When considering patents, one may automatically recall some type of thing. Throughout the last six centuries of Western technological progress the conflation of manufacturing, mechanization, and patents has resulted in a distinct object-oriented bias toward things.Footnote¹ However, a look back into the annals of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) through the contemporary lens of the Anthropocene reveals that large-scale environmental systems, such as rivers and coasts, are also represented in patents and have been subject to the iterative and projective forces of patent innovation.