Halloween is coming up, and it is one of my favorite Silly
String holidays. I was reading an article in Wired about the secret in Silly
String tonight and it got me thinking about leveraging patents
into other types of intellectual property.
Silly String was originally patented back in 1972. As described in Ms. Palmer's Wired Article, there is quite
a lot going on in the can to get that perfect, light stream to
shoot from the can.
According to Wikipedia, within a year after Silly String was
introduced in the U.S., the propellant originally used was banned
in the U.S. So we know that the composition changed, but it
seems that Wham-O never filed an updated patent.
I'm not an expert on Silly String, but this means one of
three possibilities to me: (1) the original patent still
covered the updated formulation and propellant; (2) Wham-O
didn't think the patent costs merited the return on investment
of updating the patent; or (3) Wham-O decided that it would
