Brier Ball and a Related Curling Patent

Recently, I found this patent, which describes a game combining golf and curling and I think it looks really fun.  Pretty simple concept.  Instead of curling rocks, you use golf balls and you putt them into the house.  This patent details a particular shape which includes other inclines (possibly to differentiate from prior art already being sold). 

Surprisingly, the only golf/curling game I can find online is Brier Ball.  I like the Brier Ball setup better than the one described in the above patent because it has a house on both ends, just like in regular curling, which I think would be more convenient.  However, this thing costs $995.  How many people have actually bought one of these things at that price?

How come no one has anything like this, but a lot cheaper?  I think a game like this would be really cool to have at a summertime bonspiel where you'd set it up outside the curling club and have golf/curling games go on while other teams are playing.  Or maybe I could just set one up on my lawn during a party.

I doubt you could patent the cheap version (due to the existing prior art, unless you got really specific in the patent.)  However, no cheap golf/curling game exists currently (or isn't marketed at all) and I feel like someone could make a decent side business out of this.

Update/Non Curling Post

Sorry for not updating recently (almost a month), but you know, the little curler does take up some time.  In case you're wondering, everything with the little guy is going well and he's, of course, very cute.

My other excuse for not posting this past month is that I started a new job.  (Woohoo!  More money!  More interesting work!)  Let's just say that my old job occasionally had some down time (and a decent amount of privacy) where writing my posts was a lot easier.  Don't worry though.  The little guy's going to sleep more and by the time curling season starts again, I think we can expect regular posts again. 

Until then, I have a list of interesting curling patents I intend to tackle over the coming months. 

2011 Golden Gate Bonspiel

I was not at the Golden Gate Bonspiel this past weekend, but my brother was, and I'll post some random thoughts on it.

• My brother did not get to play in the bonspiel, but has learned the lesson that it's a good idea to sign up for a bonspiel on the first day.  Incidentally, one of my brother's teammates got to play one game as a spare, but of course it was for the Saturday 7AM game.
• The bonspiel was held at the Sharks Ice at Fremont which is the official practice ice for the San Jose Sharks.  My brother hadn't been there before and noted that it was nice that they have a bar and restaurant there.  Apparently, the Oakland Ice Center is a public facility and therefore can't have the extras like that. 
• I was rooting for The Bond Girls: Bonus Edition, but it wasn't meant to be I guess.  It was good to see the Bourbon Cowboys make it to the B finals.  I wonder if I'll ever make it to the finals of any bonspiel.
• Probably due to the recent Norway/Loudmouth visit, my brother reported seeing lots of crazy pants.  Also, goldengatespiel posted this picture.  I don't know about you, but I can't imagine spending $325 for one of those jackets.

• My brother told me that he could say to people that he's the brother of StPaulCurler and there was instant recognition.  I thought that was kind of cool.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised as roughly a third of the hits to this blog have come from California, the most of any state/country.  I'll have to play at a bonspiel in California some day.  I would love to meet all of you in person.

Curling Patent - Tabletop Curling on Ice

This just seems kind of silly.  You can't really tell from the picture, but what's being patented is tabletop hockey, but on a table containing a refrigeration unit that can create actual ice for your game.

In the patent, they discuss the possibility of changing the design "to mimic the sport of curling."  They go on to say, "In such a case, miniature brooms and a miniature curling stone could be used on the sheet of ice". 

How would this even work?  I'm trying to imagine something like table shuffleboard, but on ice.  And while I think it might be funny to sweep a miniature stone with a miniature broom, I just don't think that would ever be practical.  Also, because you can't really replicate the physics of curling (heavy rock on bumpy ice) at the tabletop level, I feel like I would just go with something like the Cool Curling table.  This way, you don't have to deal with the added headache of trying to regulate the ice on your little tabletop.

So in general, I think this is kind of a ridiculous invention (for curling or hockey or anything else), but if you actually have one of these things, I would love to see it. 

Curling Patent Application - Instruments for Tracking Stones

Here's another interesting patent application I found.  (This is something I do at work when things get slow.)  Curling is only mentioned once in this patent, which is obviously targeted at golf, but let's talk about it anyway.  Here's a picture for the golf scenario.

This is a fairly long patent (27 pages with 14 pages of text), but I believe the gist of the idea is on a golf course, you set up lots of radio transmitters.  As a golf ball is in the air, radio signals will bounce off the golf ball.  This happens many times a second and by analyzing how all these radio signals from all of the radio transmitters are affected by the golf ball, one can discern the true path of the golf ball and its rotation while it was in the air.  Additionally, you can add other sensors for measuring wind speed, wind direction, relative humidity, and any other environmental factors that may also contribute to the golf ball path.

