Beginning at NYU in Jan 2013 within the context of a Patents Translation course delivered online, this blog seeks to uncover the patents that rock our daily lives....
The YSL Libre Eau De Parfum bottle is wrapped with the iconic, intertwined, three-letter, YSL monogram logo, designed by the famous art deco graphic design firm Cassandre, in 1961. The logo is nailed into the glass. The black cap is made of lacquer. The neck of the bottle has a gold chain collar. The perfume, created by Anne Flipo and Carlos Benaim, was launched in 2019. The scent is floral with lavender essence from France, orange blossom from Morocco, and a touch of vanilla.
The YSL Libre Eau De Parfum perfume bottle was designed by Suzanne Dalton. The design was awarded the US design patent, USD913798S, titled Perfume bottles, on March 23, 2021. The Applicant was Yves Saint Laurent Parfums, in Paris, France. The patent contains 19 drawing sheets of the bottle, some of which are photographs. Although the patent title refers to several bottles, there is only one described and patented. The patent Figure 1 is included below, together with an image of the marketed bottle.
As a reminder : “a utility patent” protects the way an article is used and works (35 U.S.C. 101), while a “design patent” protects the way an article looks (35 U.S.C. 171) [MPEP Chapt. 1502.01; [R-07.2015]].
The vaquero/a boot (1) patent drawing, shown below, together with the image of an embodied marketed model, is also a Hedi Slimane design, for Yves Saint Laurent (YSL). The design was awarded the US design patent, USD762354, titled Shoe. The patent was awarded to Slimane, on August 2, 2016. The House of YSL was both Applicant and Assignee.
As a reminder :
“a utility patent” protects the way an article is used and works (35 U.S.C. 101), while a “design patent” protects the way an article looks (35 U.S.C. 171) [MPEP Chapt. 1502.01; [R-07.2015]].
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(1) In Spanish, vaquero/vaquera botas, in English cowboy/cowgirl or Western boots, in French santiags, these terms are used variously across French, English and Spanish.
The boot patent drawing below, shown together with an image of the marketed product, is a Hedi Slimane design for Yves Saint Laurent (YSL). The patent drawing is extracted from the US design patent, USD762954S, titled Boot. The patent was awarded to Slimane, on August 9, 2016. The house of YSL was both Applicant and Assignee.
As a reminder:
“a utility patent” protects the way an article is used and works (35 U.S.C. 101), while a “design patent” protects the way an article looks (35 U.S.C. 171) [MPEP Chapt. 1502.01; [R-07.2015]].
Selected by the famous fashion designer, Christian Dior, as his successor, Yves Saint Laurent was just 21 years old when he became Creative Director at the House of Dior, in 1957. In 1962, he founded his own eponymous fashion design house, trade named Saint Laurent. Going forward, he is known for having empowered women, appropriating male dress codes, such as the tuxedo, the pant-suit, the trench coat, the pea-jacket and safari jacket, for female fashion. YSL also ushered the ready-to-wear hi-fashion revolution, with the YSL Rive Gauche store (on the Left Bank in Paris, France), making fashion more accessible, to more women.
The star hi-top sneakers, shown below, were designed by Hedi Slimane, Creative Director for the House of YSL, from 2012 to 2016. The design was awarded the US design patent, USD762359S, titled Shoe, on August 2, 2016. The House of Yves Saint Laurent (Paris) was both Applicant and Assignee.
As a reminder, a design patent covers the ornamental aspects of an invention, or how the invention looks. In contrast, a utility patent covers the functional and manufacturing aspects of an invention, or how the invention works and/or is produced. Provisions for US design and utility patents are recited in the US Federal Code, Title 35 (USPTO MPEP Chapt. 1502.01; [R-07.2015).
Below, the drawing on the cover page of the patent, together with three embodiments of the patented design.
The American Dialect Society (ADS) competing Words of the Year (WOTTIES) are no less interesting than the winners. Below, the list of the competing WOTTIES, in each of the 2021 Word of the Year categories. (1)
The Word of the Year 2021 (extracted from the ADSPress Release)
antiwork: position supporting the refusal to work, pushing back against labor exploitation.
Big Lie: propagandistic distortion of truth, as in Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was “stolen”.
