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Re:The patent on the Space Shuttle has expired by gherkin0 on Saturday December 05, 2015 @06:45PM (#10683750)
Some of those are really surprising. Notably the Monopoly one (I would have though that would be a copyright) and the floppy disk one (filed 1995, really?).
Re:The patent on the Space Shuttle has expired by stormbrew on Saturday December 05, 2015 @07:36PM (#10683873)
Monopoly the name and logo would be trademarked. Monopoly's board design and text would be copyrighted. Monopoly's mechanism of action (how you play the game) would be patented.

More or less, IANAL, etc.

Re:The patent on the Space Shuttle has expired by rzzzt on Saturday December 05, 2015 @07:51PM (#10683908)
A patent for an early 3-inch disk and drive mechanism was filed in 1980 [1]. The inventor was working on it since the early seventies [2].

[1] https://www.google.com/patents/WO1981001906A1

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk#The...

Re:The patent on the Space Shuttle has expired by qbrass on Saturday December 05, 2015 @11:21PM (#10684396)
The dog watch that keeps time at 7x normal speed.
Re:The patent on the Space Shuttle has expired by nkozyra on Saturday December 05, 2015 @10:55PM (#10684357)
Electric guitar in 1959, too. That's a very long time between invention and patent (unless a previous one had expired).
Re:The patent on the Space Shuttle has expired by qbrass on Saturday December 05, 2015 @11:35PM (#10684416)
It's a patent for the shape of the guitar, not electric guitars themselves.