The “IP Grab of the Week” award goes to Karsten Manufacturing (makers of PING golf equipment). This week Karsten’s application titled “Center-of-Gravity Shafted Golf Putter and Method of Making Same” published as US Pub. No. US2007/0042831.

The application is short and easy to read. To summarize: Karsten seeks to obtain patent protection on putters configured such that the shaft terminates at the CG of the putter head. This application was selected as the “IP Grab of the Week” because it makes a bold aggressive grab attempting to obtain broad patent rights.

I am sure everyone has heard the saying “if you're not getting rejected then you're probably not trying hard enough,” which is particularly true when it comes to patenting. Well, Karsten’s IP program appears to be “trying hard” and taking an aggressive IP strategy, therefore I am sure they know that there will be some rejection along the way, which is precisely what has happened to this application. The application is currently under rejection in light of some very close prior art. It will be interesting to see if they simply let the application die or go down swinging. Nice try nonetheless.

The following figures are from the Karsten application and nicely illustrate the concept of the shaft terminating at the CG.