Oh, patents! IKEA Play kitchen

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The IKEA Spisig “play kitchen with curtain” is a versatile toy. One side of the toy has a play kitchen, complete with sink, faucet, stovetop, oven and storage. The other side has a blackboard. Thus, children can play on both sides. The curtains on top also enable the blackboard side to function as small puppet theater. Indeed, the IKEA toy description further specifies:

“We call it a play kitchen, but what it actually is–that’s up to little imaginations. Maybe it will be a restaurant, café, shop or puppet theatre. Or something completely different.”

In any event, the IKEA Spisig toy is a patented design. The US design patent, USD924984S1, titled Children's kitchen, was awarded, on July 13, 2021, to the Swedish industrial designer, Maria Gustavsson, cofounder of the Swedish Ninja design firm.

Below, the Figures 3 and 4, extracted from the patent, together with images of the marketed IKEA play kitchen and theatre toy. The patent Figure 3 depicts the front view (kitchen side) of the design. The patent Figure 4 depicts the back view (theater side) of the design.

References
IKEA (website)
www.ikea.com
Swedish Ninja (website)
https://www.swedishninja.com/ 

Oh, patents! Kidrobot® Dunny™ collectibles (1)

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Founded in 2002 by the serial entrepreneur, author, filmmaker, designer, and programmer, Paul Budnitz, Kidrobot® is a custom, limited edition, collectible-designer-toy company that also produces signature apparel and lifestyle accessories. Dunny™, launched in 2004, is a blank platform toy, that was originally given to street artists to customize, and then sold as limited edition collectibles, ushering in the world 3D designer maker toys.

The name Dunny™ is a portmanteau term that combines “Devil + Bunny”, used in street art. The rest is history, because Kidrobot® Dunny™ collectable designer toys have sold worldwide, in partnership with mega toymakers such as Sanrio, Disney, and Hasbro,; as well as museums, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, for whom more than 150 Dunny™ art designer toys were produced. Additional blank designer collectible toys were made in partnership with famous fashion designers such as Louis Vuitton, Prada, Hermes, and Karl Lagerfeld. In fact, the original Kidrobot® company was acquired in 2014 by the National Entertainment Collectibles Association Inc., after having written the book on designer collectible toys in the adult world.  

Kidrobot® Dunny™ brings together art, creativity, 3-D printing and maker entrepreneurship, which means that such opposites are no longer conflicting forces for the founder of Kidrobot® and his friends. The artists commissioned to make the collectibles, and everyone else who has followed suit, making designer toys for personal or more lucrative purposes, or who have worked to customize the original blank Dunny™.

Below, the patented doll, with the head that rotates 360-degrees, and mobile arms, infinitely customisable, with big bunny ears for Dunny™, softer vinyl movable parts like Munny™, and lately the Superplastic®, superlimited, designer figures that are 3D rendered, becoming animated in videos. 

The recently expired US design patent  USD569454S, titled Doll, was originally awarded on May 20, 2008.   Below, the patent Figure 1 drawing, together with eight collector Dunny™ toys.  the dotted lines are not part of the claimed design. 

References

Kidrobot® website

www.kidrobot.com

Kidrobot® – About us

https://www.kidrobot.com/pages/about-us 

Kidbobot® blog

https://www.kidrobot.com/blogs/kidrobot-blog 

Paul Budnitz

https://budnitz.com/

What is a Dunny™?

https://www.kidrobot.com/pages/what-is-a-dunny 

Kidrobot® Dunny™ collections

https://www.kidrobot.com/collections/dunny

Superplastic®

https://superplastic.co/

Oh, patents! Squaregles® Oggs™!

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Squaregles® magnetic building-tile kits might be combined with manipulable, multi-piece toy sets with interchangeable parts, called OGGS™. These small cuties comprise three independent and cooperating parts: 1. a head with face features, 2. a base such as a toy robotic body part, or a toy car part, and 3. an attachment part such as a helmet or hair, serving to connect the head and base parts. The OGGS™ are thus designed to be manually, and easily, assembled, re-assembled, configured and re-configured, to roll around, or to stay put, according to a child’s fantasy play world, and available interchangeable parts.

OGGS™ are a patented invention. The US utility patent, US20190217212A1, titled Manipulable multi-piece toy, was awarded, on July 18, 2019, to Joseph Kelley and Noah Ornstein, both OGGS™ inventors. The invention seeks to provide a toy that is easily manipulated and produced, while still remaining customizable, adjustable, reconfigurable, and usable in different play worlds. For example, the OGGS™ spherical head part with face features is also made of rubber, so that it can be used as a small ball that bounces, or a marble that rolls around, independently from a base or attachment part.  Base or attachment parts, which once connected or reconnected to the OGGS™ spherical head, provide their many different identities, for example, as an alien, a robot, a humanoid, a pilot, a driver or boat captain. The patent thus discloses some of the possibly boundless OGGS™ assemblies and configurations.

