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As of May 2017, the patent status of the various fidget spinners on the market was unclear.[17] Catherine Hettinger, a chemical engineer by training, was initially credited by some news stories as having been the inventor of the fidget spinner, including by media outlets such as Money,[18] The Guardian,[12] The New York Times,[13] and the New York Post.[19] Indeed, Hettinger had filed a patent application for a "spinning toy"[20] in May 1993 and a patent had been issued to her in January 1997 for the claimed invention.[17] Hettinger had allowed the patent to lapse in 2005 after she could not find a commercial partner to produce and market the toy.[17][12] Even if she had not allowed the patent to lapse in 2005, it would have expired in January 2014, before fidget spinners became popular.[20] Moreover, a May 2017 Bloomberg News article showed that Hettinger had not been the inventor of the fidget spinner since her toy did not have a similar central bearing that allowed it to be held and tilted while spinning, and Hettinger agreed.[17]

On May 11, 2016, McCoskery filed a provisional patent application for a (utility) patent on the invention of a version of the toy with a centrally mounted ball bearing and other particular features (with illustrations showing two- or three-lobed versions of the toy), and after following up with a final patent application in May 2017, he was granted a U.S. patent in March 2018.[6][21]

On November 29, 2016, David Allen Pavelsky of Killeen, Texas, applied for a design patent (not claiming an original functional invention) on a three-lobed version of the toy with a centrally mounted ball bearing and other particular features, and he was granted a design patent in October 2017.[22]

I've physically owned 3 reproductions of those which I resold or gave away. I still own a brass variation of the Fakel (means torch in Russian).