Oh, patents! Invictus by Paco Rabanne

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Invictus by Paco Rabanne is a men’s Eau de Toilette, conditioned in a trophy-shaped bottle, that celebrates resilience. Invictus in Latin means “undefeated”. Whether by synchronicity or unpublicized connection, the Invictus Eau de Toilette was launched in 2013, the year before the first Invictus Games were held in London. The Invictus Games Foundation was founded by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, both as an international support community, and a pathway to recovery for wounded, injured, and sick servicemen and women (WIS). The Invictus Games is a multi-sport event that showcases the spirit of the WIS community. 

The Paco Rabanne Invictus Eau de Toilette was also launched about 130 years after the poem Invictus, by William Ernest Henley, was first published in 1875. A poem that is often quoted to summon the courage of those who refuse to be conquered in the face of tremendous adversity. For example, Nelson Mandela is known to have recited this poem during his many years of imprisonment in South Africa.

The Paco Rabanne Invictus perfume was created by Veronique Nyberg, Anne Flipo, Olivier Polge, and Dominique Ropion. The perfume is described as citrusy, aquatic, and woody. 

The Paco Rabanne Invictus Eau de Toilette bottle is patented. The US design patent, USD715151S, titled Container, was awarded on October 14th 2014, to Cedric Ragot, and assigned to Puig France. The patent Figure 1 is included below, together with an image of the marketed perfume bottle.

References

Invictus Games

https://www.invictusgamesfoundation.org/

Henley, W. E.  (1875). Invictus. Poets.org 

https://poets.org/poem/invictus#:~:text=William%20Ernest%20Henley%2C%20born%20August,%E2%80%9CInvictus%E2%80%9D%20(1875)

Paco Rabanne (website)

https://www.rabanne.com/us/en_US/

Trademark - Fame by Paco Rabanne

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Launched in 2022, one year after the Paco Rabanne Phantom perfume for men, Fame by Paco Rabanne  is a perfume for women, also packaged in a little refillable and connected robot-looking bottle. However, Fame is dressed in an iconic Paco Rabanne chainmail outfit, complete with large sunglasses, earrings, a bracelet on each arm, and women's boots. A chainmail dress reminiscent of the “Twelve unwearable dresses” that made Paco Rabanne instantly famous on his first runway show, in Paris, in 1966. 

Chainmail fashion that would then continue to inspire the Paco Rabanne-designed costumes for several movies, including the 1968 Roger Vadim blockbuster science fiction movie, Barbarella, starring Jane Fonda. One micromini dress of the original Paco Rabanne Twelve unwearables has even become part of the permanent collection at The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.  

The Fame by Paco Rabanne perfume for women was created by four perfumers: Dora Baghriche, Marie Salamagne, Alberto Morillas, and Fabrice Pellegrin. Developed in Grasse, the French perfume-manufacturing hub, Fame by Paco Rabanne combines the fragrances of jasmine, mango, and incense.

A US trademark application was filed, on July 6th 2022, for an Illustration of the Paco Rabanne Fame perfume bottle for women. The application is pending, with the US serial number 79351168. The description of the application illustration—without words, letters, or numbers—is detailed as follows:   

"The mark consists of the three-dimensional configuration of packaging for the goods comprised of a container in the shape of a stylized gold humanoid robot wearing a silver chainmail style dress, and where the robot has a vertical cylindrical shaped head with a keyhole design on the top, along with identical horizontal cylinder style ears on each side with two semi-circle ear clip earrings on top of each ear and two circle earrings on the bottom of each ear, wearing gold frame sunglasses with a black front and a small vertical oval design at the center, held up by a gold cylinder neck, which is connected to the cylindrical torso bearing identical arms on each side made of gold vertical three-dimensional curved rectangles having slight protrusion at the top to mimic shoulders and bearing a gold circular bracelet at the wrist location, along with identical gold woman's boots to simulate legs and feet, and connected in the middle between them."