Great Resignation: pandemic-era phenomenon in which workers are leaving their jobs in large numbers.
long Covid: lingering symptoms and health problems experienced by people after they have recovered from Covid.
Omicron: name assigned by the World Health Organization for a highly contagious “variant of concern” of the coronavirus.
variant: new form of a virus, such as coronavirus, resulting from mutations.
vax/vaxx: shortened form of vaccine, vaccination, or vaccinate, often used as combining form (as in anti-vaxxer, Hot Vax Summer, double/triple-vaxxed, vaxxed and relaxed).
Most likely to succeed Word of the Year 2021
endemic: describing a disease that is always present in a community or population, as some predict will be the case for Covid-19.
Great Resignation: pandemic-era phenomenon in which workers are leaving their jobs in large numbers.
mid: of average or poor quality, or simply decent, in the amorphous Generation Z slang.
NFT: abbreviation for non-fungible token, a digital asset using blockchain technology to make a unique token, with its own identification that cannot be replicated.
sigma male: term used in the masculinist “manosphere” for a male who is more introverted than an “alpha male” but is still considered successful.
shrinkflation: reduction of the size or quantity of a product while the price remains the same or even rises.
Most useful Word of the Year 2021
bussin’: extremely good, such as food that is indescribably tasty.
tone indicator: code such as “/srs” or "/lol" that indicates the tone (serious, ironic, humorous) of online discourse.
vibe: mood or emotion, such as the positive feelings evoked by a piece of music; to exult in one’s good feelings.
Political Word of the Year 2021
Big Lie: propagandistic distortion of truth, as in Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was “stolen”.
CRT/critical race theory: framework for analyzing how racism is embedded in law and policies, exploited as a scare tactic by politicians favoring “anti-CRT” legislation.
mandate: official or authoritative command, as in politically contentious “mask mandates” and “vaccine mandates”.
Digital Word of the Year 2021
bones day/no bones day: prediction of whether a day will be good or bad (based on Jonathan Graziano’s TikTok videos of his dog Noodle getting up in the morning). See Youtube video below.
girlboss: a confident, capable woman pursuing business ambitions; also used in a derogatory fashion for a woman cynically combining feminism with careerism.
horny jail: imagined place a person is sent to as punishment for being excessively sexual on social media.
parasocial: describing a relationship that a person imagines with someone whom they do not actually know, such as a celebrity on an online platform.
the ___ urge to: ironic framing device to describe stereotypical tendencies and traits, as in “the feminine urge to…”
Pandemic-related Word of the Year 2021
breakthrough: describing an infection, as from coronavirus, after a person has been vaccinated.
Delta/Omicron: Greek-letter names assigned by the World Health Organization for coronavirus “variants of concern”.
flurona: sickness from a combination of the influenza virus and the coronavirus.
long Covid: lingering symptoms and health problems experienced by people after they have recovered from Covid.
variant: new form of a virus, such as coronavirus, resulting from mutations.
vax/vaxx: shortened form of vaccine, vaccination, or vaccinate, often used as combining form (as in anti-vaxxer, Hot Vax Summer, double/triple-vaxxed, vaxxed and relaxed).
Financial/economic Word of the Year 2021
Great Resignation: pandemic-era phenomenon in which workers are leaving their jobs in large numbers.
NFT: abbreviation for non-fungible token, a digital asset using blockchain technology to make a unique token, with its own identification that cannot be replicated.
SPAC: abbreviation for “special purpose acquisition company”, an investment vehicle that allows a company to go public without going through the traditional IPO process.
stimmy: shortened form of stimulus, used in reference to government stimulus checks.
stonk: deliberate misspelling of stock, used by online day traders for their investments, esp. for “meme stocks” like Gamestop (aka Gamestonk).
Informal Word of the Year 2021
cheugy: term used by members of Generation Z to poke fun at the off-trend lifestyles and fashions of millennials.
down bad: used to describe intense (typically sexual) desperation.
flop era: time in which a person, such as a pop star, enters an unsuccessful period.
Most creative word of the year 2021
chin diaper: face mask worn below the chin instead of properly covering the nose and mouth.
copium: the rationalizations, justifications, and denial one uses to deal with a severe letdown or personal failure (a blend of cope and opium).
-core: productive suffix for aesthetic trends, such as gorpcore (functional outdoorsy gear), emancicore (non-restrictive clothing emphasizing freedom), and goblincore (chaotic aesthetic inspired by goblin folklore).
