Lawyer retools device that prevents an airline seat from reclining.(The Orlando Sentinel)

Byline: Carrie Alexander

Just in time for the holiday travel season, Ira Goldman gives us the Knee Defender. Again.

You may remember Goldman, who made the news several weeks ago when his plastic device, which blocks airline seats from reclining, was banned by Northwest Airlines.

Goldman, a 6-foot-3 Washington attorney who has chalked up as many as 60,000 air miles in a year, says he's just a tall guy who is tired of getting bopped in the knees when the person sitting in front of him on an airliner reclines his or her seat. He figured there were others like him out there. So in September he began marketing the first Knee Defender, a pocket-sized block of plastic that attached to an airline tray table arm, which prevented the seat in front of the user from reclining.

Within weeks, Northwest had banned the invention, saying it could break a tray table. So Goldman went back to the drawing board. Voila: The Knee Defender is now two grooved plastic blocks, one for each arm of the tray table, and Goldman says they should do no harm to airline equipment.

"If a broken tray-table arm ever was a possibility, with the new two-unit Knee Defender design it is no longer ... short of major force being applied with the specific intention of breaking something," Goldman says.

But the potential to break a tray table is only part of the turbulence over the invention.