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How To Swing

Posted Wednesday, June 28, 2006, at 6:22 PM ET

New Scientist and a few other print outlets wrote about the Olson patent starting in April 2002, and pretty soon patent attorneys were passing Xerox copies of the paperwork back and forth for a laugh. This eventually bestirred the patent office to deploy its mighty investigative powers to find out precisely how original Steven Olson's purported innovation really was. Data was gathered; schoolyards, presumably, visited; and the patent office issued a "reexamination certificate" in July 2003.

Posted Wednesday, June 28, 2006, at 6:22 PM ET
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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
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