Surprisingly, I have not located any scholarship devoted to the important category of Thanksgiving patents. But you can get your Thanksgiving patent law fix by reading about turkey hunting patents at IP Watchdog (following up on last year's post on turkey fryer patents), a supplemented turkey feed patent at Patent Docs (issued just last month!), a turkey decoration patent at IP Wise, and turkey stuffing innovations at Intellogist. The USPTO even celebrated some Thanksgiving-related patents back in 2001, though it hasn't become an annual tradition.
Want to search for Thanksgiving patents yourself? Even if you have never done a patent search, you can just head to Google Patents and type in a term like "turkey" (I restricted that search to issued US patents, but you can also search patent applications and European patents). Other Thanksgiving patents include "an ornamental pet collar cover" where "[t]he ornamental figure may be a turkey to celebrate Thanksgiving"and methods and systems for displaying a cell phone banner "corresponding to the current date," including a claim "wherein the unique message is 'Thanksgiving.'" Have fun, and Happy Thanksgiving from Written Description!
