Steve van Dulken's Patent blog

Halloween patents

Well, it's that time of the year again. The 31st of October, when British householders either are out of the house or pretend not to be in when the doorbell rings -- which, unlike in the USA, may be not at all or a few times an evening. That's the problem of a not very well established custom.

As for any festival there are a number of Halloween-related patents. These include an Illuminated Halloween Costume. The motivation behind the invention was to promote safety on dark evenings. Then there is the Decorative Electronic Lighting for Halloween Pumpkin (illustrated)

which uses LEDs instead of candles for safety and convenience. Safety is the message in many of these Halloween inventions.

Particularly interesting in this context is US 5735548, a Food Donator Identification Container.

 

I recall that in my American childhood, every Halloween without a thought I happily put into my bag sweets from strangers, and then read that someone had been arrested for handing out apples with inserted nails. This 1994 invention is meant to put a stop to such possible dangers. The inventor talks of using X-ray machines in hospitals but felt that this was expensive, did not help with tainted candy, laid hospitals open to liability suits and did not identify the guilty parties.

Her solution was that the donors would write their name and address on special bags when they were handed over. One wonders how many children collecting, let alone grownups handing sweets out, would comply with the invention. All too often inventors do not think through their inventions. Will consumers  really be willing to go the extra mile? And if they are, would psychopaths do the same ? Just because the invention is clever does not mean that it is practical in everyday use, or will be needed. The manufacturer or banker on the other end of the desk is not interested in how clever something is, only if it will make a profit.

Black History Month

I'm just back from a holiday to find that I'm attending tonight a function here at the British Library . It's called Winners 2: the Rise and Rise of Black British Entrepreneurs. It's part of our continuing support for business.

Most of the information on the Web or in books on black inventors is American in origin. This site is a good starting point. In the UK there is certainly plenty of activity from Asian or Afro-Carribean inventors. I have given talks at inventors' clubs and (like my colleagues Peter and Maria) regularly give free workshops here on patent searching, and the evidence is there, admittedly from a London audience.

If anyone is interested in recording patented inventions by Afro-Carribean inventors the patents would not help, as they record addresses and names only. In 1900 Henry Baker, an examiner at the US Patent and Trademark Office, carried out a survey asking for infomation on relevant patents. I have heard that he also marked in-coming patent applications with his own code for later analysis (but how did he know ?).

It's a fascinating area in which to research the history of technology. Rather easier is identifying early patent applications by Japanese citizens in the USA, which can -- with a lot of effort -- be identified on the Google patent web site. Try "emperor" and "Japan" for example.

Patented packaging

There is a vast industry in devising new types of packaging for goods. Orange juice containers with their tear-off strips to open the top, for instance -- for many years these bore patent numbers if you looked closely enough.

My colleague Maria Lampert was clearing out her cupboards and came across a cardboard teabag container with a patent number. She brought it in, thinking (correctly) that it would intrigue me.

It says "Twinings Aromatics Earl Grey" and is big enough to contain 50 teabags. On the side it says Patent No: 2359295. Further below it says that Twinings is a registered trademark (spelt American style, by the way) of R. Twining and Company, and below that claims copyright on the artwork of the box (which includes an illustration of Earl Grey himself).

It was a little naughty not to say that it was a British patent, GB 2359295, and there is an American patent as well. Here is the invention's main drawing.

It involves both the tamper-proof seal (the common strip torn away to open it) and what to me seems a familar type of opening. A search report at the end of the patent document lists similar patent documents, and to my surprise it was granted protection. I'm not convinced that protecting the method really gave the company a commercial advantage, though. They could have published details of the box to avoid someone else patenting it and that would have been a lot cheaper.

Smash and grab

I normally write about inventions that are tangible things, but an item in today's free Metro newspaper caught my eye.

It is about a product that the newspaper calls SmartWater, but which is more correctly called SmartWater® as it has been registered as a trade mark by Smartwater Limited, a company based in Walsall. The item shows a "hoodie" glaring at the photographer, hands in pockets, with glowing green stains on his pink jacket.

The product is a substance that, when sprayed onto robbers of cash delivery vans, shows up when viewed under ultraviolet light. This could be evidence for conviction. As I read the short piece, I thought to myself that if the composition had a unique combination of chemicals then it would not just provide grounds for suspicion, but would directly tie the jacket to the scene of the crime.

I believe that the relevant invention is Improvement in security systems . It suggests using coumarin derivatives but the real point of the patent is using unique combinations of trace chemicals that can be digitally analysed: just what I had thought, and just what the writer of the piece had missed. Please excuse a little bit of schadenfreude.

In my last book, Inventing the American Dream, I wrote about the idea of exploding packs of cash in the chapter on crime. Dye coming out of cash packs dates back at least to US 3053416 in 1960, where the teller had to push a button to release it. The problem with that, apparently, was that the robbers would go wild in the banking hall as the packs exploded in their hands. To prevent the resulting shootouts, later inventions such as US 3564525 provided for electromagnetic gates at the doorways that would trigger the packs after a time delay.

It occurs to me that an even better use of the Smartwater product would be if the spray was subtle, as if water had accidentally been released, rather than obvious. Apparently G4S is today to be the first company to use the product.

"Patenting" a trade mark

I was doing some research into game consoles -- after all, Christmas isn't that far away -- when I came across a page, dated 5 May 2006, on the www.wii-gamer.com site which said that they had heard from the US Patent and Trademark Office that the word wii had been patented by Nintendo. The provisional name for the product had been Revolution.

Sigh. You can't patent words. I know a lot of people think that everything new gets patented, but that's for inventions. Words or logos, or combinations of them, which are used to indicate the origins of goods or services are registered as trade marks (trademarks in the USA). In the example above, it seems from the official database that the application was only made on the 30 April, so someone was quick off the mark in letting them know.

Prior-art research and patent blogs

There are a vast number of patent blogs out there, but most seem to be about litigation. Very useful they can be, too, though most cover the American scene. For European litigation, I find the IPKat blog very useful.

For those dedicated to prior-art searching (that is, checking to see if an invention has been done before) there is much less scope. Mike White of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario has the Patent Librarian's Notebook . His last posting, about sorting out the intellectual property of a rubber diaper fastener makes good reading: apparently twins are on the way. I look forward to reading about baby products for years to come, Mike, such as all those patents for pushchairs/ strollers for twins.

For those who need to download, Stephen Nipper's The Invent Blog® has an excellent, updated posting on downloading patent documents. It's not always a matter of going to Esp@cenet®.

I'd be interested to hear about other blogs with a special focus on the problems of searching for patent documents (or registered designs, or trade marks).