The high-five patent treats the high five itself as previously known prior art

The evidence

1. US Patent 5,356,330, "Apparatus for simulating a 'high five'", was granted to Albert Cohen of Troy, New York on 18 October 1994, on application 163,856 filed 7 December 1993. Twelve claims, three drawing sheets. Primary examiner Robert A. Hafer, assistant examiner D. Neal Muir, attorney Schmeiser, Morelle & Watts.

   Supports the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

2. The title puts the gesture in quotation marks — APPARATUS FOR SIMULATING A "HIGH FIVE" — and the specification keeps the quotation marks throughout. The document treats the phrase as a colloquialism it is borrowing, not as a term it is defining or claiming.

   Supports the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

3. The background states the problem in full. "During a televised sporting event, a 'high five' is commonly shared between fans to express the joy and excitement of a touchdown, home run, game-winning basket, birdie or other positive occurrence. Unfortunately, as known in the art, a 'high five' requires the mutual hand slapping of two participants… As such, a solitary fan is unable to perform a 'high five' to express excitement during a televised sporting event."

   Context·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

4. The phrase "as known in the art" is doing the decisive work. It places the high five in the prior art — the body of what is already known and therefore cannot be patented — which is the opposite of what the popular version of this patent says happened.

   Contradicts the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

5. Claim 1 is an apparatus claim, and every element of it is hardware: a movable first arm portion with a simulated hand, an immovable second arm portion, a mounting arrangement, a pivot member, a stop arrangement limiting displacement along a single plane, and "a biasing element, formed independently of said stop arrangement", which returns the arm and reestablishes the alignment after the hand is struck. No gesture is claimed anywhere in the twelve claims.

   Supports the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

6. The arm is dressed. The upper and lower portions are "covered with a layer of padding to more closely emulate the shape of a human arm", enclosed in "a simulated skin layer formed of any suitable material such as rubber or plastic", and "attired with an outer, fabric shirt sleeve" — preferably "colored to represent a professional or amateur sports team" and bearing "a number or other indicia thereon representative of a specific player".

   Context·strong

   Cited sources:S1

7. The hand is interchangeable, and the specification says why one might want that: it is "formed of a moldable plastic or rubber material in the shape of an average size human hand, although oversized and other novelty hands may be utilized", and "to further represent a specific player on a sports team, the simulated hand may be an actual replica of the player's hand."

   Context·strong

   Cited sources:S1

8. Claim 2 adds "a sound generating system for outputting a sound in response to the pivotable displacement of said first arm portion", and claim 9 adds the switch that trips it. The specification lists what it might play: "including the cheer of a crowd or the voice of a specific player."

   Context·strong

   Cited sources:S1

9. A second use is asserted. Mounted "at a sufficient height above the normal reach of a user, the user must jump upwards to strike the simulated hand, thereby simulating many of the jumping drills commonly practiced by basketball players", and the specification claims leg strength and hand-eye coordination benefits from this.

   Context·strong

   Cited sources:S1

10. The last line before the claims widens the invention past humans: "the hand-arm configuration may be suitably configured and costumed to simulate the arm of an animal such as a gorilla or the like."

    Context·strong

    Cited sources:S1

11. Thirteen references are cited, twelve US and one foreign. The US references run from 1,425,945 (Congdon, 1922) to 5,171,197 (Healy et al., 1992), and several sit in class 482/83 — exercise equipment. The foreign reference is Soviet: 563984, U.S.S.R., July 1977.

    Context·strong

    Cited sources:S1

12. Two embodiments are claimed, distinguished by geometry rather than by purpose. In the first the arm portions sit perpendicular, mounted to a wall (claims 4 and 5); in the second they are in "a substantially linear relationship" rising from a horizontal surface (claims 6 and 12), which is the free-standing version in Figure 5.

    Context·strong

    Cited sources:S1

Evidence that cuts the other way

Findings that complicate or argue against the verdict above. They are listed because leaving them out would make the file look stronger than it is.

