New Tribe's revised Grapnel design

moss wrote:

It's my understanding that if you (or I) publicizes and clearly documents an invention or concept, that we've established "prior use" or "prior art" as they say in the legal world. When prior use of an invention is established, no one else can patent it. Again, would need feedback from a patent lawyer but that's my understanding from closely reading patents lately.

Would 'prior art' include the photo and description of my coathangar prototype that I posted on the TCI board originally? I'll look into this Moss, thanks! Of course a would be patent applicant could argue that I didn't demonstrate the patent-able features clearly enough or something like that...

Michael

I've Googled 'prior art' and Moss seems to be exactly right.

Here's some prior art then:



What I've done is get rid of the 2 arms aligned with the line on which it hangs - they simply get in the way - and turn on of the two remaining arms around so that the grapnel can grab the dangling line from either side.

The next improvement is to somehow prevent the grapnel from rotating away from the line as one of it's arms hits it. By girth-hitching the line to the U shaped hole in a flat plate (instead of just a big circular hole as in the conventional grapnels), this cinches the line, preventing the grapnel from moving along the line and also stops it from rotating when one of the arms hits the dangling line.

In short, this grapnel is better at swinging past and catching a dangling line because:

1) There is a much bigger target for the line to catch,
2) When it does catch the line it can hardly fail to grab it
3) only having 2 arms and both facing the same direction meams that it is less likely to get snagged on it's way over the the target line.

Michael

Head detail:

Original twisted grapnel arm detail, as sent to New Tribe october 2008:



Michael

Safe to say that New Tribe doesn't have any intention of patenting your design, I don't think New Tribe holds any patents on anything. There's no patent on the Dan House conduit rope sleeve. In the case of Dan's sleeve design, plenty have been sold, and certainly with the New Tribe grapnel plenty have been sold. I believe this meets another criteria of prior art, that the device has been sold and is in use. So no "third party" can now step in and patent it (rope sleeve or grapnel). In other words Michael is free to manufacture and sell the grapnel without fear that someone else (New Tribe) is going to claim patent rights and sue him.

Obviously I'm not a lawyer so these are just my thoughts based on my own research. Hint-hint, I'm hoping someone will alert a patent lawyer to this thread.

In a perfect world it would be easy for an independent inventor to get their ideas patented but right now the situation is such that investment capital and legal teams are needed to do it successfully. This is what I mean when I say that current patent law suppresses innovation.
-moss