With the festive season approaching, the commercial spirit of Christmas offers a host of opportunities for budding inventors to earn their fortunes. A quick search of Espacenet, the patent search engine of the European Patent Office, shows just how much novelty is inspired by Yuletide fever.
A quick search for ‘Santa’ in the database returns mostly utility models or industrial designs.Chocolate Santa Clauses are apparently quite popular, as are ornaments featuring the jolly fat man, often festooned with lights. Not limited to depictions of Santa himself, a utility model has even been filed for “Santa Claus’s luminescent crutch”, something perhaps not usually associated as being part of his traditional get-up. Even more surprising were the hyperbaric oxygenation system, “Santa-777”, for treatment of acute respiratory diseases, and the “Uses of Yerba Santa”, a particularly detailed look into the in vitro propagation of plants of the genus Eriodictyon.
A search for ‘Christmas’ in the database yielded results particularly geared towards Christmas trees, ranging from ornaments, to stands and erection means. A curious find was the “Wet Christmas Tree”, which is apparently “utilized particularly in subsea production systems”. It was a little disappointing to find out that this was not a festive treat for fish, but part of an oil well, so-called for its resemblance to a Christmas tree.
Gambling</> next on ‘Snowman’, I found almost exactly what I was looking for – a “Snowman Making Device”! Achieving the perfect spheres required for an aesthetically pleasing snowman has always been beyond me, so it is reassuring that this gap in the market is being exploited. Other inventions include a hat specifically designed for a snowman, various snowman toys, and a further apparatus for building a snowman by Ignacio Marc Asperas – Snowman IV – The Das-Boot, who hit the headlines in 2011 after managing to obtain a patent for method of building a snowman. In his latest application, he describes the apparatus for building a snow person comprising a ball, an adhesion surface of the ball, and a series of integrated light units. He also professes to prefer Jeff Bridges’ performance in ‘The Big Lebowski’ to that in ‘True Grit’. An Office Action is yet to be issued on the matter, so it remains to be seen what the US Patent and Trademark Office has to say about the relative merits of the respective performances.
Flippancy aside, quick searches such as these can be useful tools for gauging the state of the market for your invention. Simple search terms might yield a variety of unrelated ideas, such as the ‘Santa-777’ or the ‘Wet Christmas Tree’, but you will usually find something that at least relates to the technical background of your invention. Quick searches are therefore the best way to check that your idea is original, and will help you avoid accidentally infringing existing patents.
A snowman according to US2013/0307180 – copyright Anthony Klaves, Granite Bay, CA (US)
For more information, click here and find out more about conducting your own free patent search. Alternatively, please contact an attorney at Albright IP today for advice and guidance.