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NY Man Patents Guide to Build Ultimate Snowman

By Cynthia Hsu, Esq. on September 29, 2011 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is rewarding innovation, one snowman patent at a time. Inventor Ignacio Marc Asperas of Melville, New York discovered how to build an ultimate snowman and patented his idea.

He was granted the patent rights on Monday.

The newly-patented snowman building procedure was officially dubbed the "apparatus for facilitating the construction of a snow man/woman."

And no, this patent wasn't a joke. In fact, Asperas wrote in one of the first lines of the patent application, "The following is not a joke patent. It's completely serious and is a serious undertaking to obtain a patent."

So how does somebody make the ultimate snowman?

Apparently you need a special snowman-building component called a "snow sphere." "Snow spheres" are the round spherical objects that make up a snowman's body.

Asperas' patented "snow sphere" is hollow, and is meant to emulate a snow ball or boulder. So the "snow sphere" is essentially just a light snow-covered ball.

But how does one make a "snow sphere"? This is where Asperas' genius shines through. He first wisely determined that the materials making up the "snow sphere" cannot soak up water. So, cardboard is out of the picture. He ultimately concluded that rubber or plastic may do the trick.

But alas, how to coat the "snow sphere" with snow? It's simple: static electricity. Asperas discovered through an experiment that dry snow can cling to rubber balls that are charged with static electricity.

Add a few static electricity clinging "snow spheres" together and you've got yourself an ultimate snowman.

Awesome? Worthy of a patent? Asperas' invention is both.

And if you're a skeptic wondering why anybody in their right mind would get a snowman patent, consider some of the other "ridiculous" patent ideas out there. Did you know someone patented a method to exercise cats using a laser pointer? A "build your own ultimate snowman" patent doesn't seem so strange now, does it?

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