Andrew Knight has filed what may be one of the most aggressive patents ever: He's trying to patent a story. A plot. We're not talking about copyrighting a novel or a screenplay; he hasn't written one of those. What he has is an idea for a tale, and he's filed for a patent for it.

Normally, stories, novels, screenplays and the like are covered by copyright. But that requires that you actually write the thing. Knight, a patent agent who lives in Georgia and Virginia, hasn't done that yet. All he has is an idea that he wants to protect.

Imagine you had a great idea for a story -- something completely original, never before thought of. Maybe it's the screenplay for the next "Memento" or "Being John Malkovich." (In other words, we're not talking about the latest incarnation of "Romeo and Juliet.")

You're not a writer, so you tell your idea to a friend. He writes the screenplay and convinces Hollywood to make it a blockbuster movie. Your friend makes millions, but when you ask for your cut, he says, "Do I know you?"

That was Knight's problem.

"My contribution to the literary arts was not the writing of it, but the actual plot itself," he explained. "I wish there was a way to protect what I created. I could write a story and I could get copyright, but the thing about copyright is that anyone is free to steal the underlying story line. So I was thinking to myself, 'How can I protect the story line?' "

His answer: a patent.

You might think of patents as belonging to machines and gadgets, but lately the Patent Office has been playing it a bit more loosely, and the courts have gone along.

In fact, the patent doors are open pretty wide. In 1980, in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the Supreme Court ruled that patents could cover "anything under the sun that is made by man." Then, in 1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit opened those doors further, holding, in State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, that the Supreme Court's ruling applied to everything, including software, business methods and mathematical formulae.

That led to Internet retail giant Amazon.com patenting its "one-click" ordering system -- a patent that has been held as an example of the system gone too far.

Knight, to some, is going a step further.

The patent he filed is for "Process of relaying a story having a unique plot." It's in legalese, of course, but it describes his story, "The Zombie Stare." It's about a high school student who applies to MIT, then prays to remain unconscious until the reply comes. Because of a postal error, that reply comes 30 years later, when Our Hero wakes up to discover that to everyone else he has lived a normal life. Now, like an extended version of "Dude, Where's My Car?," he wants to find out what happened.

To protect that idea, conventional wisdom says Knight wants a copyright, not a patent.

"He doesn't know his patents from his copyrights," said Lewis Fein, managing editor of Lawyers and Business Executives in the News in Los Angeles. "He'd save himself the postage and a lot of time if he'd get it straight."

There are three ways to protect your intellectual property: get a copyright, a trademark or a patent. "Copyright is the one that applies here," Fein said. "He will never get a patent. It doesn't fall within the realm of patents; that's not what patents are."

But it's not copyright either. Knight has an idea, not a script or a book. Without the full text, he can't get a copyright.

It's still no go on the patent, Fein said. "What he wants to copyright is a concept. You can't copyright a concept. It's like saying 'I want to copyright opera.' "

Knight is far from deterred.

"Copyright attorneys just don't get it," he said. "A copyright will protect the expression of a fictional story, it will not protect the underlying story line."

And it isn't as if he hasn't heard it all before. "The problem with the copyright attorneys is they arrogantly live on this little island of copyright law and that's all they know," he said. "They usually don't know the first thing about patent law."

Debbi Lucas, intellectual properties manager for Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, does know patent law. And she thinks Knight has a chance.

"There have been some strange things that people have tried to get a patent on, and they've worked," she said. Of course, "you can apply for anything, it doesn't mean you're going to get it."

"A plot, as opposed to a story or a blueprint, might be a tough sell.

Eric Berlin, a writer and puzzle creator in Connecticut, pointed out that even puzzles can't be patented; anyone can write a crossword or create a Sudoku. As for Knight, Berlin said, "I'm not saying he doesn't have a vague point, but it's not enough of a point to become reality."

There's a reason you need a physical object to get a patent, or a complete story to get a copyright. As Berlin put it, "If you don't have whatever it takes to develop your own idea, I don't think it's an inequity that needs to be solved."

And as for Knight wanting to protect his idea, Fein is equally skeptical.

"You'd be surprised, especially in this town, how many times people think, 'I have the most original idea for a script, no one's done this before,'" he said. "They've done it before."

Knight doesn't disagree. It isn't as if he expects every plot imaginable to suddenly have a patent -- and a price tag -- attached to it.

"Most everything is a variation on an existing theme," he said, echoing Fein. "It is honestly going to be difficult to find new and nonobvious plots."

He doesn't imagine more than a dozen or two in a year making it into the patent process. Those will be the incredibly different -- the novels and movies that aren't variations on a theme, but, well, Out There.

In terms of the big picture, Knight thinks that's a good thing. "I actually think [story line patents] are beneficial to the literary world," he said. "They will increase and improve the quality of the entertainment that we see."

Others aren't so enthusiastic.

Pamela Jones, who runs Groklaw, a legal research blog and Web site, wrote, "They have at last invented a way to destroy all cultural development forevermore. That's an achievement of a sort."

When Knight pointed out that his idea might just pass legal muster, Jones wrote, "I didn't say it wasn't clever. I say in my view it's morally and culturally wrong."

But Knight stresses that story line patents would only apply to new and different stories -- not the plots of Hamlet, "Home Alone or "Harry Potter.

"That would be an absolute tragedy -- to remove from the public domain that which already exists," Knight said. "That is not the point. The point is to encourage new, exciting, never-before-seen forms of art and entertainment."

He admittedly faces an uphill battle. His patent application has been published, but that's little more than an acknowledgement from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that it has been received.

Next he'll receive a response from the patent office, one that might be more than a year in coming.

Then, he and Lucas agree, he'll probably be turned down. Most applications are. He'll respond to the ruling and clarify what needs to be clarified -- and he'll probably be rejected again. ("We've had some patents that may go through the office action and response period for up to five years," Lucas said.)

Eventually, Knight said, he'll end up filing an appeal with the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, whose job it is to "review adverse decisions of examiners upon applications for patents." In other words, he'd be asking the referees to review the play.

But Knight doesn't expect victory even then. He figures he'll eventually end up in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- the ones who opened the door to Amazon.com's one-click ordering system.

And there, he said, he expects to win, which would be good for the book-reading and movie-going public because it will encourage people with great ideas to come forward, knowing those ideas can be protected.

"Our patent system is set up that we want that inventor to come forth with the valuable invention because it's valuable to the public," he explained. "We want that invention to enter the public domain."

And Knight views himself, and anyone else who comes up with the next great story, on par with a mechanic who designs an engine that gets 100 miles to the gallon of gas -- but doesn't own a factory.

"Just because he himself can't implement it into the final product that's sold to the public doesn't make it any less valuable," he said.

What would it mean, were Knight to start a trend of patented plots? Most importantly, anyone who thinks he has the next Great American Story would have to check first before trying to sell it. If someone else already thought of it, there might be a patent in place.

But Knight doesn't think it would mean much to Hollywood. "People who want to keep rehashing and re-expressing the same plots over and over will not be foreclosed by story-line patents," he said.

So while puzzle creators and Hollywood copyright lawyers might not think Knight has a chance of winning his day in court, Debbi Lucas isn't ready to write him off.

"It's an iffy thing," she said, "but it could be done."