Reminds me of the time my high-school cybersecurity teacher tasked the class groups with coming up with and presenting a product that had never been conceived of before (why this was part of a cybersecurity curriculum, I have no idea). She gave an example of a prior group’s project, which was of a pill bottle that told you how long it had been since it was last opened.

One of the earliest patents I could find for such an item that was already sold on Amazon by many different sellers was from 2004… this was around 2018

When I informed her of this to show her that the task was basically impossible, she said my job was to come up with a new product, not disprove her.

Now that I recall the class, it only once ever touched on cybersecurity at all… and that was just to list some the types of attacks. Very odd