Today I Learned
The Toilet Paper Battle
Nobel Laureate vs Kleenex
What happens when a multinational company decides to make design changes to its product? A famous mathematician and noble laureate defend his discovery.
Not sure how these two are related? I wasn’t either.
In 1974, Sir Roger Penrose has discovered what is known today as ‘Penrose Tiling’.
Just to get a rough idea of this concept, Penrose tiling is a set of tiles that can be used to cover an infinite plane in a pattern that never repeats itself.
A few years later, in 1979, Penrose successfully listed his discovery as a patent.
The so-called battle begins now.
In 1997, Kleenex has made a new toilet paper design — ‘featuring’ the discovery of Penrose.
Penrose was quite shocked to see the use to which his discovery had been put and sued the toilet paper company for copyright infringement.
On top of that, Penrose demanded that all stocks of this toilet paper be destroyed.