The patent Figure 1 displays an exploded view of a manipulable, multi-piece OGGS™ toy 10, in a disassembled configuration. The disassembled OGGS™ toy configuration 10 comprises a spherical (head) part 12 with face features 26, a base part 14, embodied as a car with wheels 32, and axle 38, and an attachment part 16, embodied as a helmet. The attachment (helmet) 16, has a housing 50, with a hollow cavity 24, designed to cooperate with the upper portion 42 of the spherical (head) part 12. The base (car) 14 has a receiving seat or depression 20, forming a recess 46, designed to cup the lower portion 36 of the spherical (head) part 12. The spherical (head) part 12 is secured within the depression 20, of the base (car) 14, using the extensions 28 of the attachment (helmet) 16. The extensions 28, of the attachment (helmet) 16, are designed to cooperate with the tabs 30 of the base (car) 14. The extensions 28 of the attachment (helmet) 16, are further equipped with small beads 44, which engage the fastening elements 18 of the base (car) 14, comprising small depressions 40, on the tabs 30. Thus, children are able to snap all the parts together and to pull them apart, to exchange and reconfigure their OGGS™, in their play.

The scope of the Squaregles® OGGS™ invention extends to many varying bases 14, such as, for example, trucks, tractors, cycles, motorcycles, rail crafts, boats, personal watercrafts, snow mobiles, spacecrafts or surfboards, as well as varying bases in the shape of animal, insect, robotic or humanoid bodies. Likewise, many different sorts of attachment pieces 16, designed to cooperate with the bases 14, for the purposes of securing the spherical OGGS™ parts 12 (i.e., heads with facial expressions), also fall within the scope the OGGS™ invention. 

Below, a YouTube video, all about OGGS™, together with the abstract of the invention. 

A manipulable multi-piece toy having a spherical body that is removably captured between a base and an attachment member is provided. The base and the attachment member are configured to have portions of a coupling element associated therewith. The base also has a depression with curvature for receiving and securely retaining a first portion of the spherical body in its assembled configuration. In some configurations, the depression comprises a seat with geometry that mates with geometry of the spherical body. By one approach, the base includes a vehicular or figure body. In another aspect, the attachment member includes, for example, a helmet, a hat, a headdress, hair, horns, ears, and/or a mask. [Abstract US20190217212A1]

Reference
Squaregles® (website)
https://squaregles.com/

Oh, patents! Squaregles® frames

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The design of Squaregles® frames is also patented. The US design patent USD867263S1, titled Toy building frame, was awarded on November 19, 2022, to John Kelley and Noah Ornstein, both co-founders of Squaregles® and the inventors of the construction toy. 

The patent figure below depicts two embodiments of the triangular Squaregles® frames, where oblique lines represent transparent or translucent pieces, and broken lines represent aspects of the design, unclaimed in the patent. Images of boxed Squaregles® construction triangles, and of children assembling the magnetic triangle frames and panels, are also  included.

 

USD867263S1

As a reminder, a design patent only covers the ornamental aspects of an invention (i.e., what the invention looks like) vs a utility patent that describes how the invention functions (i.e., what the invention does). (MPEP Section 1502.01)

References

MPEP – Chapt. 1502-01 - Distinction between design and utility patent.   https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s1502.html 

Squaregles® (website)

https://squaregles.com/

Oh, patents! Squaregles® panels

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The designs of Squaregles® magnetic building panels are also patented inventions. For example, the US design patent, USD868169S1, titled Toy building panel, covers two embodiments of a Squaregels® tower panel. The patent was awarded on Nov. 26, 2019, to Joseph Kelley and Noah Ornstein, both cofounders of Squaregles®, and the inventors of the Squaregles® construction game. 

The patent figure drawings below show two embodiments of the invention design. The oblique lines appearing on one of the figures indicate a transparent or translucent surface, whereas broken lines, on both embodiments, indicate aspects of the design that are unprotected. The patent figures are shown together with the image of a marketed Squaregles®  set, showing the patented design panels assembled as a translucent yellow tower.  

Reference
Squaregles® (website)
https://squaregles.com/

Oh, patents! Squaregles®

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Pop! Click! Snap! Squaregles® magnetic frames, panels, bridge clips, and Oggs™, are all about building, imagination, problem-solving, and Getting lost in play®. Award-winning, STEAM(1) toy, Squaregles® is also a patented invention.

