U.S. patent application number 11/831402 was filed with the patent office on 2008-03-20 for entertainment articles of manufacture using the idea of female sperm as a plot element.
Invention is credited to Gregory Aharonian.
Application Number | 20080070711 11/831402 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 39189320 |
Filed Date | 2008-03-20 |
United States Patent
Application |
20080070711 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
Aharonian; Gregory |
March 20, 2008 |
ENTERTAINMENT ARTICLES OF MANUFACTURE USING THE IDEA OF FEMALE
SPERM AS A PLOT ELEMENT
Abstract
Entertainment multimedia, including articles of manufacture,
methods for entertaining, and systems for entertaining using the
idea of female sperm as a plot element are described. Exemplary
embodiments of the invention include television shows, movies,
theatrical plays and media containing recordings of such.
Inventors: |
Aharonian; Gregory; (San
Francisco, CA) |
Correspondence
Address: |
DAVID P. LENTINI
53 Clark Road
North Berwick
ME
03906-6310
US
|
Family ID: |
39189320 |
Appl. No.: |
11/831402 |
Filed: |
July 31, 2007 |
Related U.S. Patent Documents
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Application
Number |
Filing Date |
Patent Number |
|
|
60826017 |
Sep 18, 2006 |
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Current U.S.
Class: |
472/137 |
Current CPC
Class: |
A63J 7/00 20130101 |
Class at
Publication: |
472/137 |
International
Class: |
A63G 31/00 20060101
A63G031/00 |
Claims
1. An entertainment product that includes at least one plot element
that uses sperm created from the cells of a woman.
2. The entertainment product of claim 1, wherein said entertainment
product is an audiovisual entertainment product.
3. The entertainment product of claim 1, wherein said entertainment
product is a fictional work.
4. The entertainment product of claim 1, wherein said entertainment
product is a drama.
5. The entertainment product of claims 1, wherein said
entertainment product is a movie.
6. The entertainment product of claims 1, wherein said
entertainment product is a recording.
7. The entertainment product of claims 1, wherein said
entertainment product is a play.
8. The entertainment product of claims 1, wherein said
entertainment product is a comedy.
9. An entertainment product that includes at least one plot element
that uses the process of creating sperm from the cells of a
woman.
10. The entertainment product of claim 9, wherein said
entertainment product is an audiovisual entertainment product.
11. The entertainment product of claims 9, wherein said
entertainment product is a fictional work.
12. The entertainment product of claims 9, wherein said
entertainment product is a drama.
13. The entertainment product of claims 9, wherein said
entertainment product is a movie.
14. The entertainment product of claims 9, wherein said
entertainment product is a recording.
15. The entertainment product of claims 9, wherein said
entertainment product is a play.
16. The entertainment product of claims 9, wherein said
entertainment product is a comedy.
17. A method for providing an entertainment product, comprising
providing tangible product of human creation, said tangible product
of human creation having a plot element of claim 1.
18. A method for providing an entertainment product, comprising
providing tangible product of human creation, said tangible product
of human creation having a plot element of claim 9.
19. A patent application that includes at least one claim for a
plot element.
20. A patent application that includes at least one claim for a
plot element of claim 1.
Description
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
[0001] The present U.S. patent applications claims priority under
35 U.S.C. .sctn.119(e) from provisional U.S. patent application
Ser. No. 60/826,017, filed 18 Sep. 2006. The entire disclosure of
each of these provisional patent applications is incorporated
herein by reference in its entireties and for all purposes.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
[0002] A portion of the disclosure of this patent document may
contain material that is subject to copyright protection. The
copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by
anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it
appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records,
but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. The
following notice shall apply to this document: Copyright 2006,
Gregory Aharonian.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
[0003] The present invention relates generally to the field of
entertainment, and, more specifically, methods, systems and
articles of manufacture that include entertainment products based
on the idea of female sperm or male eggs as a plot element.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
[0004] As explained below in more detail, the phrase "female sperm"
as used herein (unless otherwise specified), or "female-derived
sperm", means the type of sperm with an X chromosome created from
the cells of a SRY-negative woman. In other words, the phrases
"female sperm" and "female-derived sperm" as used herein refer to
sperm that carry the genetic information of a woman, not a man.
[0005] An area rich with entertainment inventions is the ongoing
conceptual war between science and religion, as new scientific
discoveries erode at the historical, logical and biological
foundations of religious beliefs. Such discoveries create social
tensions that are useful in the entertainment industry when
expressed as dialog and action components of entertainment
products. Such entertainment products are useful as part of
business methods for influencing the resolution of the social
tension. Patents on such entertainment products are useful in the
entertainment industry for allowing the inventor(s) of the
scientific discoveries to have more control over the commercial
exploitation of the entertainment applications of their
discoveries.
[0006] For example, there is no basis in the biological sciences
for gender discrimination, given the biologically equivalent
cognitive powers of the female and male brains. Yet most religious
doctrines have misogynist aspects that assign men and women
different religious and societal roles based on assumed differences
in cognitive abilities. Such religious/societal conditions make
sex-role reversal plots a rich area for comedic forms of
entertainment (e.g., movies such as Petticoat Camp (1912), Goodbye
Charlie (1964), 9 to 5 (1980), and Switch (1991)). Similarly,
religiously-justified racial discrimination creates conditions rich
for serious drama about opposing the evils of racism (e.g., movies
such as To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), Mississippi Burning (1988),
Amistad (1997) and Pleasantville (1998)) or about cruelly
exploiting racial differences, e.g., the 1915 movie Birth of a
Nation (or pathetic exploitation, e.g., the reality television show
Survivor, in its 2006 season, separated contestants by race), as
opposed to science's (boring) view of skin color as an evolutionary
adaptation (e.g., in northern climates, whiter skin absorbs more
sunlight to make vitamin D). Such boring scientific views based on
evolution, though, are less boring nowadays, in light of comedic
religious opposition to evolution, otherwise known as creationism
or intelligent design, opposition which itself would be very
entertaining (especially in a parody) except that such nonsense is
cynically exploited by unethical political leaders (who should be
the target of parody). An example of (painful) comedy based on both
sex role and skin color reversal is the 2004 movie White
Chicks.
[0007] One such current conflict between science and religion
centers on homosexuality, which science views as just a natural
biological phenomena involving a minority of humans. However, many
religions assert that the human-written Word of a (loving?) god is
that homosexuality is a disturbed, immoral choice of "normal"
humans, despite science's findings of certain genetic and
developmental factors (for example, small but non-trivial
differences in brain structure, and men with older brothers having
an increased chance of being homosexual) that correlate with
homosexual humans.
[0008] One aspect of this particular conflict between science and
religion is the current controversy of extending marriage to
same-sex couples. The most common objection to same-sex marriage
flows from so-called "natural law"--that a god commanded mankind to
"multiply" with no limits or balance (the biological definition of
cancer)--for only a man and a woman to bear children together--in
light of the apparent "natural" impossibility of same-sex
procreation. The argument that same-sex couples cannot procreate
allows opponents of same-sex marriage to distinguish judicial
decisions banning racial discrimination in the legal recognition of
interracial marriages (such as the famous 1967 Supreme Court
decision, Lovings v. Virginia) from the legal recognition of
marriage between same-sex couples. To religious opponents of
same-sex marriage, there is nothing further to argue--no same-sex
procreation means no same-sex marriage--"God created Adam and
Eve--not Adam and Steve" and "It is honor your mother and father,
not honor your parents", the latter reflecting no knowledge of any
future science of same-sex procreation. That science may say
otherwise is of little interest to religious opponents and
political exploiters of same-sex marriage--creating social tension
useful for inventing entertainment products.
[0009] But to scientists, the problem of same-sex procreation is
just that--a scientific problem to solve, another fascinating
aspect of developmental biology (and for many scientists,
fascinating problems are entertaining). The question is: at the
cellular level, why can't same-sex procreation occur? What
mechanism(s) at the genetic level (e.g., imprinting), makes, say,
combining two human eggs or two human sperm, impossible; and can
this mechanism be manipulated to allow same-sex procreation?
Current biomedical views are that a variety of phenomena (problems
with cloning, no same-sex procreation, etc.) are due in great part
to imprinting, imprinting being a biological process where human
genes are "marked" with methyl groups (DNA methylation) depending
on if the genes are from a man or a woman--these markings affect
how the genes are expressed. Indeed, in one experiment, scientists
in Japan were able to combine two mouse eggs to create a viable
embryo (but only by turning off imprinting, which for humans is too
important to embryo/fetal development to be a viable medical
choice).
[0010] Thus, the possibility of human same-sex procreation is so
controversial that it can provide a basis for a variety of new
entertainment products, especially movies, television shows and
theater productions. For example, such products are useful in that
they allow audience members to consider the biological and
religious issues underlying societal sex roles and taboos against
homosexuality in a variety of ways, such as through drama or
comedy, rather than through very dry scientific lectures or
inflammatory religious rhetoric. Traditionally, the usefulness of
various entertainment forms, such as drama and comedy, have been
instrumental in helping societies consider difficult moral, legal,
and ethical questions, such as those posed by same-sex marriage.
For example, in 2006, one cablevision dramatic series portrayed the
polygamous marriage of a Mormon man and his three wives.
[0011] One approach to providing entertainment based on same-sex
procreation includes female-derived female sperm, or male-derived
eggs, as a plot component, that is, an object or idea used in a
structured sequence of (discontinuous) actions involving actor
behavior and dialog. Female sperm creates the extremely
controversial possibility of a world where men are optional to the
future generations of people, and renders suspect the extremely
male-centric sexism of most religions. On the other hand, male eggs
create the equally controversial possibility of a world where women
are optional.
