... the tool does look like the logo but now is hinged in a unobvious way and has six seperate functions that I feel are unique and unobvious as well.
And:
Ok so after rereading your posts would your arguements apply to utility as well as designs? I have been under the impression that design patents were just to protect the design and nothing more, and utilitys were much more broad. Take for example a swiss army knife and a leatherman tool They both do the same thing and have most of the same tools in them, would they both be able to get utility patents or just one? or both just design patents?
Scott, a number of links for you below. The first is the general search page of the US patent office, second is the (similar) google patents search page, from either of which you can start looking at patents by searching keywords and phrases, etc. And the third, which should hopefully open as a PDF, pulls US Patent 7,549,196 which is just a generic example of a utility patent for a yard tool housing and handle (think blowers/clippers and the like).
A utility patent can cover, for example, what a thing is (device claims) and how it's used or made (method claims), as long as the claim, taken as a whole, defines a device or method that is new, and is not merely an obvious improvement over what is already known.
On the other hand, a design patent can cover only how the thing looks. I say "only" because if your tool were covered by a design patent but not utility patent, someone else is entirely free to copy exactly what it is and what it does
so long as they don't copy too closely the "how it looks" features that are covered in the design patent.
So I realize your idea here is that you have this new tool and the new tool is amenable to being shaped in the form of a tool's company's logo, and that's how you originally conceived it. But split things up in your head. Can you make this new tool with these neat new functions (which right now as far as you know are non-obvious) without its being in the shape of the logo? I would guess the answer is yes, but really this is just to get you thinking about your options. Anyway - once you've made the exact same tool divorced from the logo, how that tool would be described in words is what would go into the utility application.
It's not uncommon to see tool companies file utility patents applications on what the new tool is/use etc., and also file design patent applications covering the ornamental features using the same drawings used in the utility patent to help describe the tool.
You might want to try some searching on the databases, though. I'd be here for the next two weeks if I had to describe all the times I've thought of something "new" or had someone come to me with something "new" - something neither of us had ever seen or heard about, and can't find available anywhere on the internet - only to have our hopes dashed when we started looking at published patents and patent applications. Either "yup, dang, there it is", or something so close to it that our marginal difference wasn't worth trying to patent. Embarrassingly, one of these widgets we got really excited about turned out to be pretty much fully disclosed
in 1907. So spend some time scrounging through the publications before you spend any money on a patent agent or patent attorney....
To your specific question about Leatherman v. Swiss Army Knife ("SAK"). Because SAK was already well-known when the Leatherman was developed, no way could a patent to Leatherman simply claim "a multipurpose tool having a number of different bladed and non-bladed foldable tools" (just an example) because this simplistic claim is already known in the prior art (the SAK).
So was the original Leatherman doomed to be an unpatented easily copied wretch of a tool? Not at all. Check the last link (another PDF-opening link). They did, however, have to make sure the claims included enough description of the tool to define over the prior art (SAK and likely quite a few others).
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.htmlhttp://www.google.com/advanced_patent_searchhttp://www.google.com/patents/download/7549196_Tool.pdf?id=8e_HAAAAEBAJ&output=pdf&sig=ACfU3U1T8_YjVKy4-qIToLshGXskJWLAWQ&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0http://www.google.com/patents/download/4744272_Foldable_tool.pdf?id=s5Q0AAAAEBAJ&output=pdf&sig=ACfU3U3nSZEk0TmDkSZBM59H-ksXF9MGoQ&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0EDIT: P.S., on the patent search page, search "leatherman" in the "assignee name" section. They've got over 100 utility and design patents. Since you're already familiar with some of their tools, that might be a great place for you to start learning...
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Topic: A new use for an existing companys logo (Read 1628 times)