Euphemism of the year 2021
election integrity: euphemism used for voter suppression.
glizzy: slang term for a hot dog (also used to describe fellatio, as in glizzy gobbling).
TFG: abbreviation for “the former guy,” an expression used by President Biden to refer to his predecessor Trump without saying his name.
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(1) Members of the ADS voted for the winners , in each category, on the occasion of the Society’s 133rd Annual Meeting (online), on January 6-7, 2022. The winning 2021 Words of the Year, selected by the members of the American Dialect Society, are listed in the previous post.
Each year, since 1990, members of the distinguished, 133-year old, American Dialect Society (ADS), vote for the Words of the Year (WOTTIES) in several categories, plus for one Word of the Year (WOTY), winner of them all. The vote occurs during the Annual Meeting of the ADS, held online for the second year, on January 6th and 7th, in 2022.
Below, the list the Words of the Year, in the 2021 categories, and the WOTY winner of them all. The 2021 WOTY categories included: most likely to succeed, most useful, political word of the year, digital word of the year, pandemic-related word of the year, financial/economic words of the year, informal word of the year, most creative word of the year, and euphemism of the year.
The Word of the Year 2021 insurrection: violent attempt to take control of a government, applied to the Capitol attack of Jan. 6, 2021.
Most likely to succeed Word of the Year 2021 antiwork: position supporting the refusal to work, pushing back against labor exploitation.
Most useful Word of the Year 2021 hard pants: pants that lack an elastic waistband or stretchy fabric, unlike the “soft pants” favored by those working from home during the pandemic.
Political Word of the Year 2021 insurrection: violent attempt to take control of a government, applied to the Capitol attack of Jan. 6, 2021.
Digital Word of the Year 2021 #FreeBritney: hashtag for those supporting the release of Britney Spears from the conservatorship set up by her father 13 years ago.
Pandemic-related Word of the Year 2021 boosted: having received a booster shot, as for Covid-19 (also boostered/boosterized).
Financial/economic Word of the Year 2021 supply chain: interconnected global system of supplying goods and services to consumers, put in jeopardy by the pandemic.
Informal Word of the Year 2021 yassify: to apply image filters to a person’s photo to transform it into a cartoonishly beautiful image; more generally, to make beautiful or glamorous.
Most creative word of the year 2021 Fauci ouchie: rhyming phrase for a Covid-19 vaccine, in honor of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Chief Adviser to the President on matters of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Euphemism of the year 2021
unalive: term used as a substitute for “suicide” or “kill” to avoid social media filters.
AMECA the new humanoid robot, on show at CES 2022(1), has been described variously as “haunting” (Newsbreak, 2022) , “terrifyingly realistic” (New York Post, 2022) , “totally surreal” (CNET, 2022) and “freaky as you would expect” (New Atlas, 2021), which makes one wonder exactly what this robot is all about.Indeed, perhaps that you will concur, after seeing the following Youtube video.
AMECA was produced by the British Company Engineered Arts, Ltd. A company that brings together performance arts and robotic engineering, originally creating mixed media exhibits for museums and science centers in the UK. The company currently rents the humanoid robots that it produces, while specializing in humanoid facial expression for the design of entertainment robots.
Engineered Arts Ltd., uses a company-developed 3D animation-type platform called Tritium for programming the humanoid expressions, and an in-house robot “inhabiter” program called TinMan for remote multilingual speech generation and synthesizing. Tritium 3D animations are downloaded directly to the humanoid robot, whereas for speech, it is actually a real live human being (an “inhabiter”) that is responding (in any language) remotely via AMECA’s camera and speaker. Thus, the company intends to open the programing of humanoid robots to the public at large, freeing them from coders-only, while acknowledging that speech should still remain generated by humans, if the humanoid is to be of best service and use, beyond mechanical automation.
(1) CES 2022 - Computer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, Jan 5 - 8, 2022. CES is one of the most influential technology shows in the world. Game-changing technologies such as videocasette players (1970), CD-players and camcorders (1981), DVDs (2003), OLED TV (2008), 3D HDTV (2009), tablets and netbooks (2010), ultrabooks (2012), driverless cars (2013) and 3D-printers (2014), were all first shown at CES, over the course of a 50-year history.