Novelty
[0012] Because of the historic impossibility of creating such sperm
and eggs, and therefore the lack of published science to inspire
entertainment creators, it is not surprising that female sperm (or
a male egg) has never been used as a plot element in an
entertainment product, especially products having the forms of plot
structures disclosed herein.
[0013] Extremely rare are mentions of female sperm derived from a
woman anywhere outside science. The Hebrews section of the New
Testament portion of the Christian bible maybe alludes to such an
idea. Hebrews 11:11 in many bibles reads "By faith, he [Abraham]
received power to generate, even though he was past the normal age
. . . . " However, some versions of this passage read
differently--"It was equally by faith that Sarah, in spite of being
past the age, was made able to conceive, . . . ", the emphasis
being on Sarah's procreative abilities. Why this deliberately false
translation of the word of a god? In the original Greek, Hebrews
11:11 talks of "seminal emission", but using grammar forms
indicating that the phrase refers to a woman (Sarah), i.e., Sarah
is having a seminal emission. This latter translation can be
justified by understanding that the author of Hebrews was borrowing
from now mostly-forgotten older Greek science (advocated by
Hippocrates, opposed by Aristotle) the false idea that women had
sperm (mammalian eggs, and egg-sperm merging, were not discovered
until the mid-1800s). The deliberate mistranslations are then due
to human authors evolving the biblical text to reflect later
scientific views of the non-existence of female seminal
emissions.
[0014] This Biblical controversy was subject of an article in the
February 1992 issue of Bible Review titled "Did Sarah have seminal
emission?" by Pieter Willem Van Der Horst, which generated some
Internet commentary (some of which can be located by using the
query "bible review"+sarah+seminal with the Google search engine),
a few of which made use of the term "female sperm". Not
surprisingly in light of the lack of any scientific basis for human
female sperm, the article and commentary has not led to any
entertainment use of the idea of female sperm, partly because the
controversy is little known outside Biblical errancy study
circles.
[0015] In 1997, scientists in Japan reported their creation of
female sperm in chickens ("Differentiation of female chicken
primordial germ cells into spermatozoa in male gonads",
Development, Growth and Differentiation, v39, 267-271). Their paper
makde no mention of the potential use of their technique for
humans, so it is not surprising that the medical news literature
published little about their discovery (for one, chicken sex
chromosomes are labeled W and Z, as opposed to X and Y labels for
humans), and it is even less surprising that no one in the
entertainment world made any plot use of the idea of female sperm,
chicken or human.
[0016] In July 2006, scientists at a medical research institute in
Newcastle, England, announced very limited fertilization successes
with sperm derived in vitro from stem cells (In
vitro-differentiated embryonic stem cells give rise to male gametes
that can generate offspring mice, Developmental Cell, July 2006,
125-132). A few news accounts at the time suggested that stem cells
from women could be used as well to make female sperm, though the
journal article itself was silent on this possibility (a
possibility that is an impossible without compensating for
imprinting effects). One would obviously think that such news
mentions would inspire a wealth of commentary on the implications
of female sperm. The exact opposite happened, reflecting the lack
of any announced viable scientific basis for sperm from the cells
of a woman, and the social taboos too prevalent involving things
that imply man-woman equality or female superiority (female sperm
implying that men are now optional, an idea with many entertaining
possibilities).
[0017] An Aug. 1, 2006, search at news.google.com (an online
database of news stories from around the world), using the phrase
"female sperm", found just one reference to female-derived female
sperm. This reference was a July 11 article in the Times Online
(UK), titled "Creation of the test-tube father", which reported on
the Newcastle research. The fourth paragraph of the article reads:
"The creation of `male eggs` and `female sperm`, however, faces
difficult technical barriers, as embryos require genetic material
from both a mother and a father in order to develop normally.",
this paragraph indirectly referring to problems associated with
faulty imprinting. Similarly, a Jul. 11, 2006, article from
irishhealth.com titled "Women could make sperm"
(www.irishhealth.com/index.html?id=9863&level=4) discusses the
Newcastle work, but doesn't use the phrase "female sperm". An Aug.
1, 2006, search of Internet blogs at blogs.google.com, using the
phrase "female sperm", found five mentions, all around the time of
the announcement of the Newcastle research (e.g.,
www.irishhealth.com/discussion/message.html?dis=1&topic=7242").
[0018] An Aug. 1, 2006 search at www.google.com, using the phrase
"female sperm", found about 800 Web pages mentioning the phrase
"female sperm". Only a few dealt with female-derived female sperm.
Two Web pages were in response to the Times Online article about
the Newcastle research ("Female Sperm",
http://hthse.com/wordpress/2006/07/17/female-sperm; and "Women are
capable of producing female sperm",
www.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_posts.php?thread_id=59557&forum_id=1),
a low number of Web pages given the radicalness of female-derived
female sperm and the uninhibited comments of Web users on every
bizarre issue. A few pages dealt with medieval arguments over
ancient Greek beliefs that females produce sperm ("Giles of Rome",
plato.Stanford.edu/entries/giles). A few other Web pages dealt with
the above-mentioned Biblical controversy involving Sarah. A similar
Aug. 1, 2006 Google search using the phrase "female
spermatogenesis" returned only 11 Web pages, most variants of the
two words separated by punctuation (" . . . female, spermatogenesis
in . . . ") and therefore not connected in terms of being a
standalone phrase.
[0019] Indeed, one year prior to the 2006 announcement of the
Newcastle (UK) research, in June 2005, another group of UK
researchers at Sheffield University announced that sperm and egg
cells could be created from stem cells. They did not actually
produce full sperm or egg cells, but rather disclosed
possibilities. Once again, the possibilities focused mostly on male
needs. For example, in an article in the 20 Jun. 2005 Guardian by
James Meikle, "Sperm and eggs could be created from stem cells,
says new study"
(www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1510299,00.html), there
appears a paragraph: "Gay couples could have children genetically
related to both. Single men could even produce a child using their
own sperm and an engineered egg, opening the way to a new form of
cloning. Women's fertility would no longer need to be curtailed at
the menopause." The implication of the last quoted sentence is that
women could regenerate their eggs, with the reporter obviously not
mentioning the more provocative implication of producing "female
sperm" despite the mention of "male eggs".
[0020] Related to the phrase "female sperm" is the very
infrequently used phrase "woman sperm". A Google search for "woman
sperm" did not return many hits, the majority of which were
writings where "woman" and "sperm" appeared next to each other in a
sentence, but separated by punctuation such as a comma. A few pages
referring to the Newcastle research made use of the phrase "woman
sperm".
[0021] An Aug. 1, 2006 search at Findarticles.com, an online
database to 10,000,000 magazine, newspaper and journal articles
from the last twenty years (1984 to 2006), using the phrase "female
sperm" as the search query, found just 37 references out of the
10,000,000 articles. Subtracting out duplicate references and
references where "female" and "sperm" appeared in different
sentences (" . . . the female. Sperm is . . . "), left 30
references. Of these, six made use of the phrase "female sperm
whale". The other 24 references, used "female sperm" in two
contexts--that of sorting man-derived sperm with an Y chromosome
from man-derived sperm with an X chromosome; and that of the
biology of male-derived sperm with an X chromosome. These 24
references are listed in FIG. 1. Thus, out of these 10 million
articles, not one mentions the idea of female sperm derived from a
woman.
[0022] An Aug. 1, 2006 of the database Dissertations Abstracts of
university MS and PhD theses, for these phrases, found similar
different uses of these phrases as opposed to the uses of these
phrases as disclosed herein. A search of two lesbian-related
abstracts databases, GenderWatch and GLBT Life, found no such
mentions of female sperm from a woman.
[0023] One of the few law review articles on the legal aspects of
lesbian procreation by Kyle Velte, "Egging on Lesbian Maternity:
the Legal Implications of Tri-Gametic In Vitro Fertilization", Am.
U.J. Gender Soc. Policy & Law, 1998/1999, p. 431, in footnote
11 mentions the idea of using sperm casings (sperm with the man's
DNA removed) to carry a woman's DNA, one way to make a
female-DNA-derived sperm. Interestingly, the article does not use
the phrase "female sperm", and there have been few, if any, further
mentions of sperm casings in the literature because of the
impossibility of using sperm casings to achieve procreation (the
transplanted female DNA is incorrectly imprinted--for the same
reason, you can't have egg casings for men).
[0024] A Jul. 17, 2006 search of Google for any Web pages with the
phrase "Honor Your Mother and Mother" (which logically follows as a
socio-religious policy from the possibility of female sperm), out
of billions of Web pages, only found two such pages which used the
phrase, but completely differently from the use herein. One Web
page used the phrase "honor your mother and mother-in-law" in the
context of buying flowers for weddings, while the other page used
the phase "honor your mother and Mother Earth" to encourage people
to plant trees. Such a phrase creates much social tension to be a
useful plot element, because of the implication that the original
religious phrase was written from the point of an erroneous
understanding of reproductive biology.
Non-Obviousness
[0025] Not only is there an absence of female sperm as a plot
element in the no-limits-to-ideas worlds of science fiction and
fantasy, but also there is no published motivation to so use female
sperm as a plot element.
