The holiday season is in full swing, and we’re celebrating Christmas and New Year’s Innovations in our signature style with various Intellectual Property (IP) treats for kids of all ages. Before we open our immaterial Christmas gifts, however, everyone at the IP Docketers Group would want to wish all of our readers and clients a wonderful holiday season and a healthy, prosperous, and happy 2023. Put on your party hats and start having fun!
This year was particularly memorable because it was our 60th year of assisting clients in maximising their creative endeavours. To cover the entire IP globe, John J. IP Docketers founded a tiny patent law practice in Luxembourg in 1962. Since then, the company has enlarged its list of services and opened more than 20 locations on six continents.
We extend a heartfelt thank you to all of our clients, partners, and subject matter experts as this historic year come to a close. What’s the next step for us? The sky is the limit, after all! And what more exciting way to kick off the celebrations than with a bang?
A fantastic Christmas and New Year’s Innovations
Everyone has an eccentric buddy, but what happens when you have a strange assortment of friends together for Christmas dinner? Your party’s saviour could appear in the unusual form of a three-armed Christmas cracker. The patent paperwork for this innovative creation describes the suffering of feeling excluded from the long-standing British custom of battling over tabletop ornaments and embarrassing jokes. Although not exactly in those words, the examiners understood, and in 2013 they granted Christopher Eves a patent for his UFO-like creation.
The fact that there is still just one gift and twice as many losers in a tugging triumvirate is undoubtedly a drawback. But if all of that sounds like more waste than flavour, fear not—there is a brilliant fix—a reusable cracker!
More value for your money
How do you get a second chance after losing out on yet another pair of nail clippers? Try again after reloading your cracker. While this sounds like an exciting possibility, creator Bea Thackeray used a different approach to create her plastic-free, multipurpose party entertainment line. Her patent was the move by the need to address an entirely different technical issue: how to enhance artisanal crackers made by hand that were too sturdy (and attractive) to break.
She created a telescopic prototype only to find that Samuel Richard Fitch had already patented a similar idea in 1899! Thackeray discovered that form followed function after refining and enhancing her original design to do away with the necessity for tedious glueing. A distinctive cuboidal cracker started to take shape.
Crackers under the “Keep This…” brand were shortlisted in the 2022 Gift of the Year competition’s Ethical and Sustainable Gift category and got both a patent grant and trademark registration. Reusing a cracker has environmental advantages, in addition to the fact that you can choose what goes inside. Therefore, we are responsible for exploiting snow as an excuse for bad puns on Christmas. (Sorry.)
Frosty acted quickly
Speaking of snow, it only seems fitting to highlight the modest snowman. Of course, we all hope our snowy sculptures will be good enough to put on view in the corniest holiday TV movie, but in practice, they often belong in a house of horrors. Rolling three giant snowballs while maintaining their symmetry always looks like an uphill battle. Additionally, there is a chance that some buried animal “prize” will destroy the freshly harvested results of your labour. Thankfully, Giuseppe Mileto devised a solution to escape this unfortunate situation. Aside from “template[ing]” the creation of the “perfect snow” (a bold claim, to be sure), it is also healthy. Children have asked Santa for smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other high-tech toys that promise instant entertainment.
The kit consists of many different-sized hemispherical basins that may be filled by shoving loose snow into them. Alternatively, they can be dragged around the ground while capturing clean snow through a base aperture. The bottom half of each body segment easily glides out of the bowl after being filled. The upper part can then be pulled together and flipped onto the lower half. Repeat this process for each body part, stack them on top of one another, and presto! You have a perfectly proportioned, regal snowman that Michelangelo would be proud of.
Worldwide celebrations of Christmas and New Year’s Innovations
When you finish your filled turkey and crackers, your thoughts will naturally drift to the future. Additionally, given our global IP service provider capacity, we are especially sensitive to the distinctive and eccentric ways different cultures celebrate the New Year. These traditions cover a wide range, from hurling plates to eating 12 grapes and hanging onions on the door in Greece (Denmark).
Unsurprisingly, many customs revolve around food and wine, with Champagne drinking being one of the most well-known New Year’s Eve customs. The appropriate IP protections that Champagne wine enjoys as an Appellation origin contrôlée (AOC) in its home country and a geographical indication (GI) in many other nations argue at the beginning of this year. Wherever these IP designations are in force, Champagne may only legally refer to sparkling wines made in the French region of the same name.
If drinking wine is not your thing, consider easing into 2023 with a warm cup of South African rooibos tea or a platter of international meats and cheeses like Jamón Ibérico (Spain), Roquefort (France), and Parmigiano-Reggiano (Italy). For you to choose the ideal treat to adorn the platters at your New Year’s Eve party, GIs protect the quality and character of a world of flavours.
Observations and anticipations
Some are already anticipating gazing ahead as the wall clock starts its unrelenting march (batteries permitting) and the lengthy countdown begins. However, New Year’s Eve is as much a moment to reflect on the year that has passed as it is a chance to imagine the days to come. We now pause in silence to reflect on the 2022 predictions and plans that materialised and those that did not. Should an old friend be forgotten and never brought to mind, the Scottish poet Robert Burns penned in 1788.
The custom of singing Burns’ “Auld Lang Syne” at midnight on New Year’s Eve is practically ubiquitous throughout English-speaking regions of the globe. Fortunately, the lyrics and tune have long been in the public domain.
Here’s one more idea to rev up your evening celebrations before we say goodbye to another busy year. Why not start a lively discussion about what would occur if all intellectual property became permanent on January 1, 2023? But watch out—your visitors can become more boisterous than you anticipated.
Again, we would like to express our sincere gratitude and wish you and your family a good Christmas and a wonderful New Year on behalf of everyone at the IP Docketers Group. Until then, 2023!
