Interesting Use of Design Patenting for Putter Surface Treatments – Congratulations Cleveland Golf

Last week USPN D543,599 titled “Top of Golf Putter” issued to Cleveland Golf related to the Never Compromise brand of putters. The patent illustrates a unique design patent strategy.

Many people seem to be surprised that one goal of a design patent should be to obtain as broad of patent protection as possible. Often people mistakenly only think of the “breadth” of a patent with respect to utility patents.

This is why you will often see several design patents directed to various aspects of a single club. For instance, a recent post illustrated a design patent directed to crown aspects of the Nike Sumo Squared driver, while a prior post illustrated a separate design patent directed to sole aspects of the same club. Additionally, consider that the ‘599 patent is not the only design patent that issued last week for this Never Compromise putter (see my prior post regarding USPN D543,598).

The following figure is the only figure contained in the design patent. As you can see, it is not the typical design patent drawing (and therefore it caught my attention).

To fully understand the scope of the design patent one must look at the description of the figure.

Congratulations Cleveland Golf, great strategy!
                    
So, which design patent do you think is the most broad? USPN D543,599 or USPN D543,598?

Dave Dawsey – The Putter Design Patent Attorney

PS – you may check out other putter design patents posts here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here

PPS – learn more about design patents here