Official Luthiers Forum!

>>Steve, if you know enough to offer a quick tutorial on things like how to submit prior art and how to find who/where to send it, I would gladly take a few minutes to do my part when things like this come up.

Give me a couple days and I will put something concise together - just got to do a little research first.

>>On a side note, if forums like this one are well archived will postings of tools and techniques here be enough to consider published prior art if posted prior to patent filing?

Good news, I think the answer to that is definitely, yes!

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

[QUOTE=jmanter]Ken, was this idea, by chance, a piece of plastic that wraps around the finger
tip and thumb to make it easier to pick the string? [/QUOTE]

Nope, it went on the fretting hand instead

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Reguards,

Ken H

Do you want to know how to tell this system is significantly broken? (Sorry to overgeneralize here Steve)... but...

Smuckers patented the peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

How unbelievable is that?

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Dang!  Do I have to pay a royalty?  I ate one just the other day.  Made it all by myself. Didn't use Smuckers either.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

[quote=Tony K](sorry Billy !!) .. what are you gonna do - come and take my snowshoes    (OH .. and bring a passport - your gov't soon wont let you back in without one)[/quote]

     Snowshoes! What the heck is that? Wouldn't they melt? Whatever, I'll license @ 2% of your...er... shosnoes? I ain't greedy    

   

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

[QUOTE=Brock Poling]
Do you want to know how to tell this system is significantly broken? (Sorry to overgeneralize here Steve)... but...

Smuckers patented the peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

How unbelievable is that?

[/QUOTE]

Don't worry, Brock, some of us can even take a joke, even when it is kind of not a joke. Does that make sense?

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

Do you have the Patent number on the PB&J and the wheel one as well?
I'd like to see them just for fun.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

[QUOTE=Jim_W] Do you have the Patent number on the PB&J and the wheel one as well?
I'd like to see them just for fun. [/QUOTE]

Jim et al.:

The Smucker's "crustless" peanut butter sandwich was Pat. No. 6,004,596. If I remember correctly, it went through the Patent Office, and was appealed all the way to the Federal Circuit where it was rejected. So, I think your peanut butter sandwiches are safe from infringement!   

See, now, who said patent law ain't fun?

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

While I agree with everything said above (the US Patent system does not work as it should), I'd like to offer a slightly different view.

Patents include both a "description" of an invention, generally including drawings, and "claims" that define the monopoly granted by the US government.  Of course, the description "describes" the invention, but it also describes the environment in which the invention works.  Therefore 99% of the description may be known in the prior art, leaving 1% for the real invention...  So if you only read a portion of the description and come to the conclusion that it has been done before, be sure to re-read it again so that no "inventive" detail has been omitted.

The heart of a patent is the claim portion.  These are generally more difficult to read and understand properly since the often include "patent agent jargon"...

So, my point is that a granted patent is often more limited in scope than a quick perusal of the description may show.

If I'm not mistaken you only need to deviate from one of claims. Is that correct Steve?
Patents can also be very educational.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Marc, your background shows. Nice to have your contribution. You are correct about the claims, of course. Only that which is set out in the claims does the patent holder have the right to exclude others from making, using or selling. What the claims actually mean can be very difficult to determine for various reasons. Much of a law suit is just agreeing on what each word of a claim means.

Jim, each claim of a patent stands on its own. You can infringe many claims in a patent. At the risk of gross oversimplification, in order to infringe a claim you must have every element of a claim. So, for example, if you have a claim which specifies A, B and C, and you only do A and B, you are probably okay. If you have A and B and something equivalent to C, you might have a problem.

The whole patent system was made with the objective of teaching the world how to practice the invention in exchange for certain rights for a finite time. For that reason, the patent document is, like Jim states, very good sources of information.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

Sometimes we choose not to patent something and hold it as (somewhat) vulnerable intellectual property. If the idea is something very difficult to reverse engineer, then that strategy can give good protection for a long time. An example of that in my career would be the D-TAR Mama Bear acoustic modeling device. We're simply not going to reveal exactly how we turn recordings of guitars into algorithms.    We have a very specific procedure for doing the recordings and then teasing out exactly the frequency and phase information that represents the signature tone of a particular instrument.   That's our intellectual property, and we don't want to reveal that in a patent. We have basically sworn ourselves to secrecy in this area.   Someone might be able to figure it out...we did...but they're not going to learn it from us; we've got way too much money invested in this technology to be giving it away.

Hey Steve, I'm glad to be able to contribute on a subject I know...

Jim, just to make Steve's point clearer, you only have to infringe one claim of an issued patent to be in trouble.

Rick, that is the way to go.  If something is difficult to reverse engineer, it is also probably difficult to know if an infringer has done it...  Finding infringers might therefore proove difficult. So if you may keep it as a trade secret, that is the best protection available...  as long as it remains secret!

Side note - Here's a new one from last week. No complaints or concerns
about public domain, but a bit interesting and amusing.

#20070143929 - "Combination Capo-Container Opener Device"



This inventor might be on to something salable for the music festival crowd.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

David,

Amusing, yes...marketable, probably. A capo with a bottle opener? Well, imho, this should not be patentable. This is a classic example of what the patent laws should reject for "obviousness." There is really no inventive step involved in combining a capo and bottle opener.

On the other hand, I can think of many times when I would have loved to have one of these!

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck