A patent ( /ˈpætənt/ or /ˈpeɪtənt/) is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention.

The procedure for granting patents, the requirements placed on the patentee, and the extent of the exclusive rights vary widely between countries according to national laws and international agreements. Typically, however, a patent application must include one or more claims defining the invention which must meet the relevant patentability requirements such as novelty and non-obviousness. The exclusive right granted to a patentee in most countries is the right to prevent others from making, using, selling, or distributing the patented invention without permission.

Under the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, patents should be available in WTO member states for any invention, in all fields of technology, and the term of protection available should be a minimum of twenty years. In many countries, certain subject areas are excluded from patents, such as business methods and computer programs.

Drew Curtis (born February 7, 1973) is the founder and an administrator of Fark.com, an Internet news aggregator. He is also the author of It's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News in May 2007. He is a guest on WOCM's morning show The Rude Awakening Show every Tuesday.

Fark began in 1993 when Curtis was a student in England, sending links back to his friends. Curtis registered Fark.com in 1997 but did not begin posting links on the site until 1999. The first story on Fark was a news article about a fighter pilot who crashed while attempting to moon another fighter pilot. Since then, the site has become one of the most popular link dump sites on the internet with nearly 50 million pageviews a month. As of 2006 the site was getting over 2,000 link submissions every day. It was the first indie blog to earn one million dollars a year in profit and its classifieds section alone generates as much as $40,000 per year.

Although Fark is a million-dollar business, Curtis takes a yearly salary of $60,000. The rest of the money goes to the site's legal 'war chest' and to pay other expenses. Under Curtis, Fark has purposely shied away from the Web 2.0 mantra of total user control. "I don't care what anyone says, the masses are morons. You can't count on them to pick good stuff. Just check out Network TV to see what the masses want for entertainment. There's certainly a place for that kind of thing but it's not on Fark." According to Drew, Web 3.0 will be "something called Good Editing." Speaking at a media conference in Washington, DC hosted by the Poynter Institute, Curtis stated, "The 'wisdom of the crowds' is the most ridiculous statement I've heard in my life. Crowds are dumb. It takes people to move crowds in the right direction, crowds by themselves just stand around and mutter."

Richard Michael Beem (born August 24, 1970) is an American professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour.

Beem was born in Phoenix, Arizona, grew up in El Paso, Texas, and played college golf at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

Beem turned professional in 1994. His early career was broken up by a spell in Seattle selling car stereos and cell phones. He later regained interest after J. P. Hayes won the 1998 Buick Classic [1].

This changed in 1999 when Beem won the Kemper Open as a rookie. His career took a further leap forward in 2002 with a victory at the The International in Castle Rock, Colorado. Two weeks later he won the PGA Championship at Hazeltine National, one of golf's four major tournaments. Beem fended off Tiger Woods to win, who birdied his last four holes, but finished one shot behind. This victory helped establish him in the top 20 of the Official World Golf Rankings.

Until this win, Beem was best known for the book Bud, Sweat and Tees: A Walk on the Wild Side of the PGA Tour by Alan Shipnuck, which profiled his rookie year on the PGA Tour and the often wild lifestyle of him and his caddy, Steve Duplantis.

Jaret Ray Reddick (born March 6, 1972) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, composer, and voice actor, best known as the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, and primary songwriter for the Grammy Award-nominated pop punk band Bowling for Soup. He plays a Music Man Axis that has a flag of Texas design on it.

Jaret Ray Reddick was born in Grapevine, Texas. He is the youngest of six children, with four sisters and a brother (named Danny). He went to Cunningham Elementary School, Wichita Falls, Texas. He graduated from S.H. Rider High School in Wichita Falls. In high school, he played snare drum in the marching band. Jaret has degrees in business management and psychology from Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls.^{[citation needed]}

Jaret loves games, which is the inspiration for the tattoo sleeve on his right arm, which includes such things as a Rubik's Cube, a Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone, jacks, Monopoly's Rich Uncle Pennybags, and Operation's Cavity Sam. The most recent addition is Mr. Potato Head.^{[citation needed]}