Steve van Dulken's Patent blog

Ambush marketing

An interesting area of trade mark law is "ambush marketing", where, typically, there is an official sponsor of a sports event and another company tries to get publicity out of the event.

Coventry University's Centre for the International Business of Sport has just published its A typology of ambush marketing: the methods and strategies of ambushing in sport, while last year they published Ambush marketing in sport: an assessment of implications and management strategies.

These reports are not as dry as they may sound. About 400 examples have been traced by the researchers, and some are mentioned in the reports. 

These include Bavaria Brewery getting fans to wear orange lederhosen advertising the company at the 2006 FIFA [football] World Cup, despite Budweiser being the official beer sponsor. Stadium officials forced the fans to strip off and watch the game in their underwear.

Then in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, American Express ran advertisements stating that visitors to Spain "don't need a visa". Visa, the official sponsors, did not take any action, and American Express claimed that it was legitimate advertising and not ambush marketing.

The Jarkey® bottle opener

Many companies specialise in the field of little tools to help with minor domestic tasks, such as opening jars. Arthritic hands can make this a nightmare.

I came across such a tool the other day. It said on it

JARKEY

PAT. PEND. DES. REG.

BRIX DESIGN

MADE IN DENMARK

The trade mark was registered in 1995 in the USA by Brix-Hansen of Denmark. Mysteriously, they have not taken the elementary precaution of registering Jarkey® in Europe through the international Madrid or Community systems let alone in the British system, even though it is so valuable as a marketing tool. 

The invention is called a Tool for breaking a vacuum in a preserving jar closed with a screw cap. Here is is main drawing.

 

It sounds very simple to me -- pressing down on the lever exerts pressure on the sealed cap of a jar and breaks the pressure seal, making it easier to then twist it open with your hands. Nevertheless it has been patented in Britain among other countries such as China, Canada and Poland.

There is also a British registered design for it, 2028129 . If it had been my invention I would have registered the trade mark in major countries and regions and not gone to the trouble and expense of patenting it and registering its appearance. People can use a (verbal) trade mark to ask for it on the telephone or on the Web, which is far harder with a patent number. It is also easier to prove use than when arguing over slightly different functions of competing products in a patent court case.

Sino-Japanese War game patent

Recently while looking for something else I stumbled across a patent for a game based on the Sino-Japanese War. This was the first war in which Japan fought a foreign country using modern methods and materials, in 1894-95. The conflict was over Korea, which Japan took over after a relatively easy campaign.

Newton Sample of Philadelphia in 1895 applied for his Game apparatus. It consisted of a shallow oblong container with a gun at one end, with a map of the campaign area (the Yellow Sea and surrounding land) with little flags. "Puppets" on hinges were present to represent armies. The only drawing is shown here.

 

As perceptive readers will have guessed, the gun was loaded with marbles which were fired across the board. I thought at first the trick was to knock over the puppets, but they were placed next to holes which represented towns or forts. Getting a marble in a hole meant that the place was captured and the puppet removed. As Sample pointed out, any adjacent countries could be used, and China and Japan were used for illustration. He suggested other pairings were Germany and France, or England and the United States (only separated by a few thousand miles, of course).

50th anniversary of the hovercraft

Today is the 50th anniversary of the unveiling of the hovercraft to the press, at the Saunders Roe boatyard at Cowes, Isle of Wight. 

Boatbuilder Sir Christopher Cockerell had come up with the idea after playing around with a cat food tin inside a coffee tin, an industrial air blower (altered to blow rather than suck) and a pair of kitchen scales. The key patent was filed in 1955, the Improvements in or relating to vehicles for travelling over land and/or water. Here are its main drawings.

The problem, though, was lots of spray and insufficient lifting power. Much of the force generated by directing the force downwards was going uselessly off to the sides. It was by using flexible segmented skirts round the bottom of the craft that ensured that the power was used effectively. The Improvements relating to means for bounding a space for receiving pressurised gas by Denys Bliss did this, and here are its main drawings.

 

Invention promoters

I've just seen an analysis by the IPKat website of Firefox Inventor and its invention competition and it makes interesting reading. It consists of comments interspersed in the text.

From time to time I am asked by private inventors about invention promotion companies -- the kind that offer to assist with commercialisation in return for, typically, upfront fees and a percentage of profits.

I would suggest caution when considering such offers. The contracts they put forward should be studied with care. One I looked at recently placed numerous, carefully worded obligations on the inventor and only vague obligations on the company, and said that the contract ended only if both parties agreed (so the inventor was unable to get out of it without the company's agreement). I've seen identically vague but enthusiastic wording about a variety of products from a number of such promoters -- surely some products aren't destined for huge sales ?

The UK IPO offers a Step-by-Step guide to using invention promoters. I would strongly endorse their suggestion that you get legal advice before entering into a contract. 

For the USA, there is a vast amount of comment, including the list of complaints about specific companies from the US Patent and Trademark Office, and there is a useful-looking Federal Trade Commission site.

