*** Today's Blog entry was written by long-time friend of the hobby- Joe Marasco. Joe has contributed to this Blog before and we were thrilled when he agreed to write about some patents he found for bobbing head dolls. For those of you who do not know Joe, he is one of the leading experts (if not the ultimate expert) on vintage hockey bobbing heads. He was very helpful and gracious with his expertise when we put the Bobbing Head Field Guide together a few years back. Many of the pictures are from his personal collection. We thank Joe and look forward to future articles from him.
By the way, we are offering the Bobbing Head Field Guide to all our customers and readers of this Blog for the low price of $7.50 (plus $5 shipping in the U.S.). It's over 500 pages of color pictures, tips on collecting and a price guide that we feel will be very helpful to both advanced and new collectors. Call 516-747-7932 or email sharlou28@aol.com to reserve your copy.***
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"Most Ideas or Designs Have a Patent" by Joe Marasco
Being a design engineer for Xerox Corporation and having received several U.S. Patents of my own, I understand how important it is to capture an idea for yourself or for your company so as to protect the rights to the idea. The focus of this article is on the research that I did last year concerning patents granted by the Japanese for the manufacture of bobbing head dolls. Have you ever wondered about the designation stamped "JAPAN PAT. # and the 6 digits" on the bottom of some of the 60's bobbing heads in your individual collections? These stampings only seem to appear on the underside of "GREENBASE" baseball bobbing heads manufactured between 1963 and 1965. I have never seen a Pat. Pending number stamped on hockey or football bobbing heads produced in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s. However, I did find a patent for a hockey bobbing head produced in 1962. Patents for both a baseball and a hockey bobbing head are depicted in the pictures presented below.
If you would like to see more baseball patents that I found, my website contains several patent numbers from "GREENBASE" baseball bobbing heads along with the teams associated with these designations. In addition, I have provided actual patent information for nine baseball bobbing heads and one hockey bobbing head along with individual links to these patents. My Patents Sections also contains an expanded explanation of the symbols and numbers contained in each patent. If collectors find different patent numbers on their bobbing heads that are not contained in my Patents Section, please send me the information and I will add the patent and its associated artwork to my website. The patents research project was time consuming but it did satisfy my curiosity and I hope it will provide valuable insights into the origins of bobbing heads for those involved in our hobby.
The link to my hockey bobbing head website is http://www.frontiernet.net/~hknodder/Index.shtml
and the specific link to my Patents Section is http://www.frontiernet.net/~hknodder/patents.html