奇聞：堆雪人也有專利了

今年冬天堆雪人的時候小心有人告你侵權哦。紐約一名男子近日獲得了美國專利商標局授予的“堆雪人”專利權，訊息一出，便引起一片譁然。據悉，這名男子早在2006年就向美國專利商標局提出了此項專利申請。他的申請書長達25頁，詳細描述了製作勻稱的雪球和建造雪人身體各個部分的方法。這名男子表示，他很喜歡製作大型雪人，但是做大雪人會遇到很多問題，比如說可用雪量不足、雪人身體各部分如何堆疊和移動等。經過多年的摸索和實踐，他發現瞭解決這些問題的辦法，並決定為此申請專利。他在申請書中寫到，雖然他堆出來的雪人不會像車輪或烤箱一樣，對人類的進步有著莫大的革命性意義，但此前還未有人曾試圖製作大型雪人，而他只想堆出來一個更加完美的雪人。

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 .