Patent Law and Razors?

[mikej7193]

Hi everyone, I was planning on designing a DE razor or two, and I was wondering if anybody knew about patent law, specific to the designing of 3-piece razors and/or slant razors?

As far as I can tell, 3-piece razors are completely open for everybody to use now, but I couldn't much information about Merkur-style slants (twisted blade in the head, rather than the head at an angle). I would imagine that it is fair game, since this style dates back many years.


Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks

 

[mikej7193]

I found this link to a slant patent from 1916: http://www.google.com/patents?id=c_...=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

But I don't know how to interpret the date vs if it's okay to copy now

 

[mugio]

Like always the best advice is to go to a patent lawyer and have them do a formal search, especially with tech companies like Apple going after people for "design" patents. Of course one person making a few razors isn't really comparable to two tech titans battling it out but... If you start investing resources into machining, etc, you'll want a formal review done.

 

[smalltank]

+1 on a patent lawyer

 

[kcenorez]

If you're starting a business, get a lawyer to look into current patents and prosecute your patent for you (if you make something patentable).

If you want to see some notes on patent, you can pm me. I'm a law student, so I can't give you legal advice (and nothing in this post should be construed as legal advice), but I did get an A in IP and I have pretty good notes you could read if you only want a quick background on the subject.