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After over ten years of research and development, the filing of a Provisional Patent in 1999, the filing of the ‘409 Patent in 2000 (issued Nov. 25,2003), the filing of the ‘473 Patent in 2003 (issued May 27, 2007), the patent applications examined by numerous patent examiners, many rounds of communication with the U.S. Patent Office regarding the patents claims structure and patent function, many relevant patent searches by the Patent Office examiners, filing and winning an appeal (in the ‘473 Patent) and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent with patent attorneys, on patent filings, patent maintenance, product marketing and patent defense, our patent was taken from us and ruled invalid. It’s my opinion that I did everything that I was suppose to, that the U.S. Patent Office did their job as they were suppose to and the Judge in this trial didn’t.
The Judge stated, at the beginning of the trial, that no information
from previous cases could be argued in this trial and further ruled
that no information from the ‘473 Patent (second patent) could be used or even mentioned
in this trial (this was repeatedly objected to by my attorney). The rulings
turned out to be devastating to our lawsuit.
The defense argued that I intentionally had not submitted information
about stirrups, which function like these, for examination by the U.S. Patent Office
and that if I had, the Patent Examiners would not have allowed our patents to be
issued.
However, before the second patent was
issued in 2007, my attorney did submit numerous documents
to the patent office about stirrups with similar function as the stirrup in the
picture. This fact was known and ignored by the defense attorney. The Patent Office
had examined the information, allowed that the information was not relevant to the
patent, issued the patent and printed the information
in the reference section on the face of the ‘473 patent.
In the trial, because of the Judge’s ruling, we were not allowed to present that
information. Information that, I believe, would have proven the defense scenario
was untruthful.
The Judge ruled that the patent had been improperly filed and that
I “knew or should have known”. It was a Jury Trial and the Jury didn’t get a chance
to vote. Do you think there was justice?
I lost the Patent, not the invention,
not the Trade Mark and not
the Crooked Stirrupsâ secret. Crooked Stirrupsâ angled riding
stirrups remain “copied but never duplicated”. We have great, made in the USA, un-like
any other, stirrups to sell to honest people through honest dealers.
“A patent is like a chain lock on a gate. Its function is to keep
honest people honest. If anyone really wants to get through the gate, they can cut
the chain.” David Jones
P.S.
I’m very disappointed by the outcome of the trial but I have decided
that I am not going to “hate” over this. I don’t think you can hate enough to make
things better. But, I am also disappointed by a very venomous press release credited
to the defense attorney. In my opinion, it is the same kind of misleading attack
that was presented in the trial. Some of you reading this will have seen it. The
release starts out “Following a jury trial ….”. For the record, there was no “following
a jury trial”. The jury never got a chance to vote. You’ll have to decide for yourselves
if the rest of the press release is also untrue. I’m not going to try to justify
such garbage. |
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Why weren't stirrups always made this way? |
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