|
Hello Cliff, Many times I see patents being used mostly for bragging rights, and marketing. So many of them blend so well with so many others that there is no real legal teeth in many of them. I've heard it said many times, that if you don't have loads of money to protect your patent, you might as well just make it public domain and produce what you can. Dynamic diving submarines are not new. Holland was doing back in the 1800's. My buddy Doc got a patent for his Bionic Dolphin that dynamic dives, but his is designed to float even when the engine compartment and cockpit are fully flooded. That's the new and novel part. Doc felt that perhaps Hawkes was able to get around his patent claims on the slightly buoyant sub was that Hawkes sub will sink fast if on of the hulls are fully flooded. I think is just to much data for the USPO to properly process, and/or they want the patent issue and maintenance fees more then getting it right, and let the patent holders fight it out in court. In regards to prior art, winged submersibles are not new either. You have a number of flying sub concepts by the US, Russia, and others many years ago, not to mention the real one that Don Reid built and tested. Plus all the glider subs, wet and what not. So perhaps the only novel element of Hawkes wings are the reversed airfoils to what you have on many planes. I plan to use a symmetrical air foil shape on mine. But that is basically the same thing you have on many submarine control surfaces seen in the last 100 years. But I likely could get a patent on it these days in any case. Claims are expensive, so to have 89 claims on Hawkes patent #7,131,389 he must have spent a load of money. Not to mention the cost of having a patent attorney write a long patent like that. This is the same basic material as I've read in my US Patent book. =================================================== "Definition of a patentable invention To be considered patentable, an invention must pass three criteria: novelty, non-obviousness and utility. NoveltyTo be patentable, an invention must be novel. That is, the invention must not have been described or claimed in a previously filed third party Canadian patent application, and must not have been previously publicly disclosed by a third party, anywhere in the world. The test for novelty is whether or not a single, publicly disclosed example of prior art that "contained all of the information which, for practical purposes, is needed to produce the claimed invention without the exercise of any inventive skill". If a third party previously filed a Canadian patent application disclosing the invention, or if a third party document or device previously publicly disclosed the invention anywhere in the world, then a subsequently applied-for Canadian patent application for that invention is lacking in novelty and is invalid. A lack of novelty is often referred to as "anticipation". For example, if a piece of prior art has each of the elements of a claimed invention, the piece of prior art is said to "anticipate" the claimed invention, or alternatively, the claimed invention is said to have been "anticipated by" the piece of prior art.Non-obviousnessThe test for non-obviousness (also sometimes referred to as "inventive ingenuity" or "inventive step") is whether a "unimaginative skilled technician, in light of his general knowledge and the literature and information on the subject available to him on (the date that the application is filed in Canada), would have been led directly and without difficulty to [the] invention."UtilityFor a product to have utility it must perform some useful function. The requirement for utility originates from the definition of invention as a "new and useful art" The requirement is generally easy to meet, however, it does limit the scope of protection by excluding methods that would not be useful."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_patent_law Regards, Szybowski Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 07:57:46 -0700 From: cliffordredus@sbcglobal.net Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Submersible Patent 7,131,389 To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org For those of you wishing to commercialize your psub design, Graham Hawkes was granted a US Patent No. 7,131,389 (www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT7131389) for a personal submersible. There are 89 claims, the first sounding a lot like Alec's original design for Solo which included no ballast tanks and an inverted airfoil to submerge. My guess is that this is more for marketing as it is not a very general patent. Filing date was Jan 22, 2004 and issue date was Nov 7 2006.
|