[0026] Such motivation is missing in the wealth of literature of
lesbian fantasy stories, lesbians who presumably would be most
motivated to have such fantasies of female sperm (especially in an
era of the fight for legalizing same sex marriage). For example,
some stories make use of certain strap-on artificial human penises
that have the ability to squirt a liquid at an appropriate moment,
presumably, to simulate ejaculation (Google search using
"ejaculating dildo"). You would think that at least one pair of
lesbians in a loving relationship, using such a device for
entertainment, would have thought "If only the fake sperm was real
and from our cells", and created entertainment about a world where
female sperm from women exists.
[0027] Or you would think that a strong advocate for lesbians would
write something similar. For example, in the 1985 book Lesbian
Origins by Susan Cavin, she writes on page 39:
[0028] "We . . . hold that individual men are the historical
creators, heirs and profiteering instruments of applied male
supremacist systems. Men are both the chicken and sperm of
patriarchy."
[0029] This is an entertaining bit of sarcasm using the joke of
"what came first, the chicken or the egg?", but since men do not
have eggs, she uses "sperm". Yet from her attitude, she could have
consistently added the following sarcasm--"Too bad women don't have
their own sperm." Such sarcasm (or hopeful thinking) would also
have been appropriate in the 1973 movie Wicker Man (remade in 2006
as the movie Run A Mile), about an island where women seduce and
control men for procreation, and then plot to kill most of the men
after the women get the mens' sperm. Similarly, singers such as
Madonna, with their sophomoric attempts in their songs and videos
to show that women have "balls", didn't take this idea to its
conclusion--a ballsy woman completely equal to a man could make her
own sperm. Without any science to shape their thoughts, it was not
obvious to such writers and filmmakers to consider the
possibilities of female sperm, e.g., the use of female sperm as a
plot element.
[0030] More recently there is the non-fiction book written by Molly
Miller titled Lesbian Sperm Tales (Author House, Bloomington, Ind.,
spring 2006), which would seem to be a most obvious book in which
to speculate about sperm derived from the cells of a woman.
Instead, Lesbian Sperm Tales is about the experiences of lesbians
making babies with sperm obtained from sperm banks--no mention of
female sperm, despite the simplicity and relevance of doing so, for
example, by also including in the book the sentence "If only we
could withdraw female sperm from these sperm banks." An Aug. 1,
2006, Google search of the Internet for the phrase "lesbian sperm"
returned references mostly about sperm banks and sperm donors using
sperm from men, with one or two references to the Newcastle
research. Another such book, titled Buying Dad: One Woman's Search
for the Perfect Sperm Donor, by Harlyn Aizley (Alyson Books, Los
Angeles, Calif., 2003), recounts one lesbian's couple to have a
children using sperm from a man. Parts of the book discuss their
hunt through sperm banks for sperm from the "ideal" man. Similarly,
in another book, Are Men Necessary, by New York Times columnist
Maureen Down (Berkeley Books, New York, N.Y., 2005), quotes one
doctor (page 144) as saying "What I think'll happen within my
lifetime is that some lesbian couples will have children, and they
will both be parents, an egg from one and a fertilized egg from the
other will produce a perfectly normal girl. You could have a new
species of human reproduced without men at all." Again, both books
have no mention of female sperm, i.e., neither fantasizing if one
of the lesbians could have sperm of her own to be combined with an
egg of the other lesbian, despite such books being the most likely
context in which to do so.
[0031] Indeed, sperm from men is rarely a plot element (that is,
outside of the world of adult sexual movies, and ignoring bad sperm
jokes made in too many movies geared towards young men, such as the
2003 movie American Pie). To date, there have been only a handful
of serious movies using sperm from men as a plot element. Such
movies include: Aristocrats (2005), Semen, una historia de amor
(2005), Succubus (2004), Donor (2002), Shooting Blanks (2001), Made
in America (1993), Frozen Assets (1992), and Spermula (1976), or a
movie that includes a sperm joke or two (e.g., the 1988 movie Moon
Over Parador). The 1983 Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life is
noted for one song, Every Sperm is Sacred. Other movies used
metaphoric objects to represent sperm from men, for example, the
somewhat sperm-shaped worms in the 1977 movie Eraserhead.
[0032] A comedic play performed in San Francisco in 2005 and 2006,
Sperm WARFARE, is about a husband and wife arguing in a sperm
clinic as the husband tries to produce a sperm sample. At one
point, the dialog mentions the Old Testament story of Sarah being
fertile after menopause--with the scriptwriter apparently being
unaware of the New Testament suggestion that Sarah had sperm--which
could have been the basis for some sarcastic jokes made by the wife
about her husband's inability to produce a sperm sample. For
example, one such line of dialog NOT used in the play could have
been the wife saying--"Who needs you?--Like Sarah--I will make my
own sperm." Without any science to shape their thoughts, it was not
obvious to such entertainers to consider the possibilities of sperm
from women.
[0033] In 2005, Tom Dougherty Associates publishers released a
science fiction/mystery 533-page paperback book titled "The Athena
Factor" by W. Michael Gear. The plot novelty is that cells of movie
stars are stolen and cloned, with the resulting embryo clones sold
to women fans of the stars--"Have a Julia Roberts baby of your
own!!" Much of the book's plot elements and structures is found in
the prior art of mystery writing--Hollywood politics, bodyguards,
love interests, embittered workers, betrayals, lawyers, etc. FIG. 2
lists excerpts from the book that are specific to this plot novelty
of illegally cloning stars, and interestingly make up in total only
a few pages of text out of the 533 pages of the book. The drama in
this book would have been greater if the author had made use of a
sperm from women--"Have a baby with Julia Roberts by buying her
sperm." Yet despite being aware of much of the science of that goes
into making sperm, but not the science of sperm from women, it was
not obvious to the author to make use of female sperm as a plot
element.
[0034] This lack of imagination with regards to the fantasy of
having female sperm is in contrast to other impossible (or at least
unreported) medical phenomena used as a plot element in a
television show or movie. For example, the 1978 movie Rabbit Test
had the male character (played by comedian Billy Christal) getting
pregnant and having a baby girl. The movie did not explain how the
man got pregnant, which was addressed in the 1994 movie Junior, in
which actor Arnold Schwarzenegger gets pregnant when an embryo (his
sperm, a female colleague's egg) is implanted in his abdominal
cavity (which some scientists speculate could be possible). In
another example, the television show, Grey's Anatomy (2005 season),
had a plot element where a man was discovered to have an ovary in
his bladder--a male ovary in a sense--the result of DNA from an
extra embryo that fused in the womb. In many of these cases, it is
a man's sexuality that is the obvious plot element to invent with,
reflecting the effects of general social misogyny on a particular
industry (there are more movies with men dressing/acting as women
as a plot element, e.g., the 1959 movie Some Like it Hot, the 1990
movie Nuns on the Run, the 2004 movie White Chicks, then women
dressing/acting as men, e.g., the 1983 movie Yentl).
[0035] And even when a strange new scientific idea is published, it
may take many years for someone to invent a use for the scientific
idea as a plot element. For example, a 1988 Nature paper by
physicist Jack Hills described how black holes could slingshot a
star, which science fiction writer Paul McAuley used five years
later in his 1993 book Eternal Light, where a star was slingshot at
the Earth by an alien race. In other cases, the science fiction is
many years ahead of the science. In 1955, writer Philip Dick wrote
the story Autofac, in which micro-machines, smaller than ants,
construct duplicates of themselves, decades before
nanotechnologists in the 1990s started doing research to achieve
this in real life. An article in the 21 Jul. 2006 issue of New York
Times, page A14, "Scientists Hope to Unravel Neanderthal DNA and
Human Mysteries" has an ethicist, Ronald Green of Dartmouth
College, making use of plotlines from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
speculating on what would happen if we could recreate the full DNA
of a Neanderthal man, clone such a man, and then somehow create a
woman/mate that could breed. Yet, for female sperm, to date, both
science and science fiction literature are silent.
[0036] One medical phenomenon which might have inspired stories of
female sperm, but hasn't to date, is that of hermaphrodites.
Hermaphroditism is a relatively unusual condition in which both
ovarian and testicular tissues are present in the same individual,
and sometimes in the same gonad (usually referred to as an
`ovotestis`). About 1 in 4000 humans is born with the ambiguous
sexual organ structure. Human hermaphrodites, also known as
inter-sexed humans, are typically sterile, but in some cases can
produce either sperm or eggs. That is, phenotypically female women
have had their eggs fertilized to be mothers, while a few
phenotypically male men have fathered children with their sperm.
But what is generally impossible for humans (but well known for
animals, such as snails) is for human hermaphrodites to have both
viable sperm and eggs (procreative hermaphrodite animals typically
have ovotestes which produce both sperm and eggs). One medical
journal article did suggest that this would be possible for humans,
allow in theory for a human hermaphrodite to reproduce by
himself/herself, with the resulting child not genetically identical
to the parent (see "Autoreproduction by Hermaphrodites", J.
Schulman and R. Sherins, Human Reproduction, March 1995, pages
500-1).
[0037] Human hermaphroditism was used in a classic science fiction
time-travel story from 1959 titled All You Zombies by Robert
Heinlein, a story about a man who is simultaneously his own mother,
his own father and the bartender serving him drinks. It turns out
the man started out life as an orphaned woman born with both sex
organs and both organs being functional (which is generally
impossible for humans). As a young woman, she/he has sex with a
man, after which the doctors get rid of her female sex organs,
making her a man (FIG. 3 contains excerpts from the story about
this change), a man who later in life goes back in time to
unknowingly have sex with himself as the young woman. Their
daughter is mysteriously kidnapped by himself as the bartender who
takes the baby girl further back in time and leaves her at the
orphanage to become the young woman. While the story is a great
example of the bizarre entertaining possibilities of time travel,
and inspired much time-travel fiction writing (including, possibly,
the 1969 science fiction story Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut),
it inspired little to no sexual fiction writing because other than
its existence, there is nothing really interesting about having two
sets of sexual organs to in theory be able to produce both sperm
and eggs. A few movies have made use of hermaphrodites as a plot
element, including the 1996 movie Bleeders, and two movies were
angels were portrayed as hermaphrodites: the 1995 movie The
Prophecy and the 1999 movie Dogma. A few documentaries on
hermaphrodites include the 1996 movies Hermaphrodites Speak! and
The Blue Hermaphrodite.
