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Comment by benzofuran | Hacker News Reader

Patent pending or not, there's clear evidence of prior art, and the patent will most likely be rejected. I can file a patent on about anything from the wheel on up, and for the period between filing and rejection, I can claim that the wheel is patent pending - it still doesn't give me much further protection.

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Apparently, Bill Ward earned $15k for re-appropriating a design from 1919.

http://www.quirky.com/products/36-Broom-Groomer-Broom-Cleani...

http://www.google.com/patents/US1315310

Did he put silicone prongs on it?

That seems like a really bad idea. Silicone rubber is high friction - it's going to make cleaning the bristles hard work. And cleaning the prongs is going to be hard.

I love how easy it is to read and actually understand that patent.

It rather depends on the patent claims. There are over 500 patents on barbed wire, and searching for "paper clip" just now, there are new paper clip patents in the last few years, like 6,973,700 and 7,500,301. To say nothing of the many design patents for paper clips.

So not, it's not obvious that it will be rejected. It could be a seemingly minor thing. I brought up paperclips because in Henry Petroski's "The Evolution of Useful Things", the author describes how one paperclip patent claim was for the variant where the outside wire extends beyond the loop of the paperclip. That seems like a minor variation, but the submitter showed that no one else had done it, and got the patent.

I hate to say it but after ridiculing that change in the design I actually realised that it would totally solve the problem that I have with some paperclips: if I pushed it right down to level the clip on a pack of papers, pulling the clip off can sometimes catch the outside arm on the paper as it comes off. It doesn't tear the paper but it leaves a weird ugly mark.

That new design would avoid that problem I imagine. I'd totally but those paperclips!

I spent a while looking for the paperclips. They are nothing new. I remember seeing them some 20 years ago. But the various sites I found mostly sold Gems, some sold Gothic, and the rest were decorative styles. I even went through the old patent literature looking for it, but the closest I found was pre-Gem, from around 1900.

I did find a picture of what I'm thinking of, in the logo for http://www.bureaudirect.co.uk/ .

Still, I don't think you want an extended Gem. Try a Gothic - it has longer legs and is supposed to be favored by archivists, who are more affected by the problem you mentioned - but I haven't yet found an online source for them. Or perhaps an owl paperclip, since that doesn't look like it has anything which will catch the paper and several places stock it.

Wow. I know I'm not really adding anything to the conversation now, but I just wanted to thank you for opening my eyes to a world that I didn't know existed. So much information about something I didn't know was even a problem.

Awesome. Thanks!

You're welcome. And thanks for the thanks.

Does it even care if it's rejected or not? There is a prior patent, doesn't that count as 'prior art' (i.e. this new patent is just overpriced paper)?

You can also patent improvements. Since no one knows the details, you can't be sure that there is no prior art. What if the patent is on the specific way the dustbin is attached to the handle?

You need only review the barbed wire or paperclip patents to see how seemingly small differences can be patented.

Ah, that didn't cross my mind. Thanks

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