Light-transmitting concrete

My March Patent of the Month column has appeared on the Ideas21 site, a little late, on Light-transmitting concrete.

Ring pulls for cans

I was reading today's Metro when I came across a "Weird fact of the day" stating that Rchmond, Virginia was the place which had the first canned beer (Krueger's Finest, in 1935). It also stated that local inventor Dan Cudzik had designed the first stay-on, non-detachable ring pull for cans -- apparently the town's only other "claim to fame".

This was a new one to me, and indeed Daniel Cudzik, working for Reynolds Metals, applied in 1972 for an Easy-open wall patent. Here is its main drawing.

 

There is the familiar U-shaped design. Thank you, Metro.

What I had been familiar with was the first ring-pull itself, which dates back to 1965 with an application by a couple of Ohio inventors for a Ring-shaped tab for tear strips of containers. The story goes that Ermal Fraze was at a picnic and nobody had bought along a "church key", the tool with a pointed end that was used in the old days to pierce a can at two sides of the top. One opening was made big enough to drink from, the other was enough to relieve the pressure (otherwise beer went up your nose).

Anyway, Fraze wondered how to open his beer can. He ended up using the car bumper, with beer all over the grass. As so often, his thought was "there must be a better way". An opening device built into the can was needed.

One night not long after, goes the story, Fraze drank too much coffee and couldn't sleep. He went down to his workshop and tinkered away until he had worked out the basic principles of the detachable ring-pull. It helped that he ran a machine tools business and so knew what he was doing. 

In fact one source at least claims that Fraze also patented the non detachable ring pull, in 1977, but this would be later than the Cudzik patent. It does, however, look much more like the one we nowadays normally use. The Easy-open ecology end was in fact by Omar Brown but on behalf of Ermal Fraze as the applicant. Here is its main drawing.

Microsoft and its Magic Wand patent application

It took some time for me to identify it, but a story in the BBC about Microsoft's "Magic wand" patent application was tracked down as US 2009/121894, indeed titled Magic wand, which was published 15 May 2009.

It would have been helpful if it, and the many other news stories, had given the actual publication number. This is only an attempt to get protection, and not a granted patent, as some news stories say.

My usual Espacenet source does not yet give it as a document so I've linked to the official USPTO web site, which gives the description and claims as text, but the actual document (showing drawings) as tiffs. You have to have the right software to load it.

Magic wand is thought to be Microsoft's answer to the Nintendo Wii®. I'll leave it to the experts to "compare and contrast". This is a drawing from it.

 

The summary provided by Microsoft certainly sounds like it can do the same as the Nintendo product, but note the final sentence:

" The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can facilitate rich interaction with and/or management of environmental components included in an environment. The architecture can exist in whole or in part in a housing that can resemble a wand or similar object. The architecture can utilize one or more sensor from a collection of sensors to determine an orientation or gesture in connection with the wand, and can further issue an instruction to update a state of an environmental component based upon the orientation. In addition, the architecture can include an advisor component to provide contextual and/or comprehensive guidance in an intuitive manner."

Saving water in lavatory cisterns

We had an energy saving day at work today. Stalls at the staff canteen displayed literature about how to save energy, as explained by the library's power company.

One of the giveaways was a packet labelled Save-a-flush®, manufactured by KMA (UK) Limited. It has on it

Patent No 2319788

Patent No US 6243 886 B1

Sometimes it pays to look at patents from different countries for the same invention. The British patent application as found on Espacenet gives the inventor as Colin John Kerwin, and he and another as the applicants (who will "work" the invention). The American patent instead gives KMA (UK) as the applicant, information that might not have been known. What is not clear is how they got the rights -- was it Kerwin's company, did he sell the rights, and so on.

So, how does the Water saving insert for W.C. cistern work ? The perforated packet, a bit bigger than a paperback, contains beads rattling around. When placed in a cistern the beads absorb water and the packet swells in size. This means less water is used when flushing occurs, as the ball float rests on the packet. Here is the main drawing.

 

I recall seeing another product that did the same thing in a different way, Hippo the Water Saver®. Here the plastic envelope itself expands. They have a colourful website.

Smart meters

The BBC has an article today stating the British government intends to have every household equipped with smart meters by the end of 2020.

These are devices that monitor and display gas and electricity usage information to householders while also having the ability to signal the usage to the utility company, usually by a wireless transmission to say a vehicle going down the street (or by phone).

The advantage to the company is that they get cheap, timely and accurate data (fewer arguments with consumers), while householders get information on consumption and cost so that they are more aware of the expense. Cut backs in usage would save 2% of current energy use, it is hoped.

As usual inventors have been working on equipment that could be used for this purpose, and a number of trials are being carried out. Below is the main drawing from a Utility monitoring device, system and method by a Canadian inventor.

Industry sources, say the article, estimate the cost at £7 billion, or about £15 per household. Even if the householder had to pay that, it would quickly be recouped by lower energy bills.