[0038] One entertainment plot element that the prior art has missed
is the ability to produce one type of sex cell when you only have
sexual organs of the other type, e.g., making sperm from a woman's
cells (or its parallel, male eggs), using novel and unobvious
clinical techniques that are as ordinary as other reproductive
techniques such as in vitro fertilization. A more specific
embodiment of this plot element, and which is entertaining,
shocking, interesting, etc. is a situation where all males are
killed while ensuring the future reproductive health of
civilization because of the availability of female sperm._Such plot
elements can be used as functional components in entertainment
articles of manufacture.
Problem
[0039] One explanation for the above-described lack of speculation
or fantasy with regards to sperm from women or eggs from men,
especially in regards to entertainment, and especially after the
few mentions of female sperm around the time of the announcement of
the Newcastle research, is due to the problem of the lack of any
scientific biological pathway to actually create sperm from a
woman's cells or eggs from a man's cells. Some scientific
possibilities, such as female sperm, are so bizarre that the
possibilities need some theoretical basis for non-scientists (such
as scriptwriters) to imagine upon to then incorporate such
possibilities into known entertainment motifs. Since no such
theoretical basis for creating sperm from a woman's cells has been
made public, it is not surprising that no one has used such an idea
for entertainment purposes, especially in modern misogynistic and
patriarchal societies.
[0040] While a possibility for sperm production from the cells of a
woman surprised the vast majority of people in July 2006 when the
Newcastle research was announced, to a very small number of
developmental biology specialists and Vatican monitors around the
world, this was old news, in light of a completely ignored sentence
in two U.S. patents. In the early 1990s, two related U.S. patents
from the University of Pennsylvania were filed (issuing as U.S.
Pat. Nos. 5,858,354 and 6,215,039--"Repopulation of testicular
seminiferous tubules with foreign cells, corresponding resultant
germ cells, and corresponding resultant animals and
progeny"--Brinster, et al.). At one point, the patents imply, but
with no enabling disclosure, the possibility of sperm from a
woman's cells (the patented process is for extracting, altering and
transplanting a man's XY sperm cells for germline correction of
genetic defects). However, the Brinster patents do not use the
phrase "female sperm"; instead hinting at such a possibility with a
sentence: "The use of female (XX) cells is also within the scope of
the present invention." Brinster and his colleagues probably
avoided the use of the phrase "female sperm", given the great
controversies that would arise--(which could jeopardize their NIH
grants), and distractingly used the more broader term
[0041] Interestingly, an author made use of this technique in a
short story, but seven years before Brinster's publication. In
1985, science fiction writer David Zindell, in his story Shanidar
(appearing in the compilation L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of
the Future), wrote "I irradiated his testes and bathed them with
sonics, killing off the sperm . . . . So I went into his tubules
and painstakingly sectioned out and mutated segments of his stem
cells' DNA so that the newly produced germ cells would make for him
sons after his new image." Zindell, in his story, makes no mention
of any application of this idea to making sperm for women, or the
use of artificial chromosomes.
[0042] Additionally, because few scientists noticed this "female"
statement in Brinster's patents, it did not occur to scientists to
consider the possibility of combining Brinster's methods with the
possibilities arising from an odd discovery some years later to
then suggest the possibility of female sperm. In 2000, German
scientists published a report in the biomedical journal Cytogenetic
Cell Genetics (volume 91, pages 204 to 207) titled "An SRY-negative
47, XXY mother and daughter", where they documented a healthy
mother and daughter, both of whom had a SRY-negative 47, XXY
karyotype (that is, their cells had that region of the Y chromosome
that helps make sperm, but did not have that region of the Y
chromosome that instructs the initially female body to become
male). If you could clone such women, take some of their embryonic
germ cells and used them along the lines of the methods of
Brinster's technique, you have the possibility of producing sperm
from a woman (a possibility further supported by the limited
procreative abilities of 47,XXY Klinefelter men [men because they
have the SRY gene]). Again, it is not surprising that since the
scientists are not so speculating in the world of facts, then the
entertainment inventors are not so speculating in the world of
fiction. None of this science is mentioned, for example, in the
2006 medical text--The Sperm Cell: Production, Maturation,
Fertilization, Regeneration (Christopher De Jonge and Christopher
Barratt, editors, Cambridge University Press), which reviews much
of the state of art of (human) sperm biology.
[0043] The non-enabling aspects of the Newcastle research and the
earlier University of Pennsylvania research include problems due to
the Y chromosome (which females do not possess in their cells,
including that region of the Y chromosome that contributes to sperm
production), and imprinting. However, in the last ten years, much
progress has been made in the understanding and manipulation of
human chromosomes and imprinting effects, techniques which can be
used to invent biological pathways that lead to creating female
sperm from a woman's cells. Pending patent applications, discussed
below, address these non-enabling deficiencies for production of
sperm from a woman's cells, and how to use these recently developed
techniques.
[0044] Thus given the historic scientific impossibility of creating
female sperm from a woman and thus its lack of discussion in
scientific literature, and the social taboos involved with some
concepts that empower women, to date there have been no
entertainment products that make use of creating sperm from a
woman's cells. Despite the obvious social tensions that will arise
from such sperm, social tensions useful for inventing entertainment
products, no such entertainment products exist. Since such
entertainment products are useful for entertainment, investment and
educational purposes, there is a need to invent and protect such
products.
[0045] Also, while there are pending U.S. patent applications on
entire movie plot structures (e.g., 2005/282140, 2005/270013,
2005/255437, 2005/240471--all titled "Process of relaying a story
having a unique plot"), to date no one has tried to patent a
functional movie plot element, with law review articles and other
legal articles arguing to the contrary.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0046] The present invention provides, in one aspect, functional
entertainment plot elements, plot structures and treatments based
on the idea of female sperm and/or structures that use female sperm
as a physical object that is manipulated by man and/or machine, and
similarly for male eggs. In another aspect, the present invention
provides articles of manufacture comprising an entertainment
product that includes such entertainment plot elements, plot
structures and methods of entertainment comprising experiencing an
entertainment product that includes such entertainment plot
elements and structures. Examples of articles of manufacture within
the scope of the present invention include, but are not limited to,
digital video discs (DVDs), compact disks (CDs), video tape, audio
tape, vinyl records, paper (e.g., scripts and novels), and film.
The entertainment product in accordance with the present invention
can be experienced at home, on portable media players, or in
theaters.
[0047] The present invention provides, in another aspect, methods
to patent functional entertainment plot structures and treatments,
for example, legal arguments useful for justifying such patenting
under 35 U.S.C. 101.
[0048] In more specific aspects and embodiments, the present
invention provides an entertainment product that includes at least
one plot element that uses sperm created from the cells of a woman;
and an entertainment product that includes at least one plot
element that uses the process of creating sperm from the cells of a
woman. In more specific embodiments, either of these entertainment
products can be in the format of an audiovisual entertainment
product, a fictional work, a drama, a movie, a recording, a play,
or a comedy.
[0049] In another aspect, the present invention provides a method
for providing an entertainment product, comprising providing
tangible product of human creation, said tangible product of human
creation having a plot element including at least one reference to
sperm created from the cells of a woman, or to eggs created form
the cells of a man.
[0050] In still another aspect, the present invention provides a
patent application that includes at least one claim for a plot
element.
[0051] Still other aspects and advantages provided by the invention
will become apparent when the description below is read in
conjunction with the accompanying figures and diagrams.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0052] FIG. 1 is a list of uses of the phrase "female sperm" in
printed literature.
[0053] FIG. 2 is text excerpts from a 2005 science fiction/mystery
book.
[0054] FIG. 3 is text excerpts from the short story All You
Zombies.
[0055] FIG. 4 is a data structure representing the Seven
Samurai-based sub-genre.
[0056] FIG. 5 is a data structure of a comedy article of
manufacture using female-derived sperm as a plot element.
[0057] FIG. 6 is a plot treatment using the data structure of FIG.
5.
[0058] FIG. 7 is a plot treatment of a mystery article of
manufacture using female-derived sperm as a plot element.
[0059] FIG. 8 is a plot outline for the treatment depicted in FIGS.
5 and 6.
[0060] FIG. 9 is a plot outline for the treatment depicted in FIG.
7.
[0061] FIGS. 10-A, 10-B and 10-C are part of a script based on
FIGS. 7 and 9.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
[0062] As used herein, "entertainment product" refers to any
tangible product of human creation that depicts and illustrates a
"story", the entertainment product made available to users via a
live performance, physical media (such as DVDs), television and/or
radio signal broadcast, network transmission and/or other
communication channels.
[0063] Illustrative examples of entertainment products in
accordance with the invention include, but are not limited to,
multimedia productions (e.g., movies, television shows, videos,
advertisements, theater plays, recordings, and the like); artistic
works (e.g., paintings, cartoons, and photographs); and literary
works (e.g., publications and manuscripts). The story depicted and
illustrated in the entertainment products can be fictional or
expository in nature. Fictional works can be works such as novels,
plays, epics, and lyrics; and include dramas and comedies.