An image is included above of the marketed Fame by Paco Rabanne perfume bottle. 

References

Barbarella [1:38] (1968). Motion picture directed by Roger Vadim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks5eE-lTFDw 

Bromley, J. (Feb. 3, 2023). Paco Rabanne: Life of the Space Age designer behind chainmail dresses. The Standard. 

https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/fashion/paco-rabanne-space-age-avant-garde-chainmail-b1057831.html 

Dress (1967) by Design Paco Rabanne. The Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.  

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/145899

Paco Rabanne (website)

https://www.rabanne.com/us/en_US/

Oh, patents! Paco Rabanne Phantom perfume bottle

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The Paco Rabanne patented Phantom perfume bottle is one of the most high-tech luxury perfume bottles you will find on the market. Phantom is both luxury perfume craft and high-tech, on at least three counts.

First, the bottle is designed to look like a stunning little collectible robot. Secondly, the men’s perfume contained within the bottle was designed using AI-driven fragrance programs for Augmented Creativity. The AI fragrance programs enabled a Rabanne quartet of expert perfumers, Anne Flipo, Dominique Ropion, Loc Dong and Juliette Karagueuzoglou to experiment with unexpected scent pairings, to select exact ingredients, and to fine-tune dosages. Thirdly, the bottle is connected. The cap has a built-in, Near-Field Communication (NFC), chip that connects to a smartphone. Just tap the cap with your smartphone, and you will have access to the Phantom Universe of games, videos, and playlists.

The Phantom perfume bottle was awarded the US design patent USD928625S, titled Fragrance Container, on August 24th 2021. The inventor on record is Jean-Marc Galvez, also known for having invented such remarkable perfume bottles as the Carolina Herrera ‘lightening bolt’ Bad Boy, and ‘scateboard' Forever Young, perfume bottles.

Below, the patent Figure 1, and an image of the marketed little robot perfume bottle, with its Paco Rabanne (PR) chest logo. Launched in 2021, the Paco Rabanne Phantom perfume bottle brings together lush, natural, and earthy fragrances, patchouli and lavender, with a fruity lemon fragrance, whose green, radiant, and zesty citrus energy was boosted with styrallyl acetate, a synthetic molecule.

                 

Best of all, when you have used all the perfume inside the bottle, you might still want keep the cute little robot bottle on your desk, considering that it will give you access to the Phantom Universe, even empty of its fragrance. On the other hand, if you love the perfume, and would rather not have an army of little robots cluttering your desk, you should also know that Paco Rabanne perfume is refillable. All you have to do is to buy a refill, which is supposed to be more environmentally sustainable. 

Finally, Phantom is a signature Paco Rabanne perfume. In other words, a perfume with the eponymous brand name of one of the greatest fashion designers, hailing from the Basque country in Spain. Someone, known to have pushed the limits of fashion in the sixties, having designed popular plastic chainmail dresses. Fashion that blended medieval times with the birth of the space exploration age, into a new aesthetics.

 

References

Rabanne website

https://fashion.rabanne.com

Terminology – Leap year 2024 (année bissextile 2024)

Copyright ©Françoise Herrmann

Curious about “leaping”? Here is the scoop.

It takes a bit more than 365 days for the Earth to revolve around the sun. To be precise, it takes 355 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 56 seconds or 365.242190 days for the Earth to complete its revolution around the sun. The extra time it takes for the Earth to revolve around the sun amounts to about one-quarter of a day (i.e., about 6 hours) each year, or about one day (i.e., about 24 hours), about every four years. Thus, to re-align (or sync) the calendar year of 365 days, with the real time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun, one day is added every 4 years, at the end of February, the shortest month of the year.

