Mitchell Reel Museum Discussion Group

Does anyone know where I might be able to locate a copy of the original patent translated into English for "The Mitchell"?
I do have the patent in French but wondered if it was ever translated into English.

Thanks
Kind Regards,
Bill

Dear Bill,

When you visit the site, use smart search to find your patent. The title of this one is "An improved reel for fly fishing". Click on this title and then you will be able to call up all of the information you need via the Bibliographic Data box, top left.

JF.

Jeremy,
Thank you so much for your help. It put me exactly where I needed to go and was a real time saver for me.
Kind Regards,
Bill

Dear Bill,

Both patents are the same apart from the language.

As John pointed out, Carpano decided to patent in their own country and the UK.

John and I carried out some joint research on patents some time ago and what Carpano did was fairly normal for that time.

Nowadays the Patent Co-operation Treaty of 1970 makes it easier to obtain patent protection in several countries via WIPO. However in the 1930's and 40's it was not so easy, and it appears that fishing reel manufacturers usually limited themselves to obtaining one or two patents.

Regards,

JF.

Dear Bailarm,

That is very interesting. I have only ever found the French and UK patents for the original reel without anti-reverse.

Could you confirm where the information on the other patents can be found, and reference numbers?

Were these patents applied for in 1948?

In his book "The Mitchell Classic 300 Spinning Reel" Wallace Carney states that the US patent was applied for on August 3 1948, but that is the date of the UK patent and the number shown on the illustration in his book is of the UK patent.

Regards,

JF.

Sorry for the slow reply gentlemen.

I am at a loss as to where I saw the applications for other countries. I could have sworn it was on Espacenet but I can't find them now...the site seems to work a little differently these days. I haven't used any other patent search engines for many years so I really do feel it was indeed on Espacenet.

From memory one used to be able to access the original French patent from 1948 and other countries application numbers were near the top of the page and one could clearly see the country abbreviations in front of them.

What I do recall is that the US patent took many years to be approved....some 5 years I think. I seem to further recall other applications in Canada, Spain, Germany and Belgium....and I'm sure these were once accessible through Espacenet, yet a search on 'carpano et pons' now fails to find any of these.

I know that I commented on these findings on other forums and I would normally provide links, so if I can find those old posts I may find links...but will they still work, I wonder?


Be patient with me......

Hey Bailarm and Mates,

Here is an Espacenet link (click to view and then sort by date ascending). This was by using advanced search with 44 results found in the Worldwide database for: carpano pons as the applicant AND A01K as the Cooperative Patent Classification. The 2 original patents for the Mitchell Spinning Reel are included in those results. The “trick” is to know that A01K is the CPC that includes fishing reels.

Entering carpano pons in a “smart search” provides 662 results with only the first 25 shown (of 500 available to view). As you wrote, one needs to keep clicking “load more for export” to have more patents available to view. The original patents eventually do come up. I gather that once one has more than 500 results, unfortunately the sort function is no longer offered.

So yes, there are aspects of Espacenet that are not user friendly, however, IMHO Espacenet is an absolutely marvelous resource.

Respectfully, I would not limit review to just abstracts, as by definition they are very short. Using patent illustrations may be a quick way to rule out or in patents for more detailed review.

Later, I’ll do a reply about USPTO.

John

It would have been quite unnecessary for Carpano to make multiple patent applications.

What they did was sensible : patent in your own country and in one English speaking country.

Although patents were not international in nature at that time, the principle of "State of the Art" meant that it was not possible to patent an invention that had already been granted a patent in another country. So, the course of action Carpano took was sufficient to prevent anyone else from patenting that invention elsewhere. What it did not do was prevent manufacture of that invention in another country. In practice this was not a great problem because if someone else pirated your invention, it was a simple matter to stop this by later applying for a patent in the country where the "theft" was taking place.

In 1946 the House of Lords in the UK stated that the only people that could apply for a patent were the inventor or first importer.

The Patents Act 1977 in the UK defined "State of the Art" as all matter which has been available (in the UK or elsewhere) by written or oral description by use or in other way. The US has a similar definition of "novelty".

We must also remember that the reel manufacturers generally knew and respected one another so that stealing another's idea would have been regarded as bad form.

Carpano used the small line clip in the reel spool under licence, and this was clearly stated in the early owner's leaflets.

JF.

Dear Bailarm,

With all due respect we will have to agree to disagree on this subject.

I have carried out considerable work on this and I have no doubt that the original Mitchell reel was only patented in France and the UK. I have used Espacenet regularly over the last 3 years or so, and I am not aware of any changes in content during that period.

I am by no means a computer expert, but individuals much more computer savvy than me have failed to find the patents you think exist. Also, as explained earlier, it would not have been necessary for Carpano to make multiple patent applications.

If you can turn up some hard evidence of the existence of these other patents, I will be very interested.

JF.