Expository works can be theoretical or practical, and include, but
are not limited to, historical, scientific, and philosophical
works.
[0064] As used herein, the following structural relationships are
assumed: a "story" (also referred to as a "work", as in work fixed
in expression) is one "plot" or a combination of "plots" that have
functional interrelationships based on common "plot elements"; a
"plot" is a structured set of "scenes" that have functional
interrelationships based on common "plot elements"; a "scene" is a
structured set of one or more "plot elements"; and a "plot element"
is either a physical setting (the environment of the scene), a
character (e.g., a human, a robot, an animal, etc.), a physical
object/feature (e.g., a car, a gun, female sperm, etc.), a physical
event (e.g., a transformation of a character or object), or a
physical message (e.g., dialog where one character
communicates--speaks, emails, uses sign language, etc.--to another
character or directly to viewers of the entertainment work [e.g.,
the type of post-modem self-referential audience inclusion made
popular by Bob Hope, for example, in his 1942 movie My Favorite
Blonde)]. The function of the physical plot element is to induce a
specifiable aesthetic effect in the user/viewer/listener of the
entertainment work.
[0065] By "plot structure" we mean a sequence or combination of
plot elements not necessarily contiguous in time or location, with
such functional structures described either as unstructured text
and/or embedded in data structures or
[0066] The phrase "treatment" (also referred to as a "synopsis" or
"format") as used herein means concrete, tangible, and useful
descriptions of the main plot elements included in an entertainment
product such as a movie or television show in particular those plot
elements that are novel and/or unobvious, with or without samples
of dialog. Treatments in the entertainment industry are typically a
few pages of unstructured text, but can also appear in the form of
functional data structures. Treatments can also set forth the
framework of a serial or episodic series within which the central
running characters will operate and which framework is intended to
be repeated in each episode, the setting, theme, premise or general
plot structure of the proposed serial or episodic series and the
central running characters which are distinct and identifiable,
including detailed characterizations and the interplay of such
characters. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) maintains the
current industry-standard for formats and terms for their
licensing. FIG. 6 and FIG. 7 are examples of treatments. Treatments
are usually two to four pages in length.
[0067] The phrase "outline" as used herein means a specification of
a "story" more detailed than a treatment, but less detailed than a
script. For example, outlines can be viewed as scripts without much
dialog--settings, actions, some dialog. Outlines are usually ten to
twelve pages in length, but can be longer or shorter. FIGS. 8 and 9
are examples of outlines.
[0068] The phrase "script" as used herein means a detailed
functional specification of the actions, processes and physical
objects in the form of "plot elements" that comprise a "story"
depicted by an entertainment product such as a (stage) play,
film/motion picture, radio, television show or other entertainment
product. Scripts can have the same structural relationships as a
story, having one or more plots that can be related by common plot
elements, and having one or more scenes that can be related by
common plot elements. The specification can be the traditional
printed script, or as represented in script software tools. As
noted in the Encyclopedia Britannica (15.sup.th ed., 1998), "The
nature of scripts varies from those that give only a brief outline
of the action to detailed shooting scripts, in which every action,
gesture and implication is explicitly stated. Frequently, scripts
are not in chronological order, but in the order most convenient
for filming. Their language approximates the patterns of ordinary
speech." The sequence of actions in a script do not necessarily
need to contain dialog (though the vast majority do), as
specifically demonstrated in Samuel Beckett's Act Without Words I
and II, and Noh theater in general. Like software, scripts can be
embedded (a television show within a movie as a script within a
script--the 1998 Truman Show). Scripts can accompany the
entertainment product when it is distributed, for example,
including a shooting script linked to image sequences on a
distribution DVD for manipulation by the viewer. Scripts are
typically 90 to 120 pages in length, each page typically
representing a minute of display time, resulting in an
entertainment work 90 to 120 minutes long, typical for theater and
television movies. But scripts can be longer or shorter to result
in entertainment works longer than 120 minutes or shorter than 90
minutes. Examples of scripts can be found at the online database,
the Internet Movie Script Database.
[0069] For example, FIG. 4, in one use, is a structured and
functional treatment for a family of entertainment products based
on the classic 1954 movie Seven Samurai by Akiro Kurosawa
(discussed in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No.
10/246,947, which application is incorporated herein by reference
in its entirety and for all purposes). Also, since FIG. 4 is useful
for generating a family of entertainment products, a sub-genre of
entertainment, FIG. 4 is also useful as a data structure
representing a sub-genre. The specific entertainment idea specified
by FIG. 4 is that of one group of bad men, redeeming themselves at
some loss of life, by saving a good group of people from the
attacks of a second group of bad men--an entertainment idea pretty
much invented by Kurosawa who combined elements of American Western
movies with Japanese samurai movies.
[0070] Before specifying the plot elements, plot structures,
treatments, outlines and scripts (all five also jointly referred to
herein as "PPTOS") disclosed herein, we first specify legal
business methods for establishing the patentability of functional
PPTOSes. To demonstrate such patentability, one or more of the
following actions, and their equivalents, can be combined in a
variety of sequences: [0071] citing the Supreme Court decision
Baker v. Selden to establish that artistic processes (and therefore
products) are patentable; [0072] citing the CAFC decision Datamize
v. Plumtree Software to establish that aesthetic elements (such as
plot elements) of a process or product can be claimed where
defined; [0073] citing the PTO BPAI decision Ex parte Lundgren to
establish that non-technological processes (and therefore products)
are patentable; [0074] citing entertainment and academic practices
to establish that PPTOSes are concrete and useful citing caselaw to
establish that treatments and plot structures are concrete and
useful properties; [0075] citing entertainment and academic
practices to establish that PPTOSes are beneficial (and/or
perceptible) and thus tangible; [0076] citing the CAFC decision
AT&T v. Excel Communications to establish that dialog, as a set
of words, is patentable as a signal; [0077] citing the CAFC
decision State Street Bank v. Signature Financial to establish that
concrete, useful and tangible processes or products are patentable;
[0078] citing the CCPA decision In re Hruby to establish that
patentable artistic products can be hand-made or machine-made;
[0079] citing the CAFC decision In re Lowry to establish that
printed matter useful to a machine is patentable; [0080] citing the
CAFC decision In re Lowry to establish that (semiotic) data
structures are patentable; [0081] citing the CAFC decision In re
Alappat to establish that (semiotic) algorithms are patentable;
[0082] citing the CAFC decision In re Toma to establish that
(semiotic) grammars are patentable; [0083] citing the Supreme Court
decision TrafFix Devices to establish that PPTOSes are
functional.
[0084] The next four paragraphs are one such combination of legal
actions to establish the patentability of PPTOSes.
[0085] To be useful (in light of current PTO examination
guidelines), PPTOSes must be specific, substantial and credible.
That PPTOSes have been the subject of state and federal lawsuits
means that they are so specific, substantial and credible. One
useful function of treatments and plot structures is for
engineering and producing full scripts using plot elements as
components, scripts which as business methods are useful for
engineering and producing entertainment products such as a movie.
To be concrete (in light of current PTO examination guidelines),
PPTOSes must be useful in repeatable or reproducible ways. Such
functional usefulness is enabled with the detailed descriptions
below. That treatments, plot structures and scripts are concrete
and useful property also follows from early decisions such as
Stanley v. Columbia Broadcasting (1948), Hamilton National Bank v.
Belt (1953), O'Brien v. RKO Radio Pictures (1946), Yadkoe v. Fields
(1944) and Italiani v. MGM Corporation (1941), all of which are
rulings on the concrete and useful nature of treatments (and thus
the concrete and useful nature of more detailed properties such as
scripts) as a form of protected property.
[0086] That physical PPTOSes are beneficial (and thus tangible in
light of PTO examination guidelines) can be seen in that they are
routinely bought and sold in the entertainment industry, often for
large sums of money; and that there are numerous university courses
and seminars on how to invent and engineer such structures. Such
monies are not paid if there is no benefit to the acquirer. Even
the use of an image as a plot element is very financial beneficial.
In the 2006 movie, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, the
logo of the Wonder Bread wrapper appeared for about 11 minutes,
giving the logo owners the equivalent of millions of dollars in
media exposure via product placement in a movie (New York Times
Magazine, Sep. 17, 2006, p. 31). That such business transactions
typically require the involvement of an intellectual property
lawyer to clearly specify economic rights and conditions with
regards to the exploitation of PPTOSes further supports their
beneficial nature, and thus their tangibility. For those arguing
the perception viewpoint of tangibility, given that PPTOSes are
perceptible enough to attract purchase offers, in some cases
multi-million dollar purchase offers, means that they are
tangible.
[0087] Essential to treatments, outlines, plot structures and
scripts are functional combinations of physical plot
elements--e.g., characters, messages (e.g., dialog), objects,
events (e.g., movement) and imagery (e.g., settings). The plot
elements are used to inform and stimulate a biophysical response
from the user of the entertainment article/product with regards to
specifiable aesthetic results associated with the plot elements
that affect the quality of the article. This essential role for
plot elements (and PPTOSes in general) with regards to use and
quality of entertainment articles, e.g., through their repeatable
ability to effect a biophysical response (e.g., an emotion) from
the use of such articles, makes plot elements functional (see
TrafFix Devices v. Marketing Displays, 532 U.S. 23 at 32
[2001]).