This seems really complicated and expensive.  I can imagine that there are easily thousands of dollars of hardware needed to set this up for just one hole in golf.  I can also see that an elite golfer could really learn something if all of this data were available for analysis. 

Back to curling.  As I said earlier, curling is mentioned once (page 16) in a list of of sports where this technology could be used.  This list also included a number of popular sports (including, inexplicably, boxing) so adding curling to this was a clear attempt to make the patent as broad as possible.  I'm not a patent attorney, but my guess is that if someone designed something like this specific to curling and patented it, I doubt there would really be an infringement.

But would this be valuable in curling?  I think you would need an empty curling club to make this work.  Otherwise, you'd have lots of people and dozens of rocks that would cause interference to radio signals.  But if it were possible, how valuable is it to know the speed and rotation of a rock as it goes down the ice?  I can see some value in that, but maybe not with a system like this.

The Norway Curling Team Visits the Bay Area

The Norway Curling Team was in the Bay Area last week.  My brother was there and recorded some videos.
First, here's a video of Christoffer Svae, the mastermind behind the pants.


There's no video of this, but my brother told me that later, there was another interview where Svae was asked what he thought about San Francisco and part of the response was "San Francisco women love the pants."

Here's a video of Markus Hoiberg, who is now the team's alternate:


Apparently, due to the popularity of the pants, Loudmouth sponsors the entire contingent of Norway curlers so juniors and all of the other teams wear something from Loudmouth.  And it seems that lots of people bought pants that weekend.  I'd be curious to see pictures from the upcoming Golden Gate Bonspiel to see if it's a huge collection of the loudest curling attire possible.

So there was a game where the Norwegian team played a house team that's local and it wasn't even close.  We don't have a final score because they stopped scoring pretty early on so it must've been really bad.  Also, one of the Norwegians said that there were more people watching this demo game than had watched the Norwegian nationals.

Anyway, it looks like it was a good time.   

Curling Patent - Electrically Heated Hand Grip

Similar to the first patent I discussed, this curling related patent also has to do with a battery powered heating element.  This time however, the heating element goes on the broom shaft.

Basically, what we have here is a heating element that can attach to a handle or shaft in a few ways (it could wrap around it, fit over the top, etc.)  There's a switch for controlling the heat and possibly changing the temperature.  There could be a little light for indicating if the device is on.  Pretty simple, but he got 18 pages out of it for the patent.  (Is that a sign of a good lawyer?)

While the idea seems to have been conceived in relation to golf, the inventor, Vaughn Marquis, also included a list of other possible sporting goods this device could be used with, including curling brooms.  It seems that Vaughn Marquis is also a patent attorney and the patent is written as broadly as possible.  For all you aspriring inventors, having as broad a patent as possible should help you derive some value out of it.  One embodiment he missed though would be heating up the handle for a curling stick.  (Go ahead and take the idea, aspiring inventor.)

I don't play golf, but I can see how this might be kind of nice to have on a cold day.  I can't really imagine though that the market for people who play golf on cold days is really all that big.  I like the embodiment of having a heated hand grip on a cane or on a walking stick.  However, there's at least one other patent related to having heated handles on canes.  I guess someone's figured out that's likely a much bigger market.

On the subject of having a heated hand grip on a curling broom, I can't imagine anyone I know using one.  If your hands are cold, you wear gloves or mittens and you might take them off later or when it's your turn to throw a rock.  And then there's the problem of dropping your broom on the ice and heating element melting that part of the ice.  I'm guessing your local ice technician would be unhappy if this happened.  What do you think?

World Senior/Mixed Doubles Curling Championships

With my mother in law in town, I was able to spend a few hours at the St. Paul Curling Club to watch some of the World Curling Championships.  Vice and I were worried about paying to get in because on the website, it says that tickets are $35 for each day.  We were thinking that if there was an even higher price at the door that we may not even want to pay to get in.  Fortunately, for St. Paul Curling Club members, the price is only $10.  (I asked if they needed some form of proof that we're members, but they said they didn't.)  The woman at the ticket counter was in Mankato for the Curling Club Nationals and actually recognized me and Vice from that (Kind of surprising, at least to me) . 

