We’re entering into a long weekend here in the U.S. On its face, Memorial Day is a sad one, designed for remembrance and reverence. As practiced, the day’s position as one of the bookends of North America’s summer dominates its stated purpose. That makes Memorial Day, like Labor Day on the other end, as much a seasonal celebration as a day of quiet contemplation.
Since there aren’t a lot of patents on the subject of fallen soldiers, we’re going to focus on Memorial Day Weekend as it’s practiced with this train barbecue:
The front portion of the train 110 houses a grill. A vent hood 130 channels smoke and heat from the grill into the smoker portion 120, where your meats rotate and take on desirable BBQ properties.
On the inside, it looks a little like this:
Unlike so many other goofy designs that are featured here, this is an actual product. They let their patent lapse, I assume because nobody was actually trying to infringe. The market for gimmicky train-themed outdoor cooking might be large enough to support their business, but probably is not large enough to support knockoffs.
Patenting the odd, the impossible, and the unnerving 