[0088] Thus as artistic (Baker v. Selden, Supreme Court, 1879)
and/or definably aesthetic (Datamize v. Plumtree Software, CAFC,
2005), technological or non-technological (Ex parte Lundgren,
USPTO, 2005) concrete, tangible and useful processes and products
and business methods (State Street v. Signature Financial, CAFC,
1995), made by hand or with the aid of machinery (In re Hruby,
CCPA, 1967), such functional (TrafFix, S.C. 2001) products such as
plot elements, plot structures, treatments and scripts are
patentable, where they satisfy 35 U.S.C. 102, 103 and 112,
especially if such products are represented in (semiotic) data
structure (In re Lowry, CAFC, 1994), algorithm (In re Alappat,
CAFC, 1994) and/or grammar form (In re Toma, CAFC, 1978).
Additional methods and legal arguments for patenting entertainment
products such as movies and televisions shows, including movies and
television shows based on new biological discoveries, is disclosed
in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/246,947
incorporated herein by reference above. Such treatments and plot
structures are functional high level abstractions, used to make
products such as movies--with movies being useful articles of
manufacture--no different than any other industry where high level
abstractions and their corresponding products are specified and
claimed (for example, the software industry).
[0089] That words (combined to construct dialog relevant to plot
elements) are functional follows directly from words and phrases
functioning as useful signals other than to signal their
normal/literal meaning--as tropes. There are a wide variety of
tropes: anthimeria, euphemism, hyperbole, irony, litotes, meiosis,
metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, paradox, pun, simile
and synecdoche. For example, a classic oxymoron is "military
intelligence" used in a way to signal to the audience that you
don't think the military is very intelligent; "competent copyright
lawyer" is another oxymoron if you arguing that 17 U.S.C. 102 is an
ill-defined mathematical absurdity, since few if any copyright
lawyers are competent in the mathematics of ideas and
expressions.
[0090] The precedent of words and phrases as functional useful
signals has been relied upon in caselaw. For example, the 1999 CAFC
decision AT&T v. Excel Communications (172 F.3d 1352), where in
referring to the use of the abbreviated phrase `e.g.`, the court
writes: "The `e.g.` signal denotes an example, not an exclusive
requirement.", that is, a word or phrase is a signal, written in
light of decades of legal precedent that signals are patentable.
This functional view of the usefulness of words is consistent with
the science of semiotics in which all of the arts and literature
are functional and structural.
[0091] Another argument for the patentability of plot
elements--e.g., characters, messages (e.g., dialog), objects,
events (e.g., movement) and imagery (e.g., settings)--is that all
of these objects are useful to machines, i.e., can be manipulated,
transformed and manufactured by computer programs, which is
possible in part due to the functionality of words and their
structural combinations. This usefulness exempts their
patentability from any application of the archaic printed matter
doctrine. As In re Lowry states: "The printed matter cases `dealt
with claims defining as the invention certain novel arrangements of
printed lines or characters, useful and intelligible only to the
human mind`. In re Bernhart".
[0092] In recent decades, a growing number of software tools for
processing collections of texts, such as PPTOSes, have been
developed. For example, one program can analyze a plot structure
from a given text having a recognizable plot structures and
automatically complete it to form a story. Another program can take
a script and generate shooting camera angles. Such tools make
PPTOSes not only "intelligible only to the human mind", but also
functionally transformable by computers to produce industrially
useful results, making PPTOSes "intelligible" outside of the human
mind. Thus intelligible, PPTOSes rise above abstract printed
matter, and thus are patentable (see In re Lowry, 32 F.2d 1579
[CAFC 1994] where it cites In re Bernhart, 417 F.2d 1395 [CCPA
1969]).
[0093] In general, as long as there is new science to be
discovered, there will be new scientific ideas and actions useful
for being entertainment plot elements, and their structured
combinations. Given the economic value of new entertainment ideas,
patent applicants should seek patent protection for the
entertainment use of their new scientific ideas, especially if the
new ideas are patentable. For example, claims of new inventions can
claim the entertainment use of the new invention, for example, an
independent claim for an article of manufacture or method, and
dependent claims for entertainment uses: [0094] "1. A sperm cell
containing the X chromosome of a woman." [0095] "2. The sperm cell
of claim 1 used as an entertainment plot element." [0096] or [0097]
"1. A method for manufacturing female sperm comprising . . . . "
[0098] "2. The method of claim 1 used as an entertainment plot
element." or purely independent claims where the entertainment
article of manufacture or method uses the new article of
manufacture or method as a plot element: [0099] "1. An
entertainment product comprising (or depicting) the use of XY as a
plot element." [0100] or [0101] "1. An entertainment product
comprising (or depicting) the use of the process for manufacturing
XY as a plot element."
[0102] For example, "XY" could be inventions such as "sperm from
the cells of a woman", "ceramic high temperature superconductor" or
"cancer-proof cell". Some of these claims are useful for providing
intellectual property protection where copyright is prohibited from
doing so (17 USC 102(b) prohibits copyright protection for any
depictions of processes, systems, etc. "regardless of form"). An
entertainment use of a new useful invention is no less useful than
the usefulness of the invention in other applications. This
usefulness, this utility, is reflected in the entertainment
industry being a very large industrial sector of the American and
global economies.
The Science of Female Sperm
[0103] The phrase "female sperm" as used herein, or "female-derived
sperm", means the type of sperm with an X chromosome created from
the cells of a SRY-negative woman. In other words, the phrases
"female sperm" and "female-derived sperm" as used herein refer to
sperm that carry the genetic information of a woman, not a man. The
term "SRY-negative" is used to distinguish "biologically normal"
women from socially-recognized "women" such as men-to-women
transsexuals/transvestites, and phenotypically female
hermaphrodites and/or 46XX/46XY chimeras, most of whom have
outwardly female appearances (naturally or surgically) while being
born with the/some/no ability to generate sperm with the bodily
organs. If necessary, one further distinction is that the sperm be
created from the cells of a human with a normal RSPO1 gene (which
promotes ovary growth--when defective, testes growth dominates);
this gene test distinguishes a few men with male sex organs but a
XX genotype.
[0104] Some patents (such as U.S. Pat. No. 6,819,411 and
US2005/081256) and medical references use the phrase "female
sperm", but only in the sense of natural sperm cells with an X
chromosome from the cells of a man (e.g., when juxtaposed with the
term "male sperm" that refers to natural sperm cells with a Y
chromosome from a man). Similarly, searching the Medline/PubMed
database for references to "female sperm" return no references to
articles describing sperm derived from the cells of a woman, but
rather only for sperm derived from the cells of a man. There are a
variety of news reports, product announcements and medical journal
articles that mention man-derived female sperm in the context of
sorting man-derived male sperm from man-derived female sperm
("sexed sperm"). The methods disclosed herein also can make use of
the phrase "woman sperm", or "woman-derived sperm".
[0105] A co-pending U.S. patent application, Ser. No. ______
(Attorney Docket No. GREG006_US) filed on even date herewith and
incorporated by reference in its entirety and for all purposes,
describes and claims methods for producing female sperm using cells
from a woman. The production methods are based on altering certain
types of a woman's (cloned) germ/stem cells with artificial
SRY-deficient Y chromosome to allow the altered cells to undergo
spermatogenesis, and then cultivating such cells, in vivo or in
vitro, to produce quantities of female sperm. For example, one
method makes use of the following steps: [0106] a) clone an adult
woman, [0107] b) extract germ cells from the woman's embryo at any
point where their imprinting is mostly erased, [0108] c)
(optionally) cultivate the extracted cells in vitro (mitotic
divisions), [0109] d) add artificial SRY-deficient Y chromosomes to
the extracted cells, [0110] e) (optionally) cultivate the altered
cells in vitro, and [0111] f) inject the altered cells into the
chemically sterilized testes of a man, where the injected cells
undergo normal spermatogenesis (meiotic divisions).
[0112] The SRY gene instructs the initially female embryo to
develop as a male, with the gene contributing little to nothing in
regards to sperm production.
[0113] Such sperm from a woman's cells can then be used to
fertilize eggs from another woman, achieving same-sex procreation,
the possibility of which, when combined with caselaw such as
Lovings v. Virginia, leads to a constitutional basis for same-sex
marriage and the theological demotion of the phrase "Honor Your
Mother and Father", the consequences of which will provide new
opportunities for entertainment.
[0114] The above-incorporated co-pending U.S. patent application,
Ser. No. ______ (Attorney Docket No. GREG006_US) also discloses
methods for producing male eggs. Such male eggs can also be used as
plot elements in many of the ways disclosed herein for female
sperm, plus others, as will be appreciated by those having ordinary
skill in the art.
Entertainment Use of Female Sperm
[0115] Female sperm, and steps in the biomedical processes used to
produce such sperm from a woman's cells, can be used as a plot
element in a variety of entertainment sub-genres, including comedy,
religious, conflict, horror and family situations. A plurality of
plot elements based on the idea of, processes for, and use of
female sperm in a variety of entertainment sub-genres are described
below.
Specific Scene Actions for all Entertainment Genres
[0116] In general, one or more of the following exemplary specific
action scenes listed in Table 1, and other scenes, can be combined
to create an entertainment multimedia product using female sperm as
a scene's plot element, across many genres and sub-genres,
including those disclosed. In addition, most, if not all, of the
following action scenes can be adapted to use male eggs as a
functional plot elements by analogy, as will be understood by
persons having ordinary skill in the art.
