I almost cut my hair: Haircut Property

Patent

In teaching my 1L property course, I only spend about two hours focusing on intellectual property issues.  Today's class corresponded with a bit of insomnia last night and I decided to try my hand at the GEICO advertising challenge — to make a short video in only 15 minutes. Here is my first entry: 

 

Query: Can someone point me to attempts to protect a haircut or hairstyle with intellectual property? 

Here is my other video for the property course(it took about an hour to create):

 

These videos are intended for entertainment and discussion rather for any clear statements of black letter law. 

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41 thoughts on “I almost cut my hair: Haircut Property”

  1. 41

    thx ed, I’m having a bit of trouble applying that is why I asked the question. It is kind of a difficult determination to make.

    In the case at issue I guess the situation is a bit more complex. We have a guy that basically adds a whole new part onto an old part, thereby allowing a connection to be made to the new part and thus establish a connection to the old part. But, he is able to call the whole unit, new part+old part, simply by the generic name of the old part. This broadens the claim as the app wants, but would essentially make the claim cover embodiments where the connection is made straight to the old part which is inoperative since that doesn’t actually work irl, sans a miracle, or future developments.

    I just don’t know gd it. I think I’ll reject and get my spe to double check it.

  3. 39

    “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc6frwaMcjk&feature=related”

    Did you know it can make you cry?

    LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

  5. 37

    oh my god, the “so you want to go to law school” that is linked after the 2nd one finishes is great. “If you say the constitution is a living breathing document I may kill myself”.

  7. 35

    If I could only figure out how to log in using Facebook (doesn’t seem to work) you could see my avatar – and my long hair, LOL!

  10. 32

    US 7,854,234 – Method of setting up, caring for and later removing a temporary rasta hairstyle
    Claim 1. A method of setting up a temporary rasta hairstyle, said method comprising the steps of:
    (a) applying to the hair at least one roughening composition or at least one composition for making back-combing of the hair easier;
    (b) applying at least one adherence-increasing substance to hair tips and/or the hair; and
    (c) after the applying of step a), intertwining the hair strand-wise to form temporary dreadlocks in order to set up the temporary rasta hairstyle without essentially or irreversibly interlocking the hairs by:
    separating the hair into individual dreadlocks;
    twisting each individual dreadlock over its long axis;
    after 2 to 3 twists, dividing the individual dreadlock at the tips into two divided dreadlocks;
    separating the divided dreadlocks from each other to move the two or three twists toward the hair roots thereby intertwining the individual dreadlock; and repeating the twisting, dividing, and spreading of dreadlocks until the entire length of each individual dreadlock is intertwined.

  11. 31

    Many many examples exist.

    One favorite is US 7,854,234 — Method of setting up, caring for and later removing a temporary rasta hairstyle

    Claim 1. A method of setting up a temporary rasta hairstyle, said method comprising the steps of:
    (a) applying to the hair at least one roughening composition or at least one composition for making back-combing of the hair easier;
    (b) applying at least one adherence-increasing substance to hair tips and/or the hair; and
    (c) after the applying of step a), intertwining the hair strand-wise to form temporary dreadlocks in order to set up the temporary rasta hairstyle without essentially or irreversibly interlocking the hairs by:
    separating the hair into individual dreadlocks;
    twisting each individual dreadlock over its long axis;
    after 2 to 3 twists, dividing the individual dreadlock at the tips into two divided dreadlocks;
    separating the divided dreadlocks from each other to move the two or three twists toward the hair roots thereby intertwining the individual dreadlock; and repeating the twisting, dividing, and spreading of dreadlocks until the entire length of each individual dreadlock is intertwined.

    Try it today.

  12. 30

    I’ve read Tokai now. Not exciting after all. Depressing, more like. Lourie thought it obvious to put a spring-loaded, thumb-operated child-protecting safety detent on a barbecue lighter, while Newman didn’t. Bryson (I guess) spun a coin and went with Lourie. And there was me, thinking that this case might teach me how to help my mechanical engineering clients to determine whether their claim meets the statutory provision called 35 USC 103.

