Need to Text In the Rain? They've Got It Covered

Public opinion improved, and centuries' worth of carrying such a device has informed the current etiquette of rain, one in which small groups of wet people form impromptu communities, clinging together around a slim telescopic pole.

The communal behaviors of Homo Umbrellicus are evidenced by the workers of an M Street NW office building, who are experiencing a fire alarm in the middle of a downpour.

An earth mother type, protected by a garden motif-y umbrella, ushers three co-workers under her canopy, where everyone is too polite to point out that this is ridiculous, they are still getting hit.

A man in a business suit, who is much more important than everyone else, stands alone under a golf umbrella made for four, oblivious to the passersby who must step in the street to avoid the giant metal prongs.

Those without umbrellas find excuses to talk to those with them, and when two umbrella carriers get too close, they briefly bump nylon before boinging off of each other like repellent magnets.

For centuries people have been trying to build a better umbrella. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Crystal City has 97 applications on file from 2007 alone, 487 from 2002 on.

"Mostly, people want to improve opening and closing mechanisms," says Robert Canfield, one of five patent examiners who work with classification 135. Classification 135 is the USPTO division that deals with tents, canopies, umbrellas and canes.

Canfield has been examining umbrella applications for about 20 years and has seen just about every umbrella under the sun, ranging from patent 6871616, Pet Umbrella, to patent 598687, Multi-component Electric Stunning Umbrella.

Even the search for a hands-free umbrella is not new; the office has several applications on file going back to 1978.

Kaufman is not concerned, because he thinks that previous products have totally missed the point of an umbrella.

"There's a very precise pitch on this product," he says. It is: Way back when the Egyptians invented the parasol, it was meant to protect from sun, not rain, and no umbrella in history has ever achieved perfection.

He believes so strongly in the Nubrella that he invested $400,000 of his own -- and various family members' -- money in the product.