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Nice Patent Reexamination Example from the Golf Industry (A Polite Way of Saying? Here is a Good Example of Competitors Trying to Sink Each Others? Golf Patents)

By David Dawsey PE Esq

It is hard to believe that is has been over a year since I authored a post titled ?Bust Your Competitors? Patents? regarding the patent reexamination process. Since that post many of you have probably learned a little more about the process simply by following my coverage of the Callaway v. Titleist ProV1 golf ball patent dispute. Well, recently a Request for Ex Parte Reexamination was approved by the USPTO regarding a push golf cart design patent, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to share this golf patent reexamination example with the Golf-Patents readers.

Back in November a Request for Ex Parte Reexamination was filed regarding USPN D502303 titled ?Golf Cart.? The golf cart in question is shown below:

The ?303 patent is assigned to Sports World Enterprises of Taiwan.  

One of the unique characteristics of Ex Parte Reexamination requests, as opposed to Inter Partes Reexamination requests, is that the request can be made in relative anonymity. In other words, the party that is funding the request does not have to reveal their identity, although the identity of the attorney filing the request is public information. Thus, Sports World Enterprises does not know which of their competitors is trying to sink the design patent.

If you are the curious type you can click HERE to review the file wrapper of the reexamination proceeding (browse from the last page toward the first). A quick review of the file wrapper reveals that the party requesting reexamination of the patent wants the USPTO to consider a golf cart design that appeared in the 2003 Bag Boy Company catalog. Thus, one could speculate that Bag Boy is the party behind the reexamination request; but that would be one heck of a leap of faith (and not one that I would not be willing to take). In fact, an anonymous reexamination requester could easily prepare the request and the associated prior art in a manner that would lead the patent owner to incorrectly speculate on the identity of the party behind the request (one rather devious way to cause bad blood among the competition).

Isn?t intellectual property fun?

David Dawsey  - Reexamining Patents

Full post as published by Golf Patents on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).