Patently Absurd

A patent for the proposal of marriage, actually filed with the PTO (in 2003, but still funny) To wit:

[0008] As the industrial revolution has passed and the computer revolution
has taken afoot, society has been submerged with innovation and novel ideas.
With the regularity of such innovation, society has become more prone to demand
novel ideas and innovative thinkers. This bias toward innovation has raised the
bar not only for industries, computers, and manufacturing, but also for
individuals involved in relationships. Individuals want their relationship to be
as unique and novel as the ideas that sparked the industrial and computer
revolution. Furthermore, individuals in a relationship demand such uniqueness in
their marriage proposal so that the individual can tout such uniqueness and
novelty in the relationship and have a written record of such events. A
significant setback to the aforementioned methods of proposing to marry an
individual is that they lack novelty and innovative effort. Such a lack of
novelty and innovative effort in a method of proposing to an individual may
result in a negative response from the individual in an effort to wait for a
more memorable moment. [0009] Accordingly, a need exists for a unique, novel,
and recorded method of proposing marriage to an individual.