MyPatent.co.za

(Extract from MyPatent’s Patent e-Book)

 

After coming up with an invention, and before patenting, you should always conduct a novelty search. Failure to do so may cause you to incur unnecessary expenses, time and effort in developing and commercializing an invention that is not even protectable.

 

Never assume that your invention is new. Conduct internet patent searches through the freely accessible databases, e.g. US, UK, European and Canadian Patent Office databases.

 

 

            Pitfall 2 – do not assume that your invention is new. Conduct a search.

 

 

On September 14, 1964, the Al Kuwait freighter carrying 5000 sheep capsized and sank in the Kuwait harbour. As time went by, the freighter’s decomposing cargo threatened to contaminate the city’s drinking water supply, which at the time was sourced from the harbour. An effective method of salvaging the Al Kuwait freighter was desperately required.

 

Bringing cranes in would have taken too long and the real risk of the freighter breaking apart during salvage was unacceptable. It was apparently during this ordeal that Karl Kroyer dreamt up an alternative method of raising sunken vessels. His method involved pumping a number of buoyant bodies into the vessel through a tube until the buoyant bodies provided sufficient upward lift to bring the vessel back to the surface.

 

On 31 December 1964 and using 27 million plastic balls made of expandable polystyrene foam, Kroyer raised the Al Kuwait freighter to the surface, saving the insurance company that had insured the freighter in excess of $1,500,000.

 

Between the time of the sinking and the salvaging of the Al Kuwait freighter, Kroyer filed a patent application at the Danish Patent Office. This application was later extended into the territories of Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In his application, Kroyer claimed a “method of raising sunken or stranded vessels by introducing into the interior of said vessel buoyant bodies by means of a stream of water, characterised in that said stream of water is passed through an ejector and that the buoyant bodies are introduced into said stream of water through the suction tube of said ejector”. The figure below shows a representation which accompanied Kroyer’s application.

 

 

Although his invention had proven successful with the salvaging of the Al Kuwait freighter and had resulted in the grant of patents in both Germany and the United Kingdom, Kroyer could never have guessed that the novelty of his invention was about to be brought into question by a Donald Duck comic book.

 

Patent “legend” has it that although Kroyer’s invention was considered novel by the German and UK Patent Offices, the Dutch Patent Office had discovered a piece of prior art which was detrimental to the novelty of Kroyer’s invention. The prior art discovered was not found by a search normally conducted through the available patent records of that time, but rather a 1949 Donald Duck comic book entitled “The Sunken Yacht” (by Carl Barks - Walt Disney)

 

 

The comic book shows Donald Duck and his nephews raising a yacht by filling it with ping pong balls fed through a tube. The Dutch Patent Office refused to grant a patent for the invention on the ground that the comic book disclosed the same technique as that claimed in Kroyer’s patent, consequently destroying the novelty of his invention. Whether the patents in Germany and the United Kingdom were ever challenged on the findings of the Dutch Patent Office are to this day unclear. However, on the basis of the comic book disclosure, all patents filed by Kroyer appeared to lack novelty and were invalid.

 

An invention must be new to be patentable in South Africa. If an invention has been disclosed to the public in any way, anywhere in the world prior to filing a patent application, the invention is no longer patentable. Even the disclosure of the invention by the patentee on a non-confidential basis to his best friend is novelty destroying. A series of nine confidentiality agreements is available at www.mypatent.co.za).

 

 

Pitfall 3 – do not rely on novelty searches conducted through

the records of the South African Patent Office.

 

 

Many inventors conduct patent searches at our Patent Office. This is not encouraged; our Patent Office records are incomplete and not up to date; some searchers remove relevant patent abstracts instead of making a photocopy thereof; and a very small percentage of patents world wide are filed in South Africa. Only conduct South African searches for technology where South Africa is recognized as a world leader, e.g. mining equipment, techniques and processes and automatic pool cleaners.

 

 

Pitfall 4 – just because your invention has not previously

been commercialized does not mean that it is new.

 

 

There are two chestnuts that a patent attorney is guaranteed to see every year – aeroplane tyres with fins and a front brake light for a car.

 

Standing at O.R. Tambo International and watching the aeroplanes land, the benefits of pre-rotating the aeroplane tyres prior to landing are obvious. Tyres making contact with the runway have to accelerate from zero to over 350 kilometres per hour within a fraction of a second. The friction wears the tyres and generates a cloud of smoke.

 

Using the wind speed to pre-rotate the tyres while in flight, should improve tyre life. And, a simple way of converting wind speed into wheel rotation is to add fins or cups to the outer walls of the tyres.

 

Despite the obvious commercial benefits, a quick search through the US Patent Office database reveals that this technology is more than 40 years old and has never been put into practice.

 

Search String Example

 

The keywords, and all variations thereof are:

 

§         airplane or aeroplane or aircraft;

§         tyre or tire or wheel;

§         rotate or rotating or rotation or spin or spinning or turn or turning;

§         wind; and

§         land or landing;

 

Patents are generally broken up into a number of sections, namely a title, an abstract, a body and claims. Categorise the keywords into the relevant sections and use wildcard characters (i.e. $ symbol for US Patent Office searches) to reduce the length of search strings.

 

The keywords “airplane or aeroplane or aircraft” are likely to appear in the title of the patent (field code ttl/ for US Patent Office searches) and the rest of the keywords should appear in the abstract (field code abst/ for US Patent Office searches). The appropriate search string is:

 

 “ttl/( airplane or aeroplane or aircraft) and abst/((tyre or tire or wheel) and (rotat$   or spin$ or turn$) and wind$ and land$)”

 

This search reveals six possible pre-existing patents, including US patent 6,032,900 entitled “Aircraft Wheel Rotating Device”.

 

 

Front brake lights for a car would be useful to confirm on coming drivers’ intentions to turn. To a victim of a head on collision such an invention has obvious benefits. However, these benefits are clearly not appreciated by the industry, despite numerous patents for such inventions having been filed.

 

For guidance in developing a search strategy, see the search manual available at www.mypatent.co.za).