奇闻：堆雪人也有专利了

今年冬天堆雪人的时候小心有人告你侵权哦。纽约一名男子近日获得了美国专利商标局授予的“堆雪人”专利权，消息一出，便引起一片哗然。据悉，这名男子早在2006年就向美国专利商标局提出了此项专利申请。他的申请书长达25页，详细描述了制作匀称的雪球和建造雪人身体各个部分的方法。这名男子表示，他很喜欢制作大型雪人，但是做大雪人会遇到很多问题，比如说可用雪量不足、雪人身体各部分如何堆叠和移动等。经过多年的摸索和实践，他发现了解决这些问题的办法，并决定为此申请专利。他在申请书中写到，虽然他堆出来的雪人不会像车轮或烤箱一样，对人类的进步有着莫大的革命性意义，但此前还未有人曾试图制作大型雪人，而他只想堆出来一个更加完美的雪人。

There may still be three months until the festive season arrives, but one inventor has received an amazing early Christmas present from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Ignacio Marc Asperas, of Melville, New York, has been granted an astonishing patent for ‘facilitating the construction of a snowman/woman’, five years after he first applied.

The inventor wrote a 25-page document with details on how to roll symmetrical snow balls and construct body parts such as arms and shoulders - and he insists he is being absolutely serious.

'If you're like me, you enjoy building snow men big,’ Mr Asperas wrote in the patent. ‘The bigger, the better. One problem is there isn't always someone around to help. It is very difficult by yourself.

‘Over the years, I have developed different tricks to assist my self-style of building snow people. My favourite trick is to use the long end of a shovel as a lever to rotate the boulder when it is really big.’

He described the original inventor of the snowman as a ‘genius’, but said he knows nothing about its history and had often had trouble with his back when building up a snow boulder, reported Gawker and Huffington Post.

'I do not pretend that the ultimate snowman will be as revolutionary to the advancement of mankind (as the wheel and the toaster oven),’ Mr Asperas wrote in U.S. patent 8,011,991 B2.

‘But I do contend that as far as I know no one has ever conceived and reduced to practice such an apparatus.’

Mr Asperas said some problems people come across when building snowmen are the boulder size, the amount of snow available, the stacking of each boulder and the positioning on the ground.

'We are living in the 21st century now,' he wrote. 'We have created the internet. China is getting ready to send a person to the moon.

‘And we invented silly putty, perhaps one of the all-time greatest inventions a big kid ever invented. Can't somebody build a better snowman?'

Mr Asperas said he wants to create a snow boulder that is 'perfect every time' - symmetrical and lightweight. The patent was first spotted by a number of technology websites, including Geek.com.