On November 1, 1988, Claude G. Coots received U.S. Patent No. 4,780,985 on an Electric Mouse Exterminator

The metaphor “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” originated in a different form with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in 1855 wrote:

If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

In 1882, a month after his death, the following quotation was attributed to Emerson by The Cincinnati Enquirer:

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbors, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

Whoever edited Emerson to add “mouse trap” knew what he was doing — the USPTO has issued more that 4400 patents, on mouse traps, the most recent being U.S. Patent No. 12,446,567, on a Rodent Disposal Device, which electrocutes the rodent and projects the rodent out with a spring: