I succumbed to a chip-and-dip bowl shaped like a flip-flop on sale at the grocery store check-out line. As I was washing it, I noticed “Made in China” and “Patent Pending” stamped on the bottom. What in the world is patentable about a novelty chip bowl?

Something is patentable when it is a new, nonobvious and useful invention (typically a process, machine, article of manufacture, composition of matter, or, as the patent law calls it, an ornamental design of an article of manufacture (a “design patent”).

To my mind (and I’ve been wrong before) nothing seems patentable about this flip-flop bowl.

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