1. The patent does not claim the high five, and saying it does inverts the document. The gesture appears in the background as something already known — "as known in the art" — which is where prior art goes. What was examined and allowed is a spring-loaded mechanical arm. The distinction is not a technicality: the whole premise of the invention is that the high five already exists and already requires two people.

   Contradicts the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

2. The specification's benefit claims are the applicant's. That the apparatus "synergistically improves the hand-eye coordination of a user", that it improves leg strength through simulated jumping drills, and that it provides "a convenient outlet for the release of excitement" are assertions in a patent application. A patent is examined for novelty, utility and non-obviousness — not for whether its asserted benefits survive testing — and nothing was consulted that tests any of them.

   Contradicts the claim·decisive

   Cited sources:S1

3. A grant is not evidence that nobody had mounted a striking target on a wall before. The references run back to 1922 and several are exercise devices in class 482/83, so the examiner was working in a populated field. What was allowed is this particular self-righting sprung-arm combination, which is narrower and more procedural than "someone invented this".

   Contradicts the claim·strong

   Cited sources:S1

What we still don’t know

• Whether the apparatus was ever built. Nothing in the record establishes a constructed example. A search for evidence of manufacture or sale returned only mirrors of the patent document itself and blog posts about it, none of which is evidence that the machine exists, and none of which is cited.
• Whether it works as described, in either of its stated uses. The exercise and coordination benefits are assertions in the specification and were not tested against anything. No source on training, biomechanics or sports medicine was consulted, and the file takes no position.
• Whether it was ever licensed, sold or enforced, and whether the sports-team livery and player-replica hand the specification suggests were ever attempted. Not established, not investigated.
• Whether Albert Cohen is living, and whether the patent is still in force. Neither was researched. Maintenance-fee history was not checked and no expiry date is asserted; nothing in this file depends on either.
• Why a 1977 Soviet document appears in the references. It is cited in class 482/83 and its subject was not retrieved or read. It is reported as present on the front page and nothing is inferred from it.

Sources

Every source below was read in full before it was cited. Archive snapshots are recorded at research time, because a file whose sources have evaporated is indistinguishable from one that never had any.

1. S1Tier 1Read in full

   US Patent 5,356,330 — Apparatus for simulating a "high five"

   Albert Cohen · United States Patent and Trademark Office · 1994-10-18

   The patent itself, retrieved as the USPTO's own seven-page scan and read in full — front page, all three drawing sheets, the complete specification and all twelve claims. It is the document the claim is about, and it establishes every finding attributed to it here: the parties, the dates, the application number, the classification, both examiners and the attorney, the abstract, the background including the "as known in the art" phrasing, the full text of claim 1 and the dependent claims, the padding and shirt-sleeve description, the interchangeable hand, the sound system, the jumping-drill assertion, the gorilla sentence, and the reference list including the Soviet document. Also the source of the image, and the subject of the rights inspection. No archive snapshot is recorded. The Wayback Machine holds no capture of this URL, as with SF-0014's sources; creating one would mean writing to a third-party service on the publication's behalf, which is not an action taken unasked. The advisory stands open and is recorded as open.

   Accessed 2026-07-30Archived copy

2. S2Tier 1Read in full

   Terms of Use for USPTO Websites

   United States Patent and Trademark Office

   The agency's stated rights position: that subject to the limited exceptions at 37 CFR 1.71(d) and (e) and 1.84(s), patent text and drawings are "typically not subject to copyright restrictions"; that not all material on USPTO sites is US government work; that the seal and logo are excluded; and that publication without copyright restrictions "does not give you permission to manufacture or use the invention". It also points to MPEP 608.01(v) on the right to include a copyright or mask work notice in a patent, the provision that makes individual inspection necessary rather than optional. Cited for the licence reasoning only.

   Accessed 2026-07-30Archived copy

Checked for circularity: S1 and S2 were confirmed not to derive from one another. Two sources that trace back to the same origin are one source, and counting them twice is the most common way a false claim looks well-evidenced.