The US utility patent, US10918963B2, titled Magnetic building tiles, granted to Noah Ornstein and Joseph Kelley, on February 16, 2021, is one of a dozen patents, reciting the Squaregles® invention. Specifically, this patent discloses all the various toy-building components of the Squaregles® invention, in 95 patent figure sheets, the 15-page description of their endless combinations, and 44 claims. 

Compared to the prior art of toy building kits that might replicate a particular model, the Squaregles® toy building kits are designed to combine and recombine endlessly, according to a child’s fantasy and imagination-at-play. Furthermore, Squaregles® are not only reconfigurable, the building kits are also customizable and alterable, according to each child’s creativity. Thus, for example, the building tiles not only connect and disconnect, using magnets, clips or other means, the tile frames are also connectable to varying building elements. Similarly, tile panels can also be colored, decorated and graphically altered.

Below, the patent Figure 2 depicts an exploded square magnetic tile 10, comprising a tile frame 12 and an exploded tile panel 18 with two tile panel walls, 26 and 28. The tile frame 12, in Figure 2, is shown comprising two portions, 14 and 16, which may be connected together, using the connection mechanism 22. A releasable, snap-fit, magnetic connection 22, comprising two joint portions, 32 and 34, that are designed to mate. The snap-fit connection mechanism 22 of the two tile frame portions, 14 and 16, enables to securely bring a tile panel 18, together with a tile frame 12. Conversably, the snap-fit magnetic connection 22 is also releasable, so that tile panels are removable and exchangeable, when both portions of the tile frame, 14 and 16, are pulled apart.

The Figure 2 further depicts a series of brick-shaped magnets 20, inserted inside the sides of the tile frame 12. The inserted magnets 20 enable one side of a magnetic tile 10 to connect with the side of another magnetic tile 10, also square, or of triangular shape. Within the sides of the tile frame portions, 14 and 16, the magnets 20 might otherwise have different cylindrical or spherical shapes, so that they are able to rotate, in view of adjusting their polarity, when in contact with the magnets of other building tiles.

The abstract of the Squaregles® invention is included below.

A building system includes a plurality of building tiles and / or connectors that are magnetically and releasably connectable to one another. The magnetic building tiles are comprised of a tile frame and a tile panel. The tile frame, by one approach, is comprised of two connectable frame portions or elements having magnets embedded therein. The first and second frame elements are connectable to one another through a snap, clip, or another similar connection mechanism. The first and second frame elements are connectable around or into the tile panel, which is removable from the magnetic building tile. The tile panel or the tile frame has a channel into which the other of the tile panel or tile frame extends to secure the two pieces together. In another approach, the tile frame is a single element and the tile panel may snap or attach thereto, such as, for example, through fasteners or friction. [Abstract US10918963B2]

Note

(1) The Acronym STEAM indicates a toy that requires the application of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math, while building.

Reference
Squaregles® (website)
https://squaregles.com/

Oh patents! My Special Aflac Duck® (2)

Copyright© Françoise Herrmann 

In addition to utility patents, Sproutel’s My Special Aflac Duck® was also awarded a US design patent. The American Family Life Assurance Company (AFLAC) filed an application for a US design patent on January 5^th 2018. The US design patent, USD846040S1, was granted on April 16^th 2019, awarded to a team of seven inventors, and assigned to AFLAC, for a duration of 15 years.

As a reminder, a design patent covers the ornamental aspects of an invention, or how an invention looks. In contrast, a US utility patent covers the functional aspects of an invention, how the invention works, and/or is fabricated.  Per the USPTO Manual of Patent Examination Procedure:

 “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]].

Below, the patent Figure 1 of 11 drawings, showing a perspective view of the duck with beak open. The eyes, feet, and sensor, on the duck’s chest, are drawn with broken lines to indicate that they are excluded from the claimed design. Such components of the duck are covered in utility patens related to the animatronic and user interface aspects of the invention. A YouTube video of My Special Aflac Duck®, helping kids cope with a cancer diagnosis, is also included below. 

References

My Special Aflac Duck®  https://aflacchildhoodcancer.org/myduck.cfm

Sproutel Inc.  https://www.sproutel.com/

USPTO MPEP – Chapt. 1502-01 – Distinction between design and utility patent.
https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s1502.html

Oh, patents! Creative Tonies® (2)

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Disney Pixar, children's classics and bestselling characters, the unlinked mosaic below displays an inexhaustive sample of the many available Creative Tonies®, aka patented identification carriers for the patented Toniebox® toy. 

References

Tonies (website) https://us.tonies.com/