Time to read: 5 minutes
Time to skim/look at pictures: 1 minute
Patent Search Excerpt (2nd half)
A47G1/*.CPC. and ((rotat$7 OR revers$7 OR pivot$7 OR revolv$7) near10 fram$4)
Example Patent Search Query
Patents and the Patent search
While the molds were being machined, I worked relentlessly on getting my NPA patent (the ‘real’ patent). First, I needed to update the patent search. A patent search is a lot like looking for needle in a haystack. You need to be diligent in looking and keep your fingers crossed that you don’t find anything that will deny your patent. It’s a bit like playing a game of ‘chicken’, except for several days. And you need to document everything related (see excerpt).
By the end, I'd reviewed
thousands of related patents
None was a close enough match (IMHO), so I decided to get back to work on the patent submission package.
When the objective of your drawings and descriptions is only to document your work (like for the PPA), the burden is light. Submitting the NPA requires more diligence, however, and a lot of time to create (28 pages of carefully worded content in my case). Once I wrote the entire document, I read it over and corrected it probably a dozen times before it was ready. Overall, the process probably took over 200 painstaking hours to review, document, and submit. Along the way, I attended several patent seminars put on by the US Patent and Trademark office (uspto.gov), as well as a special class for newbies to the patent process. This class was especially helpful as I was able to pick the brain of a working patent examiner for several hours. By the time I was done with that class, I had the confidence to submit my own patent and did so a few weeks later.
Trademarks
I applied for two flippee trademarks. Trademarks keep others from using your brand names to make the specified class of product (see right). They also provide another mechanism to protect your IP. With the flippee name trademarked, I could take action against others who make flippee knock-offs using the flippee name. This, coupled with the patent protection, is a real deterrent to piracy that is a real threat due to foreign competition.
USPTO Trademark Dashboard
Production 1.0 Boxing
Final Collector’s 8-pack Box Rendering
Boxes and Packaging
While the patents were being examined and the molds being made, I looked at the product packaging. I wanted a distinctive package and hired a designer to construct it. Throughout the process I knew I wanted to offer a single box product and a ‘collector’s pack’ that would hold many flippees. That’s the easy part. What I forgot to address was product weight, bulk shipping and box design. The initial Production 1.0 box is shown in the figure. It had a stick-on UPC code, which is not shown, and featured 1 sheet of bubble wrap in a cheap box.
Something needed to be done. My Indian contact found a box manufacturer that designed a beautiful box. We decided to put eight units into a ‘collector’s pack’ and to put 32 units into a carton – in either individual unit or ‘collector’s pack’ packaging. Samples were made and critiques issued. The graphic designer started the box design – and then trouble ensued. While considering the box design, I made a disasterous discovery that the resulting 32 unit cartons were just a little too large to fit evenly on a pallet (see below). By reducing the size of the box by about 5% in two dimensions, we were able to put 6 cartons per layer on a standard 40″ x 48″ pallet – instead of 3 cartons.
Making each box slightly smaller allowed the 40″x48″ pallet to hold 6 boxes instead of 3.
After
Before
After yet another round of samples (6 total), the final box and Collector’s 8-pack (see left) were measured, printed and ready for production.