According to The Register “In a move that has surprised naïve observers, the US Patent Office has announced that from now on it will consider ‘serious’ applications to patent specific integer numbers.”

As far as I’m concerned this only means one thing; I own the number 101 because it’s the second half of my often used moniker on Instant Messenger. From now on anyone that uses this particular number integer will have to pay royalties in the form of $.50 for every instance used of said number. Failure to comply with this “patent” will result in an automatic court summonance (not optional by the way).

Consider the example above a silly one, but something that will eventually make sense if the US Patent office is seriously considering this preposterous idea.