TABLE-US-00001 TABLE 1 depicting with a video, and/or animation, a
sperm entering an egg creating female sperm using samples of a
woman's cells displaying graphics of the structure and development
of female sperm discussing the science of the X and Y sex
chromosomes depositing female sperm in a sperm bank using a genetic
testing device that detects female sperm using female sperm to
fertilize an egg transporting a female sperm and/or other sperm
samples delivering a baby girl by a woman testifying at a
Congressional hearing on the issue of creating female sperm filing
female sperm patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
interviewing political and religious figures on the controversy of
female sperm a sperm whale breaching the ocean surface comparing
sperm sizes and shapes across species with a series of images
entertaining an audience with sarcastic news comments about female
sperm, by comedians such as Jon Stewart of cable television's The
Daily Show displaying outdoor imagery of biomedical companies and
university laboratories in biotech and gay rights bastions of San
Francisco and Boston naming a female sperm-related biotech company
Cave of Yenga depicting a very light skinned woman and a very dark
skinned woman walking hand-in-hand with a young girl between them,
the young girl having an intermediate skin color between the two
women, with the young girl optionally wearing a T-shirt with the
message "Honor your mother and mother" famous female entertainers
such as Madonna, Angelina Jolie, announcing their plans to have
sperm prepared from their cells
[0117] Such exemplary specific action scenes, alone and in
functional combination with other scenes, can then be used to
manufacture an entertainment process description (e.g., as embodied
in the form of a script), a description useful for producing an
artistic and/or aesthetic article of manufacture, as well as a
process for stimulating a biophysical response from a user of such
article of manufacture. A structured organization of such
functional components (e.g., the specific scenes) credibly
specifies the article of manufacture, with one or more such
components having functional (e.g., intertextual) relationships
(for example, a specific scene of sperm being switched in a sperm
bank is functionally dependent on an earlier scene of sperm being
deposited in a sperm bank). Such functional relationships affect
the quality of the entertainment article by effecting a biophysical
response from a user of the entertainment article.
[0118] Such actions comprising the entertainment process are
depicted and illustrated with plot elements (dialog, objects,
movement, imagery, etc.) that, as useful signals, also function to
inform and stimulate the user of the entertainment article/product
with regards to specifiable and repeatable aesthetic results that
affect the quality of the article.
Specific Scene Actions for Comedy Entertainment Products
[0119] One example of an entertainment product made in accordance
with the present invention includes a scene where a woman is in
labor, showing signs of pain and exertion, finally giving birth to
a healthy, beautiful child. Everyone in the delivery room is
smiling with joy--until the mother sees the baby's penis and
exclaims "where's my daughter?!!" setting the stage for a plot
element based on sperm samples being switched either at a sperm
bank or insemination clinic.
[0120] In other examples of the entertainment products made in
accordance with the present invention, one or more of the following
exemplary specific action scenes using female sperm as a plot
element listed in Table 2, and other scenes, can be combined to
create an entertainment comedy product (though these scenes can
also be used to create entertainment products in other genres,
including those disclosed herein). In addition, most, if not all,
of the following action scenes can be adapted to use male eggs as a
functional plot elements by analogy, as will be understood by
persons having ordinary skill in the art.
TABLE-US-00002 TABLE 2 switching, either accidentally or
deliberately, a female sperm sample a female-sperm procreated
embryo developing with a shot of its penis delivering a baby boy to
a woman expecting a daughter filing lawsuits based on the switched
female sperm samples, and similar legal activities searching for
which embryo was fertilized using a woman's sperm adding green
fluorescence protein (GFP) genes to female germ cells and sperm,
with later scenes depicting the babies born from such sperm being
able to glow in the dark dressing up as female sperm for marching
in a gay pride parade, such as sperm in dresses displaying a scene
in the 1972 movie "Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were
Afraid To Ask" where Woody Allen is dressed up as a sperm about to
be ejaculated interviewing a mother and her female-spermed daughter
on television shows, for example, female-oriented shows as Oprah
offering the women in the audience free sperm preparation packages
on talk shows such as Oprah depicting scenes for a play/movie
titled Waiting For Opradot about two strippers waiting for a woman
named Opradot to bring them news about something special for their
lives, such as female sperm joking about female sperm by late-night
television comedians such as Jon Stewart, Jay Leno and David
Lettermen inventing female sperm for lesbians in order for the male
heterosexual inventor to be introduced to the lesbian's
heterosexual female friends auctioning female sperm on Internet
sites such as eBay training dogs to sniff out female sperm being
smuggled into the United States trading female sperm technology
with human-like female aliens who come to Earth with male control
technology detecting when men are lying, e.g., by women born from
female sperm
[0121] Such exemplary specific action scenes, alone and in
functional combination with other scenes, can then be used to
manufacture an entertainment process description (e.g., as embodied
in the form of a script), a description useful for producing an
artistic and/or aesthetic article of manufacture, as well as a
process for stimulating a biophysical response from a user of such
article of manufacture. A structured organization of such
functional components (e.g., the specific scenes) credibly
specifies the article of manufacture, with one or more such
components having functional (e.g., intertextual) relationships
(for example, a specific scene of sperm being switched in a sperm
bank is functionally dependent on an earlier scene of sperm being
deposited in a sperm bank). Such functional relationships affect
the quality of the entertainment article by effecting a biophysical
response from a user of the entertainment article.
[0122] Such actions comprising the entertainment process are
depicted and illustrated with plot elements (dialog, objects,
movement, imagery, etc.) that, as useful signals, also function to
inform and stimulate the user of the entertainment article/product
with regards to specifiable and repeatable aesthetic results that
affect the quality of the article.
[0123] FIG. 5 is a data structure representing a comedy article of
manufacture using female-derived sperm as a plot element. FIG. 6 is
plot treatment using the data structure of FIG. 5. FIG. 8 is a plot
outline based on the data structure and texts of FIGS. 5 and 6.
Specific Scene Actions for Religious/Legal Entertainment
Products
[0124] One of the classic science-versus-religion movies is the
classic 1960 movie To Inherit the Wind about a trial in the
Tennessee state courts in 1925, where a teacher was convicted of
teaching the theory of evolution. The many religious controversies
that female sperm will generate allow the creation of a variety of
religious entertainment products, for example, a movie titled To
Inherit Female Sperm about mothers who want to their daughters born
using sperm created from the mothers' cells to inherit the gene
that enables sperm production. One reason to treat religious and
legal entertainment products together is that they both exalt form
over substance (which is why they are very amenable to use in
entertainment products).
[0125] In other examples of the entertainment products made in
accordance with the present invention, one or more of the following
exemplary specific action scenes using female sperm as a plot
element listed in Table 3, and other scenes, can be combined to
create an entertainment religious product (though these scenes can
also be used to create entertainment products in other genres,
including those disclosed herein). In addition, most, if not all,
of the following action scenes can be adapted to use male eggs as a
functional plot elements by analogy, as will be understood by
persons having ordinary skill in the art.
TABLE-US-00003 TABLE 3 informing a religiously conservative man
that his sperm was mistakenly used by a couple of lesbians seeking
a daughter using their female sperm arguing the morality of female
sperm by citing its positive use in the New Testament arguing that
all "sperm drops" must be from (Islamic) men, since female sperm is
not in the Koran arguing that a female sperm insults the male Hindu
sperm god Skanda displaying anti female-sperm signs, e.g., by
religious protesters releasing an official condemnation of female
sperm at a news conference sponsored by a religious organization
discussing at a Congressional hearing the federal funding of any
research that supports the science of female sperm, such as NIH
stem cell research reading a Vatican statement condemning
"unnatural female sperm", and/or excommunicating researchers of
female sperm debating the truth of the religious passages such as
"Honor your mother and father" in light of female sperm procreation
- "Honor your mother and mother?" arguing from Mormon scripture
that a white female sperm should not mix with a black female's egg
(and that two women doing so should be killed) testifying at a
same-sex marriage court case, e.g., by female-sperm researchers
challenging female sperm patents in court, typically by religious
groups removing Sarah's seminal emission passage from the New
Testament assassinating the winner of Novel Prize in biology for
achieving the first female sperm baby, typically by a religious
fanatic arguing that if women who are genotypically women yet can
make female sperm are still legally women, then transsexual men who
are mostly phenotypically women and can make sperm are legally
women as well passing a law (or issuing a religious edict) making
illegal/heretical the use of mammalian artificial chromosomes
(e.g., to make female sperm) filing a lawsuit arguing in light of
same sex procreation using female sperm, that the court decision
Lovings v. Virginia is directly relevant for the issue of same sex
marriage
[0126] Such exemplary specific action scenes, alone and in
functional combination with other scenes, can then be used to
manufacture an entertainment process description (e.g., as embodied
in the form of a script), a description useful for producing an
artistic and/or aesthetic article of manufacture, as well as a
process for stimulating a biophysical response from a user of such
article of manufacture. A structured organization of such
functional components (e.g., the specific scenes) credibly
specifies the article of manufacture, with one or more such
components having functional (e.g., intertextual) relationships
(for example, a specific scene of sperm being switched in a sperm
bank is functionally dependent on an earlier scene of sperm being
deposited in a sperm bank). Such functional relationships affect
the quality of the entertainment article by effecting a biophysical
response from a user of the entertainment article.
[0127] Such actions comprising the entertainment process are
depicted and illustrated with plot elements (dialog, objects,
movement, imagery, etc.) that, as useful signals, also function to
inform and stimulate the user of the entertainment article/product
with regards to specifiable and repeatable aesthetic results that
affect the quality of the article.
