Patent Attorney and Founder
Hi everyone, I’m J.D. Houvener, your host of the Bold Today Show, where you, the inventor, entrepreneur, or business owner, get your daily dose of inspiration to make the world a better place. We’re talking about baseball this week, and we’re in the middle of the week, right, it’s hump day. I want to talk about the baseball swing apparatus. We’ve been looking at the different claims, detailed figures, and different laws and requirements about how those are structured. I want to get right to it today, and we’re talking about the specification under 35 USC Section 112. The laws say that you’ve got to be able to particularly point out and define your invention in written words. Okay, you’ve got to explain to someone like yourself, in this case, someone that’s in the field of baseball and specifically training devices, what would that person need to know to build, make, and use this invention? This particular one is a baseball swing, or how to swing the bat, how to train a baseball player using a device. And so, this is the explanation, and this invention, now that it’s patented, certainly met the rules under 35 USC 112.
So, this time I want to point out this is the part of they mentioned that we’ll need to explain fully, right, using the figures where we talked about this last time, why figures are required in the specification. The inventor or the patent attorney, whoever drew this part of the spec up, it integrates into the wording figure numbers, and it’s wonderful. It reads very well. We can zoom in right here to that, what’s called the preferred embodiment detail description. Preferred embodiment just means it’s the number one is but it’s the first iteration, the one that the inventor is likely going to go to market with first. Now, by no means is going to constrain the inventor, right? They could have lots of different versions or alternative embodiments. They just need to explain at least one to the person of ordinary skill in the art in order to meet the section 112 requirements.
So, let’s take a look at this. This first paragraph, you can kind of see as these words describe the said vertical portion holding up the line so that it can hold the ball on the rail. And as they describe you to these words, you can see they say ball with the number one next to it. Okay, and so what that does is it draws your attention to figure one. And so, as you read that paragraph, you can have the drawing right next to it and say oh okay, ball one, yep, that’s the right one. Now, I understand what ball they’re talking about is attached to rail four or whatever the right numeral is. It’s a great way to fully define the invention along with the figure. All right, so you know you guys love baseball out there. I think of some ways that you know, as you watch a game on TV or if you have the opportunity to get out there and go to a game, what are some ways you see the game being played or shown that you haven’t quite seen before, right? Pay special attention to, you know, things like the gear, maybe the gloves or the shoes, maybe it’s the devices back in the dugout. They’re anything that they’re, you know, the players are using or looking at or implementing into the sport that you haven’t seen before. See if you can spot one of these new inventions in this game we all know and love.
Okay, everyone have a wonderful day, and thank you for tuning into the Bold Today’s Show. I’m your host J.D. Houvener, go big, go bold.