However, this neat leap year adjustment to the 365-day calendar year, every four years, would still create a calendar year that would eventually become out of sync with the time it takes to revolve around the sun, considering that everything after the decimal point in 365.242190 days does not amount to exactly 6 hours, multiplied by 4. Thus, intercalary (leap) days are added every four years, except those years that are multiples of 100 (i.e., centuries), but not multiples of 400. Thus, for example, the year 2000 was a leap year, but the year 2100 will not be a leap year, for the same reason that the years 1900, 1800 and 1700 were not leap years.

As a result, the term “leap year” really means “sync year”. The French term bissextile (which also exists in English as an archaic term) is derived from the Latin terms (bis)sextus, meaning “twice sixth”. Thus, February 29th is twice sixth day of the month of February because the extra day that is added at the end of February is the second sixth day before March 1rst (calend martius), using the ancient Roman way of designating days, relative to the ones that effectively had a name. In the Roman case, just the calends (first days of the month) or new moon days, and ides (the middle of the month) or full moon days, had names. For example, the nones were the ninth days before the ides of every month, using the same dating system. 

Revolution and rotation of  planet Earth
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

References 

Merriam Webster – Bissextile.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/bissextile-#:~:text=The%20extra%20day%20fell%20on,to%20refer%20to%20leap%20day. 

NASA Spaceplace–What is a leap year?

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/leap-year/en/ 

Gif file – revolution and rotation of the Earth (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/review/leap-year/1day-1year.en.gif 

Lori Silverman - Crystal Sole® pumps (3)

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The US design patent, USD753378S1, titled Shoe with decorative sole is another US design patent awarded to Lori Silverman for her Crystal Sole® pumps. The patent was granted on April 12, 2016, to Lori Silverman and assigned to her company LSIL & Co Inc. As a reminder US design patents cover the ornamental aspects of an invention or the way it looks. In contrast, US utility patents cover the way an invention works and/or is manufactured. 

Below the patent Figure 1 extracted from the US design patent, USD753378S1, shows a bottom perspective view of a shoe with the invention decorative sole in an argyle rhinestone pattern. An image of a marketed pump model with a black patent leather upper, an argyle patterned sole, and argyle piping, is also included below.

Reference

LSIL & Co Inc. 

lsilandco.com

Lori Silverman - Crystal Sole® pump (2)

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The US design patent USD740006S1, titled Shoe with decorative sole is one of twelve US design patents awarded to Lori Silverman for her Crystal Sole® pumps. This patent was granted on Oct. 6, 2015 to Lori Silverman, and assigned to her company LSIL & Co Inc.  As a reminder, US design patents cover the ornamental aspects of an invention, or the way the invention looks. In contrast, US utility patents cover the way an invention works, and/or how the invention is manufactured.

Below, the patent Figure 1, extracted from the US design patent, USD740006S1, depicts a bottom perspective view of a shoe with the invention decorative sole in a camouflage, rhinestone pattern.  An image of a marketed, pointy-toe, pump model with nude suede upper, and more than 3000 crystals adorning the camo-patterned sole, is also included below. 

Reference

LSIL & Co inc. 

lsilandco.com

Lori Silverman - Crystal Sole® pumps (1)

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Lori Silverman’s Crystal Sole® invention consists in a process of decorating shoe soles, in a way that makes the design impervious to the rigors of walking on asphalt and other surfaces. The result is a shoe with signature decorated soles.  

Crystal Sole® shoes are patented. Patented not only with dozens of US design patents for each of the distinctive ways the decorated soles look, but also with a core US utility patent. A US utility patent covering the manufacture of the Silverman shoes with distinctively decorated soles. Indeed, the Crystal Sole® invention was originally recited in the US utility patent application, US20160007678A1, titled Shoe with wrapped sole and transparent pod. 

The invention recites a method of making a shoe with a decorated sole, comprising decorative fabric that is bonded on a blank sole, and covered with a transparent plastic pad. The extracted patent Figure 1 below shows a side perspective view of the shoe made according to an embodiment of the invention.  

