Catherine Hettinger (1954 – present)

One of the challenges for an old fogey like me is to keep up with current trends. I’m told that a craze which has swept through the playgrounds this year is something called the Fidget Spinner. For those who are not in the know it consists of a central circular pad, which the user holds, and two or three prongs, each holing a metal or ceramic bearing. The object of the exercise, is such a rudimentary process can be so described, is to rotate it between your fingers. Apparently users enjoy a pleasant sensory experience. For those looking for more excitement you can toss or twirl the spinner or transfer it between fingers. What fun!

Proponents of the gadget claim that it helps relieve stress and is aimed at those children who suffer from ADHD, another of those conditions which seem to have sprung up since I was a child. It certainly seems to appeal to those who surfeit of energy is in inverse proportion to their concentration span. With the Fidget spinner hailed as the toy of 2017 and flying off the shelves in their millions, you would think that the person who came up with the original concept would have unlocked the door to untold riches. But this is where the latest inductee to our illustrious Hall of Fame, Florida based Catherine Hettinger, comes in.

In the 1990s, Hettinger was suffering from myasthenia gravis which causes your muscles to weaken. Desperate to keep her young daughter amused, she came up with a toy which consisted of a circular device moulded from a single piece of plastic which could be spun on the fingertip. In 1993 Hettinger applied for and in 1997 was awarded a patent for her device, described as a spinning toy. She toured around some of the arts and crafts fairs in Florida and sold enough to break even, improving on the design as she went along.

In search of her big break, our heroine approached toy manufacturing giant, Hasbro, who tested the design. Alas for Catherine, they decided not to put into production. One of the problems with patents, as we have seen on numerous occasions, is that you need to renew them and this involves the periodic payment of a fee, $400 a time. Hettinger allowed the patent on her device to lapse in 2005.

In late 2016, eleven or so years after the patent lapsed, the Fidget Spinner began to make waves amongst the junior members of society and manufacturers of the toy started making bundles of money. Again, as we have seen, one of the ways that corporations can evade paying inventors their due is by making subtle changes to the design. Although the current crop of Fidget Spinners are spun using your fingertips, they rely on a completely different movement mechanism from Hettinger’s prototype.

Worse still for Hettinger, even if she had renewed her patent, it would have expired in 2014, seventeen years after it had been granted. This is the way that patents work, ostensibly giving an inventor enough time to capitalise on their genius without granting them a perpetual monopoly. You can’t help thinking that the toy manufacturers waited until any vestige of patent right had disappeared before launching the Fidget Spinner commercially.

It is a moot point as to whether Hettinger would have had any entitlement to cash in. At the very least, she came up with the basic concept but was unable to cash in on her brainwave. For this she is a worthy inductee into our Hall of Fame.

If you enjoyed this, why not try Fifty Clever Bastards by Martin Fone which is now available on Amazon in Kindle format and paperback. For details follow the link https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=fifty+clever+bastards

Filed under: Culture, Science Tagged: Catherine Hettinger, Fidget Spinner, Fifty Clever Bastards, Hasbro, how patents work, Martin Fone, myasthenia gravis, who invented the Fidget Spinner