Research about fidget spinner

A fidget spinner is a toy that consists of a bearing in the center of a multi-lobed flat structure made from metal or plastic designed to spin along its axis with little effort.

Fidget Spinner

The fidget spinner is a toy that sits like a propeller on a person's finger, with blades that spin around a bearing. Depending on your personal taste, watching the spinning motion is either mesmerizing or irritating.

But even for those who don't want to play with the spinners themselves, the gizmo's story provides a classic parable of the small-time inventor with the big idea who got cut out when the time came to cash in. This kind of narrative is reliably compelling even when — as in this case — it's not really true.

A wave of media outlets, including The Guardian and The New York Times, have recently declared that Catherine Hettinger, a woman living in the Orlando area, is the inventor of the fidget spinner. Hettinger isn't involved in any of the companies that are making the popular toys and told a reporter at The Guardian that she is having financial difficulties.

The press coverage quickly congealed around an interpretation summed up expertly by the headline writers at the New York Post: "Woman Who Invented Fidget Spinner Isn't Getting Squat."

Hettinger, 62, is a chemical engineer by training and said she's always been a tinkerer. She first got two patents for a placemat that would help people control their diet by telling them how much the food they were eating weighed. In 1993, she filed for a third patent, which covered a circular device molded from a single piece of plastic that spins on the tip of a finger. In her patent application, Hettinger described the device's shape as akin to the U.S. Capitol building. It also could be a weird frisbee or a toy UFO. She called it a "spinning toy."

Catherine Hettinger

Catherine Hettinger

Catherine Hettinger has an inventor's mind: When she notices a problem, she tries to imagine a toy or device that can remedy it. So when she heard about young boys throwing rocks at police officers and people walking past them while visiting her sister in Israel, her wheels started turning. She started brainstorming devices that could distract young children and provide them with a soothing toy to play with.

First, she thought of a soft rock that kids could throw. But then she tossed that idea aside, still thinking about other options when she returned to her home in Orlando, Fla. It was there that she eventually developed the idea that would become the original fidget spinner — more than two decades before the wildly popular device became the must-have toy for both kids and adults this year.

 “It started as a way of promoting peace, and then I went on to find something that was very calming,” Hettinger, now in her 60s, told MONEY of the fidget spinners, which she first began imagining back in the 1980s.

Hettinger's daughter with first original fidget spinner [1993]

The toys now come in different designs and have hit the mass market after the patent expired on Hettinger’s original product in 2005, meaning companies can sell the product independently from her. But Hettinger isn’t upset about the sudden popularity and capitalization of her invention. In fact, she's excited about it.

“Maybe if it was some kind of exploitative product — like a new style of cigarettes — and my only motivation was to make money, I’d have a different attitude,” Hettinger said. “But I am just thrilled.”

Hettinger's patent was granted in 1997. She said she began making the devices in her laundry room, using a machine she bought from a defunct sign-making manufacturer and selling them at art fairs. Hettinger traveled to toy conventions and pitched the spinner to Hasbro, which market-tested it and eventually decided not to pursue a deal, she said. Hasbro didn't respond to an interview request.

Patent holders have to pay periodically to maintain their patents, and Hettinger let the spinning toy patent lapse in 2005. Over a decade later, in 2016, the current generation of finger-spinning toys became a hit. Aside from the spinning, these devices had little in common with Hettinger's toy. They relied on a completely different mechanism for movement. Yet when a Wikipedia page was created for the fidget spinner this April, it described Hettinger as the inventor.

When she first heard of the Wikipedia page, Hettinger said she assumed that one of her friends had made it. But she asked around, and no one would cop to doing so. Reporters started calling, and she was happy to tell them the story of how she had invented the spinner.

Aside from the Wikipedia page, Hettinger acknowledged that there is no evidence of a direct connection between her own plastic disc and the fidget spinners that are popular today. She said she doesn't have an opinion on whether her patent would apply to them. "You're going to have to call a patent attorney. This is way beyond me," she said.

Bloomberg asked two patent experts to review Hettinger's idea for a spinning toy. They came away skeptical of its connection to the current fad. "In reading it, it doesn't appear to cover the products that people are selling now," said Jeffrey Blake, a partner at Merchant & Gould, a law firm focused on intellectual property. Hettinger didn't argue with this conclusion. "Let's just say that I'm claimed to be the inventor," she said. "You know, 'Wikipedia claims,' or something like that."

A patent search for the words "spinning toy" pulls up thousands of patents covering everything from yo-yos to a "flying toy for propeller launching with liquid dispersing parts," and dating back over a century. It's not clear which patents, if any, would cover the current fidget spinners. If the toys have a true inventor, he or she remains in obscurity.

Even if Hettinger's patent had covered the current spinners, and she hadn't let it lapse in 2005, she would have had no claim to any fortunes created during the spinner boom that started last year. Her patent would have expired in 2014, 17 years after being issued, said Blake. This is the philosophy behind patent protection: Inventors make their work public in exchange for the exclusive right to commercialize it. But that right has to expire to avoid perpetual monopolies. "The patent system worked the way it should," said Blake.

This isn't to say that solo inventors or small companies aren't often outgunned, especially when they're making products like toys that can be copied and distributed with relative ease. The legal process is a bear even for those with legitimate claims. "The cost and time involved in the enforcement system makes it difficult for the small inventor," said Mark Gober, senior director at Sherpa Technology Group, which consults companies on intellectual property-related issues. Many inventors find themselves pushed into the arms of larger companies precisely because they can't handle these issues on their own, he said.

Fidget Cube

The inventors of another suddenly popular toy for the restless — the Fidget Cube — raised $6.4 million through Kickstarter to make their toy but recently decided to license the rights to a company called Zuru rather than do it themselves. "The increased ability to aggressively pursue counterfeits and knockoffs certainly added to the benefits of our licensing agreement," said Mark McLachlan, one of the inventors.

Hettinger recently launched her own Kickstarter campaign to help her pay to manufacture her spinners. "Wikipedia credits Catherine Hettinger as the original inventor. That makes it a Classic," the pitch starts. She has also been working on an iPhone app, a project she has held back on, because she knows how hard it is to break through the noise on the App Store. She's thinking that her newfound celebrity status might help. "After this blows over somewhat, I'm sure I'll be making a lot more connections for that," she said.

Unfortunately, with the rapid increase in the spinner's popularity in 2017, many children and teenagers began using it in school, and some schools also reported that kids were trading and selling the spinner toys.

popularity of fidget spinners in early 2017

As a result of their frequent use by schoolchildren, many school districts banned the toy. Some teachers argued that the spinners distracted students from their school work. According to a survey conducted by Alexi Roy and published in May 2017, 32% of the largest 200 American public and private high schools had banned spinners on campus.

When fidget spinners rose in popularity in 2017, many publications discussed the marketing claims made about them for people with ADHD, autism, or anxiety. There is no scientific evidence that fidget spinners are effective as a treatment for children with autism or ADHD.

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Artwork

Artist statement

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