Vice and I stopped by the table for Shot Rock Curling.  In the center of the table, there was a pair of baby sized curling shoes.  Vice thought that my little curler should have a pair, but at $35, that's pretty steep (and ultimately useless.)  We learned that having the baby sized curling shoes in the center of the table has worked really well for Shot Rock Curling because somehow it just draws people in and they have to look at them, even if people aren't really in the market for baby sized curling shoes. 

On the first floor of the curling club, they've set up some bleachers in front of sheets D, E, and F, but they were somewhat empty when we were there because the US team was playing on sheet G.  Upstairs, they had chairs all along the glass and then long taller tables with high top chairs behind.  Normally, the club isn't set up for a large audience and I was curious to see what would happen with a big event like this.

Vice and I sat upstairs so that we could get some food and drinks.  We sat in front of sheets A, B, and C.  Korea was playing Finland in Mixed Doubles on sheet A, Estonia was playing New Zealand in Mixed Doubles on sheet B, and Russia was playing Australia on sheet C.  I think it's interesting to see all these random countries there.  I mean, who knew that there was curling in New Zealand? 

We were sitting by another St. Paul Curling Club manager.  I asked him whether or not I would win at least one game if I were competing in mixed doubles, and, unlike Dex, believed that I would win at least one so I thought that was a good (semi) vote of confidence. 

Vice and I were kind of surprised that the Championships didn't do all of the official type stuff we saw in Mankato.  The rocks were the regular curling club rocks and were not the kind with the hog line violation LEDs.  Also, the games aren't timed, apparently because they couldn't get enough timers so they just told all the players to go fast.  And lastly, the club's regular scoreboards are covered up with new World Championship type scoreboards, but with the scoring done in the baseball style.  I remember the club scoreboard first being explained to me five years ago and now I find baseball style scoring really foreign.

To sum up, we had a great time hanging out at the curling club for a few hours and talking curling with anyone sitting by us.  And we saw some close games especially with Estonia barely getting past New Zealand.  With a huge sigh of relief, the Estonia male player just held his arms up with his hands making peace signs after they clinched the win on the last shot.  Were I to ever play in a tournament of this caliber and actually win one game, I'd probably have a similar gesture afterward.

Curling Patent Application - Energized Curling Broom

As I talked about earlier, during the summer, I'll occasionally discuss patents related to curling.  What makes me qualified for this?  In my real life, I'm an engineer and I have one patent and one patent pending.  Also, I don't really see anyone else writing about this at the moment. 

For my first post on this, I've picked the "Energized Curling Broom" from Johannes Hoesli, US patent application 12/380884.  From what I can tell, this is also pending in Canada.  Let's look at the main picture:

Kind of a simple idea, right?  You have a "Device for Energy Transmission" which in the patent is described as capable of delivering, for example, "heat, vibration, or irradiation" that would then melt the ice a little.  It's wise to make the energy transmission device as general as possible just in case some new technology comes up.

However, I can't really imagine that with current technology that a battery that fits inside a curling brush would be able to power anything for an entire game.  Also, most updates to brooms have the aim of making a broom lighter (carbon fiber brooms, for instance.)  Adding a battery and the energy transmission device would add a significant amount of weight to a curling broom, which wouldn't be fun.  It would have to far surpass what you can get from an Equalizer brush head since you would have to work that much harder as you sweep.

I'm not 100% on the rules of curling, but wouldn't a device like this be illegal, at least for official type games?  Maybe no one's tried before.

For the several thousand it must have cost to file this patent in both the US and Canada, I guess I'm unsure the inventor would make money.  It looks like this patent was filed without a patent attorney, so at least there was some money saved there.  Also, FYI, this is actually the shortest patent I've ever looked at with only 3 pages, with only one page of actual text. 

What do you think?  Would you buy one?  I (and Johannes Hoesli) would like to know.

Updates from San Francisco

My brother has now played two games in his current five week league.  His team all has team t-shirts, which are very fun.  (Next year, you can see me play in the extra shirt he bought for me.)  They also all have Tournament Performance brooms.  Not sure if they all have shoes now, but two of them recently purchased the Olson Ole/Fly shoes, and I know they got some colors, but not sure which.  They're a very coordinated and prepared team. 

My brother skipped both of his past two games.  He won his first game, and even made a (lucky) double raise takeout that also required his rock to go through a pretty small port; they scored two for the end.  His team lost the second game pretty badly.  Apparently, the ice was also tough to deal with, but that's what happens with arena ice I guess.  A funny thing he said to me: "You're used to ice that you can see through."  I guess I am and I didn't even realize that one might play without that kind of ice.  Maybe at some point he'll remember a strategy decision or two and we'll discuss that here.