Specifically, the patent Figure 1 depicts the invention shoe 10, an upper 12, a  sole 14 to heel 16, a decorative element 18 on at least a portion of the sole 14, and a protective pad 20, covering at least a portion of the sole 14. 

The depicted shoe 10 is a woman’s pump, but the scope of the invention extends to other types of shoes for both men and women. Shoe types for women comprise, for example, boots, booties, flats, or ballet slippers. Shoes for men comprise both loafer types and boots. 

The decorative element 18 is a piece of fabric 22 with a separately patented decorative design. Decorative designs for men’s shoes comprise, for example, checkerboard, camouflage, or sport’s team logo. Decorative designs for women shoes comprise, for example, checkerboard, zebra pattern, stripes, polka dots, plaid, argyle, leopard spots, tiger stripes, plus many more. 

The protective pad 20 covers just the portion of the shoe contacting the floor when the shoe is high heel. When the shoe is a flat, the pad covers the entire sole, up to, or including the heel portion. The protective pad 20 is made of any polymer such as silicone or PVC. The pad 20 also includes holes 24 for stitching to the sole.

The patent further describes the methods of cutting, bonding, and putting together the invention shoe 10, comprising the fabric 22, the blank sole 14,  the protective pad 20, and the upper 12. The patent also describes the extra steps required to include crystals as decorative elements beneath the protective shoe pads 20, directly on the shoe soles 14.

The patent Abstract is included below. A marketed women’s pump embodiment of the invention appears below the patent Figure 1.  

The invention provides a method for making a shoe having a decorated sole, which comprises: providing a sole blank for a desired shoe; providing a fabric having desired decoration, design, or insignia on a bottom side thereof cutting the fabric to a size which will cover the sole and wrap on a portion of an inside edge of the sole; adhering the fabric to the sole blank with bonding agent or adhesive and wrapping the fabric around the edge of the sole; adhering the fabric to the upper edge of the sole blank; affixing a clear plastic pad to at least a portion of the sole to protect against wear of the fabric by floor or street surfaces; and adhering the sole to a shoe upper to form a complete shoe. The invention further provides shoes having decorative soles made in accordance with the foregoing method. [Abstract US20160007678A1]

References
Lori Silverman Shoes (website)

https://www.lorisilvermanshoes.com/

CES 2024 - Invoxia Minitailz Pet tracker

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Invoxia unveiled the Minitailz pet tracker at the largest  Computer Electronics Show (CES) in the USA, meeting in Las Vegas, Jan 9-12, 2024, since 1995. The Minitailz pet tracker not only informs you of your pet’s whereabouts, using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, the Minitailz is also a biometrics pet tracker that supplies information 24/7 about your pet’s health. Health information such as respiratory and heart rates, movement, sleep and barking. Indeed, it is the first combination GPS-Health tracker for dogs, and soon for cats also. 

The Minitailz tracker is sold together with a collar, or separately for easy attachment to an existing collar. The Minitailz tracker comes with a monthly (8$) subscription-based app for monitoring and interpreting all the collected data.

The Minitailz pet tracker is a patented invention recited in the US utility patent application, US20230210091A1, titled Dog collar. The patent recites a non-invasive, intelligent collar with a neural network (NN), trained to continuously monitor the physiological parameters of a dog, such as heart rate (HR) and breathing rate (BR) and to separate the BR and HR signals. The collar further comprises a movement sensor comprising an accelerometer and/or gyrometer to capture movement data, and a storage unit comprising the trained neural network. A memory is configured to store physiological information. The tracker also has an interface to communicate all the collected physiological information, to a remote device.

Below the patent Figures 1 and 2 of the dog collar (1). Figure 1 shows a band (2) fitted around the dog’s neck and a set of electronic parts (3) adapted to the band (2), for monitoring the physiological parameters of a dog.  The patent Figure 2 represents a detailed view of the Figure 1 set of electronic parts (3). 

