more boring? Apparently, time has also run out on the humble “surgical gown”.
Or, my personal favourite, the “total body brush shower”:
A hand-held or wall-based shower which incorporates a shower spray nozzle or nozzles inside a body brush shaped to conform with the user’s hand. This combination enables the user to realize total body bathing efficiency by scrubbing while lathering and rinsing.
Yep, when I’m cleaning myself, my top priority is “total body bathing efficiency”. At least someone is considering my needs.