A Cautionary Tale
While celebrating the Lunar New Year with his relatives and dodging questions from nosy aunts on when he would be finding a mate to settle down with, Eddy Sun had a sudden flash of inspiration when he saw a Chinese firecracker explode into thousands of red paper flecks.
Three caffeine-fuelled, sleep-deprived days later, he comes up with a working prototype of a disposable self-popping popcorn tin that is capable of popping corn kernels using heat generated by an exothermal core inside the tin. All the user has to do is to pull a tab at the bottom of the tin to start the chemical reaction and wait for the popcorn to pop out.
Sensing that his product would be a hit since popcorn snacks sold in stores tend to be of poor quality and would go stale easily, he immediately proceeds to have a patent application filed for his popcorn tin without first conducting a prior art search. “Prior art searches are a waste of time and money,” he thinks, “and no way does anybody have the brains to come up with such a brilliant invention!”