Stupid Patent of the Month: Alleged Cult Leader Wants to “Improve Performance” In April, Mexican federal police arrested Keith Raniere , taking him from the $10,000-per-week villa where he was staying and extraditing him to New York. According to the NY Daily News , Raniere, leader of self-help group NXIVM (pronounced “nexium”), is now being held without bail while he awaits trial on sex-trafficking charges. Through NXIVM, he preached “empowerment,” but critics say the group was a cult , and engaged in extreme behavior, including branding some women with an iron. This was not the first controversial program Raniere was involved in. In 1992, Raniere ran a multilevel marketing program called “Consumer Buyline,” which was described as an “illegal pyramid,” by the Arkansas Attorney General’s office. More recently, he has collected more than two dozen patents from the U.S. Patent Office, and has more applications pending—including this one , which is for a method of determining “whet...
