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By J.D. Houvener
Patent Attorney and Founder

to that let’s jump in let’s jump in I wanted to Showcase some some Innovations right and I say analog you know for property again we’re talking about patents trademarks Trade Secrets and copyrights I’m going to focus on patents of course that’s what I got behind me in the sign but I do want to get into trademark stuff as it comes up yeah I can’t spell the word patent so you know yeah you know yeah we don’t let you do that and so we kind of stay in our lane if you will yep 100 I had some fun before the show and I was poking around um and I found a a whole bunch so I’m just going to share my screen let’s get into it keep an eye on the on the on the screen for anybody asking questions

this first one is uh I was kind of laughing at the drawings because it looks like it may be you know solo inventor kind of kind of getting their own their own pen and pencil out oh my gosh yeah I love it I love it it looks like a toilet bowl lid

I know this is a podcast so I mean JD I mean maybe you need to describe what I’m looking at here because it looks like to me this looks like a toilet seat with a

how much basic pressure you have on the seat listen air inflated it does look like a toilet seat oh it actually is a toilet seat no this is some little American football neck collar okay that’s gonna go with either look at look like a toilet seat or a light vest yeah let’s play what is that and so yeah as you can imagine I don’t know if you’re gonna play football but one of the biggest concerns is neck injuries right among other injuries so this would go between basically the helmet and the shoulder pads you’ve seen some people some you know even professional athletes will have collars and yep so there you go you basically get to adjust the pressure um fairly simply straightforwardly it’s got a little hook and loop attachment um and it seems pretty straightforward so this was filed there’s a publication this is not a patent so really important if you’re looking at patent documents you’ll be extra wise to note in the upper right what you’re looking at if you just see the us and it has a year and then a slash that just means it’s a publication they do not have a granted patent on this yet what happens is when you submit an application and within 18 months it will publish and so this likely means it’s still pending maybe the examiner hasn’t even reviewed it yet okay so again looking at the drawings that’s a great way to get a picture of what you’re looking at uh listen better likely filed their own invention um and I say that because they’re they’re specifying things like inches oh yeah you don’t want to put inches and why would you want to specify hey this this belt or this attachment this can only be two inches wide you would want to have you know an infinite number of potential Dimensions to cover the invention broadly so that’s what a patent attorney could help you with is help you kind of make sure you’re not limiting yourself to one specific type of caller um but hey it was submitted it’s got a couple claims so I’m hoping the best for this individual out of Alabama yeah all right so that’s number one any questions on that please let them fly let’s go to our next invention and I’ll scroll down and just give you the picture because it’s kind of fun I kind of like this game I mean maybe you could really go you could just find some yeah find some like patent Arc and we can say we can figure they play the game like what is this thing right and I can guess toilet seats and you’d be like no no it’s neck collar exactly um this could be I’m looking at this and this to me looks like a two-person straw hahaha come on come on it’s a goal post I know that yeah it does look like it to me now I’m looking at the bottom and honestly I haven’t looked too much at this I see some attachments on the bottom so I feel like this could almost be sort of a framework right for attaching this and putting this a removable goal post of sorts yeah I don’t know like I wonder if those are meant to be buried like a like a yeah post I was only almost like on a track or a rail okay let’s take a look at the title portable football field goal post and methods I like that this this may have been drafted by it by a counselor uh out of Texas a lot of football in Texas so um abstract is easy I love reading that right the present disclosure provides a portable football field goal and methods for making and using the same portable American American football they did highlight that David for you um comprises that’s a fancy legal word just means it can contain all this stuff in the list and then it could include more that’s what that word means comprises uh looks like it’s it is what it is so it’s a structural piece it’s removable um again this is still an application so it’s pending they even got a picture of the thing looks like it’s relatively small unless they I don’t know maybe it’s a youth field goal it is teeny right um the claims are at the bottom so they’ve got you know Parts um so I just want to point out here so this is the the first claim they’re talking about the physical parts right cross bars upright vertical horizontal which is that first part then they get into seven okay a method for making it so that really some sometimes you want to go into this sometimes you don’t a method for making something again this is uh this is a great point I think I’ll take a little break on the sharing is you want to consider reverse engineer ability if you’re going to be telling the world how to go make this not just what it is you want to make sure that

if if you can make it in such a way to where no one else can figure out how to reverse engineer it you want to actually keep that method as a trade secret okay it’s a cool way to keep bold but if you think after you sell it someone could just take it apart and figure it out real quick then it’s a good idea to think about protecting the method for putting it together so in this case maybe they’ve thought about those pieces like a Lego puzzle or they’ve you know position the parts to assemble to be assembled in a certain way might be a wise thing um David’s got a comment here would such limitations be used to squeak an application past someone otherwise conflicting prior art absolutely David great point so going back to uh Mr uh toilet seat guy McConnell yeah John John Connell Jr I was ragging on him for being so specific um David does bring up a good point that adding limitations no maybe not quite that drastic can be a way to get around prior art so when an examiner finally gets a chance to look at that I hate this just call it the toilet seat but it looks like I told C The Examiner is going to say oh you know what this has been done before there’s been inflatable uh seats you know like this um uh but they you know this is the priority and so the examples may be a really thin one and so what he may be able to do is say you know what my seat is at least four inches thick and then put some parameters around the the thickness of some dimensions and and they’d have to probably also argue why that’s not an obvious thing right uh maybe even suggest that hey there’s been some Publications around too high of a toilet seat might be unsafe and so therefore there’s no reason to go above three or four inches and yet he did so um anyway a lot of a lot of argument maybe uh maybe come in for that but I appreciate that input um we’ll just keep cruising I’ve got three others um and we can uh we’ll keep playing our our little game cool jump to uh our bold bite into a few minutes so football Innovations