The electronic parts (3) comprise a processing unit (5) and memory (6). The electronic parts further comprise a radar (7) unit with a sensor, comprising a receiving antenna, adapted to detect a signal on the dog’s skin (8), preferably above the dog’s throat, in particular above the dog’s jugular and/ or carotid veins (9). The raw radio frequency (RF) signal (10) detected by the radar is measured by a single antenna. In other embodiments, three antennas might capture the RF signal, resulting in a three-dimensional signal. The dog collar also comprises a ballast (11) with a power source (4) for positioning the radar unit on the jugular vein. 

The electronic parts also comprise a movement sensor unit (12), comprising an accelerometer and/or a gyrometer. The movement sensor (12) is designed to capture the raw movement signal (13) of the dog’s collar (1). The dog collar also comprises a clock (14), designed to synchronize segments of raw movement signals with raw radiofrequency (RF) signals. The neural network unit (16), comprising artificial intelligence software, is stored in its own storage unit (15). The dog collar also comprises an input/output unit (17), for short-range radio communication, designed to transfer stored physiological data to a remote device via BlueTooth®. 

The abstract of the invention is included below. 

An intelligent dog collar for monitoring physiological parameters of a dog, comprising:
- a movement sensor unit comprising an accelerometer and/or a gyrometer, wherein the movement sensor unit is configured to detect raw movement signals of the dog collar,
- a storage module storing a trained neural network, the neural network being configured to determine a physiologic information into raw movement signals detected by the movement sensor unit,
- a processing unit connected to the movement sensor unit and configured to operate the trained neural network,
- a memory configured to store the identified physiologic information,
- an interface for transmitting to a communication device the identified physiologic information. [Abstract US20230210091A1]

References

CES 2024 

https://www.ces.tech/

Invoxia

https://invoxia.com/en-US 

Terminology - The other ADS 2023 WOTTIES and candidates.

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann 

In fact, the distinguished, 134-year-old, American Dialect Society (ADS) selects the Word of the Year (WOTY) in eight (no-less-interesting) additional categories. Words of the year (WOTTIES) selected in categories, such as the Most creative WOTY, the Acronym/Initialism of the year, the Euphemism of the year,  the Most useful/Most likely to succeed WOTY, or the Digital WOTY.   

Below, a copy of the list of each of the ADS Word of the Year (WOTY) categories, released to the press. The categories appear with indexed category winners (marked with an asterisk), together with the category candidates, including candidates in the Word of the year 2023 category, the winner of ‘em all. 

The terms are listed with their definitions, or expansions in cases of abbreviation. The numbers appearing at the end of lines indicate the number of votes, or runoff votes, when competition was tight. 

WARNING: Some of the terms are not for the faint of heart. 

WORD OF THE YEAR (2023)
 * enshittification: worsening of a digital platform through reduction in quality of service 68/92/158 
 babygirl: older male fictional character or celebrity seen as emotionally damaged, helpless, or vulnerable 10 
 ceasefire: rallying cry for those seeking a stoppage of hostilities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 29 
 context: word invoked by presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn to questions at a House hearing about prohibiting speech on campus 45/63 
 (derogatory): parenthetical comment humorously appended after a word that might not be expected to be derogatory 43/73/121 
 girlie: lighthearted and affectionate term of address for young women (also used in a broader more gender-inclusive way) 20
 Kenaissance: renaissance in the wake of the Barbie movie’s depiction of Ken (also Kenergy, Kenough) 14
 let (someone) cook: allow a person to do something that they are good at without interference 14 
 stochastic parrot: large language model that can generate plausible synthetic text without having any understanding 37/52 

MOST USEFUL/MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED

 * (derogatory): parenthetical comment humorously appended after a word that might not be expected to be derogatory 116 

cunty: having an audaciously exceptional appearance or displaying fierce femininity (from LGBTQ ballroom culture) 26 

enshittification: worsening of a digital platform through reduction in quality of service 37 

era: a personal period defined by a noteworthy style or behavior (esp. in in my X era) 30 

girl/boy X: way of doing something associated with a gender, as in girl dinner, girl math, boy math 55 

mother: (adj.) admirable (as a term of endearment); (v.) to perform something admirably (from LGBTQ ballroom culture) 16 

POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR 
* 🍉 (watermelon emoji): symbol of Palestinian solidarity used on social media 103/143 
 context: word invoked by presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn to questions at a House hearing about prohibiting speech on campus 61 
 hot labor summer/hot union summer: summer of 2023, when a number of unions went on strike 106/133
 I/P: shorthand for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict 1 

DIGITAL WORD OF THE YEAR 
* enshittification: worsening of a digital platform through reduction in quality of service 111 
 chat: collective term of address for those participating in a streamer’s chat 59
 gamers: second-person plural term of address, as on a gaming livestream 11 
 ice cream so good: response by TikTok streamer Pinkydoll to receiving an ice cream emoji 11 
 millennial pause: pause by a millennial at the beginning of a recorded video, as opposed to the Gen Z shake (shaky video at the start of recording) 45 
 skibidi: nonsense word popularized by the YouTube animated series Skibidi Toilet 46 

INFORMAL WORD OF THE YEAR 
* let (someone) cook: allow a person to do something that they are good at without interference 90/142 
 babygirl: older male fictional character or celebrity seen as emotionally damaged, helpless, or vulnerable 39
 (derogatory): parenthetical comment humorously appended after a word that might not be expected to be derogatory 75 /127 
 gyat, gyatt: exclamation expressing surprise, excitement, or admiration (esp. on seeing someone with a large butt) 12
 rizz: charm or attractiveness, now used as a combining form or blend component (rizzler, pre-rizz-toric) 60

 ACRONYM/INITIALISM OF THE YEAR (ad-hoc category) 

* FAFO (fuck around and find out): warning that foolish actions will result in unwanted consequences 177 

 AITA (am I the asshole?): question asked to an online audience (as on Reddit) to determine if the person is at fault in a situation 47

 IYKYK (if you know, you know): indication that something is a reference understood by a select group 14

 LFG (let’s fucking go): exhortation to action 26 

 MOOP (matter out of place): waste material left behind at an event (esp. Burning Man) 12

 

AI-RELATED WORD THE YEAR (ad-hoc category) 

* stochastic parrot: large language model that can generate plausible synthetic text without having any understanding 106/147

 ChatGPT: name for OpenAI’s chatbot, now becoming generic for generative AI systems 111/130

 hallucination: AI-generated response containing false information presented as factual 10

 LLM (large language model): machine-learning model trained on a vast text corpus 6

 prompt engineer: expert in developing text prompts for generative AI models 40

 MOST CREATIVE WORD OF THE YEAR

 * Kenaissance: renaissance in the wake of the Barbie movie’s depiction of Ken (also Kenergy, Kenough) 100/161

 assholocene: the current era of human history, defined by the ubiquity of assholes 42

 delulu: delusion, as in delulu is the solulu (delusion is the solution) 72/109

 tush push: quarterback sneak for short yardage perfected by the Philadelphia Eagles (also called the brotherly shove) 64

 EUPHEMISM OF THE YEAR

 * structurally restrictive housing: solitary confinement (rebranded by the New York City Department of Correction) 101

 artificial intelligence: computerized simulation of human intelligence that is not actually intelligent 60

 effective altruism: movement ostensibly to benefit humanity, used as an excuse for spending other people’s money 57

 free bird: alternative to “empty-nester” promoted by Gwyneth Paltrow 17

 stenographer: journalist seen as uncritically reporting statements made by officials and others in power 22

References
American Dialect Society (ADS)
https://americandialect.org/ 
Zimmer, B. and L. Sutton. (Jan. 5, 2024). American Dialect Society selects “enshittification” as 2023 Word of the Year. Press Release American Dialect Society.
https://americandialect.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2023-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf