Wretched mortals, prepare your faces for melting

Bow thine heads unworthy, for ye are in the presence of a Rock God. US 4,656,917 issued to one Edward L. Van Halen of Los Angeles, California in the year of our Lord, nineteen and eighty-seven.

The most important thing to say is that this might be the single best patent cover figure I've personally seen. A line drawing of a major musician shredding on the cover of a US legal document is not something that happens very often.

So somewhere between doing stuff like this and kicking David Lee Roth out of the band, Halen filed an application for this patent. It's pretty simple, really: a flap on the bottom of the guitar folds open and supports the guitar horizontally which, according to the abstract "[allows] the player to create new techniques and sounds previously unknown to any player." So show some respect swine and spark your lighter, damn it!

It's not the only one Halen has either. He has a design patent for pegheads as well as a drop key tuning system. Good for him.

How to read a patent

So what's this all about? Well, I come across a bunch of funny, weird, interesting, or just neat patents in my job. They seem to be a big hit with people, ergo I am writing this blog. Because patents are a fairly complex legal document, as an initial formality I'm going to go over how to read one. Don't worry, I'm not planning on being this detailed usually.

There are three basic parts to a patent. The first are the figures. Those are obvious. The second is the specification or the disclosure (read: the words). They describe the invention. The third are the claims. The claims are at the very end of the document and the most important part, legally speaking. They lay out what the patent holder wants for legal coverage, or the right to exclude others from making/selling/etc.

So the patent to the right is US 5,311,807, issued May 17th 1994 to Gottlieb Ruttgerodt of Germany. You can find the whole document here on Google Patents. This is the cover sheet where I've put some markers.

1: The patent number. Numbers are given in sequential order and are currently in the ~7,600,000s or thereabout

2: The first named Inventor from the application. If there are multiple inventors they're listed as Smith et al. which means "Smith and the rest"

3: The title of the patent. This one is "Military Tank" for obvious reasons

4: The full list of Inventors and the Assignee (read: owner) of the patent.

5: The classification of the patent. Every patent is categorized when it issues to aid in examination. This one is in class 89 (Ordinance), subclass 36.08 (Capping and Uncapping which is a specific manner of ammunition loading).

6: The Examiner of the patent. An "Assistant Examiner" listing means that the "assistant" actually examined the application (read: did all the work) and the "primary examiner" just signed off on it. So it goes.

After the cover page, the figures are shown as here on the left. Everything the Applicants want legal protection for must be shown and identified with a number in the figures. My brother engineers out there will recognize the style of drawing from their orthographic drawing classes in college.

After the drawings comes the body of the patent, called the specification, which described the invention in such a way as it allows the reader to make and use the invention. That's the quid pro quo aspect of the patent system. You as the inventor have to tell the Patent Office (and by extension, everyone else) how to make your invention, how to use your invention, and what it's good for. In exchange, the Patent Office gives you exclusive rights to that invention for a period no longer than 20 years. Using your disclosure, other inventors can work off your invention to further the state of the art. The term "art" is common and comes from the US Constitution which requires the creation of the Patent Office in Article 1, Section 8. Only the Patent Office and the Postal Service are explicitly created by the Constitution. Things people have done before are called "prior art."

At the end of the specification come the claims, marked by the arrow to the right. As mentioned above the claims determine what the patent holder actually gets legal protection for. They are written in extreme legalese. For example, the first claim of this patent reads:

"Claim 1: A military tank comprising: a chassis having a front half and a rear half having an upper surface; a turret; means mounting the turret for rotation on the upper surface of the rear half of the chassis; a heavy weapon; means mounting the weapon for pivotable movement on the turret" bla bla bla bla....

Think of it as the net that's being cast by the inventor. Any object which fits the description of the claims can only be made, sold, or used by the patent holder. What "fits the description" is up to a great deal of interpretation, which is why people sue each other. And that's basically it as far as the basic nuts-and-bolts of reading a patent. More to come.

So I do need to put down some CYA legal-type stuff too. I'll put it at the bottom to not scare anyone off. First, I am a patent examiner. That means ethically that I can't give any specific advice about applying for a patent other than say that you should retain the services of an attorney registered to practice before the US Patent Office. You can find a list here. I can talk about the application process in a broad sense, however. Second, so it's it writing, I'm not making any money off this blog, nor am I using my work computer to write it. While I do, of course, come across most of the patents I plan on writing about while at work, for the purposes of this blog all the patents are accessed via Google Patents. Third, while I can't really talk about the specifics of cases that I'm currently working on, patents issued off applications I've examined on are open to the public.