so we’re here uh let me just get this one ready before I share this one looks rad I just gotta say let’s share this tab oh yeah number three some uh some like some LARPing armor that’s a new word for me I need a definition on that LARPing yes live action role-playing oh is that really like Dungeons and Dragons kind of stuff yeah yeah my uh my wife’s cousins are super into it like they get all dressed up and they go around like you know beating each other with um fake swords and stuff like that I like that yeah anyone from the audience uh let’s let’s take a look at uh anybody have any ideas on this I mean it isn’t that well I’m just I’m trying to make it look and see what’s unique about it oh hey there’s a there’s a grab handle on it ding ding ding you nailed it interesting example there are plurality of handles what you’ll see here what this is a is an alternative tackle out uh gear so basically it teaches someone maybe a youth you know under the age of 12 or whatever to grab handles instead of to actually knock someone silly uh and so you’re kind of grabbing hold of them and so as you’re training to wrap your arms around them and Tackle them so giving you a little bit more leverage I’m just picturing some little guy wearing this and someone grabbing this handle yeah totally yeah but uh that’s they’re this protective football equipment apparatus with alternative tackling element interesting American football they got a bunch of handles on it I am Pro all of this right Pro safety Pro alternative stuff I’m big into flight football personally I know a lot of folks out there may be you know big on the the hit and smash stuff but I just some of those injuries are just awful yeah whenever you see someone get really hurt playing football it’s like yeah why are we doing this you know right so this is something cool I like it I mean I think the drawings are well done they can kind of show it you know with the over the shirt over the top that’s a great way to show you yeah that’s cool I like that a lot um so anyway yeah obviously they come with a whole different rule set you know then do those handles come off then is that how it works well looks like they do look so you got a removable attachment here’s just one one means of that we gotta basically buckles on so maybe to make it more challenging you’d have fewer handles right for oh yeah so let’s do our next one here I’ll get this one prepared I love just looking at drawings okay here we go

all right what do you see what looks different wow okay um I mean the face mask is really different on this thing where’s where’s the utility here you think I know people listening you know let’s see what we’re looking at is a traditional football helmet but the mask has got really I’ll say fine mesh a finer it almost looks like a fencing mask on the bottom half um I I don’t know I don’t know uh I suppose it’s probably to keep people’s fingers out of your face I don’t know you’re on fire sir you’re on fire non-grabbable football likely to protect as you just said fingers from getting ripped off deformed stuck in helmets now oftentimes you’ll see how much for that can I go just perfect enough where you can write a finger in and it’s just an awful situation for that you know just getting dislocated so yeah really like that because stuff it probably helps prevent face masking right which is importantly sometimes it tends to down yeah safety feature but God that is ugly looking for those that are on podcasts I want to take a look at this thing I don’t think anybody that’s getting you know 30 million dollars a year is going to put that thing on but no no no maybe they will I can see a kicker with traditionally the single bar right over this just trying to see Aaron Rodgers style right yeah right okay let’s do one more and we’ll wrap up our our show here again I picked some easy ones you know there are I’ll just say a lot of Innovations with respect to Ai and VR and software um and just looking at really cool things with lighting they were very complicated and they would require a process flow chart and things like that but I wanted to show some very easy mechanical inventions for you all today yep um so here’s the last one oh that’s a football holder for kicking oh my gosh you know that I’m a kicker and I thought hey um I’ve seen I’ve seen Ace Ventura and Ray finkelis so that’s the only reason that I’m you know aware what this apparatus is yeah instead of you know basically having to have a buddy hold hold a ball for you um this is gonna do it so it’s very very responsible very simple out of China so I wanted to point that out too it’s good to point that so you don’t have to always be a U.S citizen to file a U.S patent application sure yeah this is a still again published pending application um so likely was filed first in China I’m guessing but maybe this first filed here and then did it or they did a foreign filing here in the U.S so what’s unique about this is that it’s foldable well let’s take a look we had to find out what they’re alleging is you need they really get granular on the fastening mechanisms uh substantial amount of detail there and which is reasonable because I mean look 2023 what hasn’t been done yet with folding metal right so we’re looking at way at the bottom oh my goodness that is the longest clam element I think I’ve ever seen okay there’s at least 300 words um in the third element alone so two elongated supporting arms elongated holding arm uh having holding end portion and then a holder joint which I think where all the Innovation is they’re hoping going to be generally a v-shaped configuration having a lot a lot of structure so I was really surprised this is extremely specific again just remember if you’re trying to avoid infringing this if this were to be a patent one day you would just have to not do one of these things in this 40 line description huh isn’t it I mean just from your perspective JD like this client comes to you and says hey like can I patent this I mean isn’t this obvious yeah had they come to us and this is again really really quick kind of armchair quarterback style but we would likely say you know what there’s so much prior art we don’t think we can get you a patent that will help you Corner the market in this space right and and they may still come back and say you know what I still want you to file it because I want to be able to put patent pending on my product yeah and sometimes that is enough um but you know there are there are some clients that just want a absolutely very very specific patent um and it uh when it comes down to it it’s almost for ego um so those are not our favorite types to work on we want to we want to go bold bold patents only yeah game changing world changing yeah inventions

About the Author
J.D. Houvener is a Registered USPTO Patent Attorney who has a strong interest in helping entrepreneurs and businesses thrive. J.D. leverages his technical background in engineering and experience in the aerospace industry to provide businesses with a unique perspective on their patent needs. He works with clients who are serious about investing in their intellectual assets and provides counsel on how to capitalize their patents in the market. If you have any questions regarding this article or patents in general, consider contacting J.D. Houvener at https://boldip.com/contact/