Tire Hanger Example

Another recent example involves automobile lifts. One aspect of the invention involves a finger-like projection that travels up and down with the lift, so that when a mechanic removes a tire from the automobile, he has a place to hang the tire without bending over and potentially injuring his back.

This case was also transferred to us from another law firm. That law firm focused its claims on a tire support apparatus and a support body without regard to its use for automotive tires. That was a mistake, since the patent office was able to repeatedly reject all claims over a plethora of prior art, including U.S. 5618228 , U.S. 4776569 , U.S. 5078276 , U.S. 5887461 , U.S. 3883018 , U.S. 4101107 , and U.S. Des. 313544 .

Significantly, the feature missing from the claims was a key distinguishing feature over the prior art, and a key factor in marketplace acceptance. But rather than developing new language that claimed around the cited references, the previous attorneys kept arguing that the examiner was wrong. After several rounds of rejections, the applicant transferred the file to my attention. We filed new claims, and quickly obtained allowance on the following:

1. A hoist used in raising and lowering an automotive vehicle, comprising:

a moving member that raises and lowers along with the raising and lowering of the vehicle;

a mount body disposed on the moving member;

a hanger extending from the mount body, positioned, sized and dimensioned to receive and support a tire/wheel assembly removed from the vehicle and placed thereon while the vehicle is in a raised position; and

a vertical member, and the moving member is substantially perpendicularly cantilevered off the vertical member.

The patent issued as U.S. 66046101 . In due course we also secured corresponding method claims, including:

1. A method for temporarily retaining a vehicle wheel, comprising the steps of: elevating a vehicle on an automotive hoist so that a support arm disposed on the hoist is at about the same height as a wheel of the vehicle; removing the wheel from the vehicle; placing the wheel on the support arm; removing the wheel from the support arm substantially without bending over; and reinstalling the wheel onto the vehicle .

The point is that the prosecution was not especially difficult. It just required the applicant acknowledging the fact that that the patent examiner had uncovered important prior art, and then figuring out how to reword the claims so that the applicant circumvented that prior art to secure the coverage he wanted.