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.

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.

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?

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.