Specific Scene Actions for Horror/Science Fiction Entertainment
Products
[0128] In other examples of the entertainment products made in
accordance with the present invention, one or more of the following
exemplary specific action scenes using female sperm as a plot
element listed in Table 4, and other scenes, can be combined to
create a horror or science fiction product (though these scenes can
also be used to create entertainment products in other genres,
including those disclosed herein). In addition, most, if not all,
of the following action scenes can be adapted to use male eggs as a
functional plot elements by analogy, as will be understood by
persons having ordinary skill in the art.
TABLE-US-00004 TABLE 4 exuding a virus deadly to men by women
procreated from female sperm, e.g., a virus that destroys any cell
containing the SRY gene, which only men have using the few
remaining men (nicknamed the "mAndrodios") as incubators to produce
female sperm, in a future where most men have been killed using
transgenic chimpanzees to produce human female sperm, eliminating
the need for men sterilizing all men when they reach puberty, and
assigning each man to one woman to be her sperm factory testing and
killing all boys when they start being able to produce non-female
sperm kidnapping men to replace their germ cells with germ cells
created from cells from women (so that the man's testicles forever
make only female sperm) kidnapping men to remove one of their
testicles to be used as in-vitro female sperm "factories" removing
a testicle from a man, and implanting the testicle in woman to be
used as her sperm "factory" making human artificial Y chromosomes
from some of the Y-genes of a chimpanzee preparing female sperm for
a future pope/rabbi/ayatollah named Sarah voting, in a future world
dominated by women, by a group of female religious leaders, in
Lyons France, that men are still human by a vote of 69-13 (even
though mens' non-female sperm is not needed) kidnapping notable
female conservatives, and without their knowledge, removing some of
their cells to make female sperm and/or eggs, procreating daughters
from these cells who undergo accelerated growth while being
indoctrinated against the evils of their host mothers' religious
and social beliefs, training these daughters as a squad called
Deuts-22:20 to hunt down their host mothers and stone them to
death
[0129] Such exemplary specific action scenes, alone and in
functional combination with other scenes, can then be used to
manufacture an entertainment process description (e.g., as embodied
in the form of a script), a description useful for producing an
artistic and/or aesthetic article of manufacture, as well as a
process for stimulating a biophysical response from a user of such
article of manufacture. A structured organization of such
functional components (e.g., the specific scenes) credibly
specifies the article of manufacture, with one or more such
components having functional (e.g., intertextual) relationships
(for example, a specific scene of sperm being switched in a sperm
bank is functionally dependent on an earlier scene of sperm being
deposited in a sperm bank). Such functional relationships affect
the quality of the entertainment article by effecting a biophysical
response from a user of the entertainment article.
[0130] Such actions comprising the entertainment process are
depicted and illustrated with plot elements (dialog, objects,
movement, imagery, etc.) that, as useful signals, also function to
inform and stimulate the user of the entertainment article/product
with regards to specifiable and repeatable aesthetic results that
affect the quality of the article.
Specific Scene Actions for Mystery/Action Fiction Entertainment
Products
[0131] In other examples of the entertainment products made in
accordance with the present invention, one or more of the following
exemplary specific action scenes using female sperm as a plot
element listed in Table 5, and other scenes, can be combined to
create an entertainment mystery product (though these scenes can
also be used to create entertainment products in other genres,
including those disclosed herein). In addition, most, if not all,
of the following action scenes can be adapted to use male eggs as a
functional plot elements by analogy, as will be understood by
persons having ordinary skill in the art.
TABLE-US-00005 TABLE 5 stealing female sperm samples from sperm
banks kidnapping/murdering researchers in the field of female sperm
manipulation saving female sperm researchers from being
kidnapped/murdered picketing and/or bombing laboratories and
corporations where female sperm researched is being conducted
seeking secret lesbian research facilities where female sperm
techniques are being developed, e.g., by spies from religious
empires monitoring Internet emails by a mysterious (government,
religious) agency for any message containing, for example, "germ"
and "female" and "MACs"
[0132] Such exemplary specific action scenes, alone and in
functional combination with other scenes, can then be used to
manufacture an entertainment process description (e.g., as embodied
in the form of a script), a description useful for producing an
artistic and/or aesthetic article of manufacture, as well as a
process for stimulating a biophysical response from a user of such
article of manufacture. A structured organization of such
functional components (e.g., the specific scenes) credibly
specifies the article of manufacture, with one or more such
components having functional (e.g., intertextual) relationships
(for example, a specific scene of sperm being switched in a sperm
bank is functionally dependent on an earlier scene of sperm being
deposited in a sperm bank). Such functional relationships affect
the quality of the entertainment article by effecting a biophysical
response from a user of the entertainment article.
[0133] Such actions comprising the entertainment process are
depicted and illustrated with plot elements (dialog, objects,
movement, imagery, etc.) that, as useful signals, also function to
inform and stimulate the user of the entertainment article/product
with regards to specifiable and repeatable aesthetic results that
affect the quality of the article.
[0134] FIG. 7 is a plot treatment for a mystery article of
manufacture using female-derived sperm as a plot element. FIG. 9 is
a plot outline based on FIG. 7. A patent abstract for a patent for
such a movie could read in part as follows:
[0135] "Their Kisses Kill" is a story of biotech intrigue, female
power and a secret religious legacy. In the near future, a virus
outbreak spreads across California. Its ravaging symptoms lead to
painful deaths only for men. Government agents uncover a secret
enclave of scientific/artistic nuns devoted to the science of
female-only procreation--fatherless daughters born using female
sperm. The virus is accidently triggered (or by design?) by the
genetics of female sperm. As state and church authorities
(including a resurrected order of Knights Templar) hunt down and
attack the nuns, they are rescued and their foes defeated by an
ancient order of warrior nuns in Europe who vow to restore
female/male equality in religions worldwide, now with the help of
the scientific nuns.
[0136] FIGS. 10-A, 10-B and 10-C are part of a script based on
FIGS. 7 and 9.
Business Method: Licensing Patent and Provisional Rights to
Entertainment Products
[0137] The entertainment products provided by the present invention
can also be the subjects of various business transactions, i.e., as
methods of doing business. Under Title 35 of the United States
Code, anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers to sell, or imports an
entertainment product based on the idea of female sperm claimed
herein is liable for patent infringement as of the date of
publication of this patent application (provisional rights), as is
for any uses after any patent that issues based on ideas disclosed
herein. Thus, the owner of the patent or provisional rights can
license or sell one or more rights to practice the invention herein
to third parties as a means of generating revenue. Thus, the
present invention further provides novel business methods
comprising the license or sale of one or more rights to a patent
that claims at least one entertainment product based on female
sperm.
[0138] For example, the assignee for any patent or patents reading
on the ideas disclosed herein is can offer the following licensing
terms, to be subject to a formal contract: in return for using the
idea of female sperm as a plot element, the assignee will be
compensated an amount equal to 1% of the development budget and 5%
of the gross income; and the inventor will be given final authority
over any dialog.
Business Method: Patent Applications for Functional Plot
Elements
[0139] Another business method is the preparation of patent
applications, such as patent applications for functional plot
elements as provided by the present invention. For those wishing to
patent their own new plot elements, they can prepare patent
applications with disclosures (e.g., abstract, figures, detailed
description, claims) similar to the disclosures appearing herein.
For patenting a plot element based on a new invention, disclosures
similar to the disclosures herein can be incorporated into a patent
application for the new invention.
[0140] For example, a patent application for a new plot element
could be prepared by having the traditional patent application
structure, comprising one or more of the following sections of a
patent application: abstract, background of the invention, summary
of the invention, brief description of the drawings, detailed
description of the invention, drawings and claims. Examples of
these sections of a patent application in the context of patenting
a plot element are disclosed herein.
[0141] The background section of patent application disclosed
herein is a good example of how to deal with a major challenge in
patenting functional plot elements--distinguishing around the prior
art. Given millennium of existing plot elements, there will be
prior art problems similar to those experienced in other crowded
areas of technology such as software and business methods. As the
background section disclosed herein demonstrates, there are ample
prior art resources (such as Internet search engines and academic
databases) for searching the prior art as well as for other areas
of technology. Any prior art found can then be distinguished in the
background section, such distinguishing being easier for plot
elements based on new scientific and engineering inventions (such
as female sperm).
[0142] While the patent application disclosed herein includes a
lengthy analysis of the statutory compatibility of patenting
functional plot elements, others preparing plot patent applications
may choose to include just a short statutory analysis, or
incorporate by reference part or all of the content of the
disclosure of present patent application. Nevertheless, a
disclosure should include many examples of the functional uses of
the new plot element (as done, for example, herein) in view of the
general trend in patent caselaw that "the more you disclose, the
more you can protect".
[0143] Figures similar to the figures disclosed herein can be
included in the patent application: data structures showing use of
the plot element, parts of stories and scripts showing use of the
plot element, etc. Additionally, methods of illustration of plot
elements, as discussed in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser.
No. 10/246,947 for claiming entertainment sub-genres, can also be
used in patent applications for movie plot elements.
[0144] Patent claims similar to those disclosed here can be used:
"An entertainment product that includes at least one plot element
that XXX.", where XXX is a description of the functional use of the
plot element, for example, " . . . uses sperm created from the
cells of a woman", or "is the activities of a ruggedly good looking
patent buster in San Francisco who likes donuts", the latter
description being an example of the narrowness needed for some plot
elements to satisfy novelty and obviousness requirements.
[0145] Although various specific embodiments and examples have been
described herein, those having ordinary skill in the art will
understand that many different implementations of the invention can
be achieved without departing from the spirit or scope of this
disclosure.
* * * * *
References