    They couldn’t agree on whether there was or was not a “nexus” with the impressive sales volumes, through Wal-Mart. But that, I think, was because the judges writing the opinions had already made up their respective minds on the prima facie obviousness issue.

  13. 29

    Well, here’s the solution for the poor guy with no hair under his hat: merely implant magnets into your scalp and then magnetically attach a toupee/wig/hairpiece! And your kids will find lots of other uses for the magnets in your head…like sticking daddy to the refrigerator door…

    link to google.com

  14. 28

    Over on Patent Prospector, a case called “Tokai” has just been put up. Newman’s dissent following the EPO-PSA “could-would” obviousness theory. I need time to read Tokai; the pdf of the Decision runs to 39 pages. Meanwhile, the inordinately long Hawk “summary” is no substitute for a nice posting here. Dennis have you got time to set up a thread?

    Does everybody else have to re-type their sender name here now, each time they post a contribution? Tedious, I find it.

  15. 27

    I was just noting the coincidence, pingster.

    Would you use one of these things to clean your own moustache?

  19. 23

    Dennis – I had almost that exact haircut/intellectual property exchange with my wife this past weekend. The spark is still there.

  21. 21

    More than one. First: the burden of proving your “impossible”. Second: assuming that is proven, the burden switches to the owner of the claim, to prove that the ambit fits to the extent of the enabled “contribution to the art”.

    But those are problems in Europe. Do they also exist in the USA? No idea.

  22. 20

    “Could we possibly get to the answer rather than all of you guys inane observations and questions? ”

    GIGO – sorry pal.

  24. 18

    I know right?

    But no, this is about more than the word comprising introducing all kinds of non-enabled embodiments. Although, you bring up the interesting topic of the fact that such a word should likely strick most claims with such language (though I’m sure there’s some clever decision that supposedly presents the court’s view as to why it doesn’t).

    Could we possibly get to the answer rather than all of you guys inane observations and questions?

  25. 17

    Nah, they clearly intend for the claim to be interpreted as broadly as it is clearly written. It isn’t exactly a hard claim to construe. Claim construction isn’t really at issue here. There is no real way to go “oh no, our interpretation of this claim wouldn’t include all those not enabled embodiments”.

    But let’s just say, for the purpose of the hypothetical, that the claim is correctly construed by me and covers all the embodiments which I believe it to.

  27. 15

    “a claim that encompasses many embodiments… The rest of the embodiments, so far as can presently be seen, sans some miracle, would be impossible to manufacture.”

    Gee 6, this sounds more like a case of (B)roadest un(R)easonable (I)interpetation to me…

  28. 14

    I have a question about enablement that I’m sure most can answer fairly quickly. Let us say we have a claim that encompasses many embodiments. And let us say also that one embodiment is enabled and appears to be easy to manufacture. The rest of the embodiments, so far as can presently be seen, sans some miracle, would be impossible to manufacture.

    Is there a problem with enablement?

  31. 11

    Ah yes, 4,022,227 is in my personal collection of funny patents. Of course one wonders if Gene Keady may have been a prior inventor of what is claimed in that patent

  36. 6

    My faves would be “The Jennifer” and of course, the classic “The Farrah”.

    Should the discussion be expanded to include trade dress?

  37. 5

    What a great didactic tool this format could be.

    BTW, when Dennis’ “trespass” ends, click the one on “So You Want To Go To Law School” —

    link to youtube.com

    Brilliant. But then, as a lawyer who has never gone to law school, I have my prejudices.

  39. 3

    What about a design patent on a hairsytle? Considering the low bar for getting a design patent, that might actually fly!

  40. 2

    U.S. Patent No. 4,022,227 to the combover. As mentioned in a Patently-O blog post dated in October 2004.

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