Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Trademark searching tip

Here's a tip for limiting trademark searches to only trademarks that are classified in the "jewelry" category of goods and services. Start by selecting the "Structured Search" option from the main Trademark page. Start at http://www.uspto.gov/, select "Trademarks", "Search TM database" and then "Structured Search".

In my example, I was searching for the trademark "FCA", so I put that in the first part - leave the field as "All", then make sure that you have the "AND" option selected. The fill in the word "jewelry" in the second line with "Goods and Services" selected for the Field name. This limits your search results to trademarks that have your search term (in this case for me, FCA), and that fall into the category of jewelry.

(click the graphic below to see the full graphic if the right side is cut off on your screen - I didn't want to make is too small to read so I didn't shrink it to fit)


Friday, November 7, 2008

Oldest design patent?

I went searching through the US patent site, looking for the oldest design patent I could find. The oldest one I could dig up in the database was from October 1858 for a locket. The designer is Albert C Randall of Providence Rhode Island. Was this the beginning of the prominence of Providence? It's hard to be certain that this is the oldest jewelry design patent, since the really old patents are often classified in unusual ways, but this is the oldest that is classified in the basic jewelry category.

Here's the drawing from the patent



It is described as "a new and ornamental design for lockets usually worn to decorate the person ..... the design consists of embellishing the sides...(some words are hard to make out)..valise formed lockets or charms for containing hair, likenesses and other souvenirs, with clusters of flowers or foliage ...and nail heads at their ends in such a manner as to give an ornamental finish and appearance...the configuration ..at the center consists of a stem, on which are formed flowers and other foliage of a corresponding ornamental character and the corners of the spaces between the ....bands and nail heads are adorned and relieved from their sameness by smaller configurations or chasings of flowers similar to those situated in the center and the sides of the locket or charm are thus made to present a simple, chaste and highly ornamental appearance in keeping with the objects for which the locket or charm is designed"

I have to say I love the "simple, chaste and highly ornamental" description! I did do a quick search to see if I could find any other patents by A. C. Randall at that time, but i did not see any. However, the only way to search these really old patents by designer name is with the Google patent search which relies on the computer being able to interpret text. Handwritten cursive text would be unlikely to be correctly interpreted. And in fact this particular patent is not listed on Google.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

159 year old brooch patent.. special? - how?

I am fascinated by this patent from 1859. Patent #23042. When I first saw the drawing, it didn't strike me as particularly unusual, other than that is is a very old patent. A very nice pin with a design of a mother and children. But as I started to read the description I was amazed! This patent is for a photographic brooch! With the photograph made directly onto the glass front of the brooch! As an amateur photographer and joolie, my interest was piqued!

The patent describes enthusiastically that "a peculiar and beautiful effect is produced by placing a photographic picture upon the concave surface and the appearance of the finest enamel painting is readily imitated"


The process to make the brooch is described as using a watch crystal, which is held in the camera. ...the production of a permanent photographic or sun picture by causing the picture to be taken on a collodion film..on the surface of the glass. When the picture is finished, the concavity is filled with cement composed of gum shellac, resin and coal tar.

Pretty cool, considering that the National Geographic's website page about the history of photography says that the first permanent image was made in 1826 and the first photo of a person was made in 1839!