Patent application number | Description | Published |
20120104705 | Ice Skate Blade - Ice skate blades represent the sole interface between a skater and the ice, a thin line of contact that must generate sufficient friction to melt the ice to allow gliding but not add drag under one state of usage and in another generate sufficient traction to support sharp turns and stopping. Today's skate blades have a single hollow of predetermined profile across their width terminating in sharp edges at the outer limits of the skate blade. However, improved performance at both the competitive and recreational levels of skating and hockey in terms of the athletes and their sporting equipment has not followed through into the ice skate blade despite significant innovations in the skate boots. Accordingly it would be beneficial to provide increased design flexibility by allowing multiple hollows per blade such that the performance can be adjusted between inner and outer edges as well as across the entire width. | 05-03-2012 |
20120108151 | Multiple Blade Sharpening Apparatus and Method - The competitive and technological evolution of sports with ice skates such as ice hockey, speed skating, and figure skating as well as the conditioning and training of these athletes places increased demands on their equipment. Amongst these are the ability to vary the blade profile at different points to increase speed, agility, acceleration, etc according to the sport and the athlete's personal preferences. In many instances matching left and right blades is also important. In contrast in amateur sports where users access retail skate sharpening services speed or service and cost of service is important. A system and method are taught for simultaneously profiling both blades of user for increasing speed and reducing cost in retail environments whilst aligning there profiles in more professional applications. The method further allows for profiles to vary in cross-section along the length of the blade. | 05-03-2012 |
20120149488 | GOLF CLUB HOSEL - Golf is a massive industry as well as sport globally with golfers investing in continuous evolutions and modifications to golf clubs with sensitivity to weight of a few grams, offset in angle of a degree, “feel” etc. Prior art designs focused to the golf club head, grip, and in a few instances the shaft. However, considerations of accurate alignment between the elements during initial assembly/replacement are not addressed. It is, therefore, desirable to provide a means of assembling a golf club shaft that provides for an accurate alignment between the multiple elements such that alignment between them is established, can be maintained with replacements, and also allows for meaningful adjustments in the grip and head to be achieved as multiple other factors do not confound the desired interpretation of the impact of an adjustment. Accordingly the invention provides for such alignment between multiple elements of a golf club. | 06-14-2012 |
20120149490 | GOLF CLUB SHAFT - Golf is a massive industry as well as sport globally with golfers investing in continuous evolutions and modifications to golf clubs with sensitivity to weight of a few grams, offset in angle of a degree, “feel” etc. Prior art designs focused to the golf club head, grip, and in a few instances the shaft. However, considerations of accurate alignment between the elements during initial assembly/replacement are not addressed. It is, therefore, desirable to provide a means of assembling a golf club shaft that provides for an accurate alignment between the multiple elements such that alignment between them is established, can be maintained with replacements, and also allows for meaningful adjustments in the grip and head to be achieved as multiple other factors do not confound the desired interpretation of the impact of an adjustment. Accordingly the invention provides for such alignment between multiple elements of a golf club. | 06-14-2012 |
20120190473 | VARIABLE STIFFNESS SPORTS EQUIPMENT - Many sports rely upon the use by the sportsperson of one or more pieces of sports equipment such as bats, rackets, clubs, boards etc. Typically these items of sports equipment employ a shaft having predetermined geometry and properties established by the materials used to manufacture the equipment. However, the sportsperson typically uses these over a wide range of conditions rather than a narrow range that provides constraints on the design of conventional sports equipment. According to embodiments of the invention sports equipment are implemented with multiple elements within the shaft such that the stiffness of the item varies with induced flexure arising from use. As such under one range of motion the item exhibits stiffness characterized by a first Young's modulus and under a second range of motion the item exhibits stiffness characterized by a second Young's modulus. | 07-26-2012 |
20120233838 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR INCREASING AND ADJUSTING DISTRIBUTION OF WEIGHT WITHIN A GOLF CLUB HEAD - Every amateur golfer wishes to improve their game. Doing so is usually achieved through significant practice and the hit-and-miss search for the right golf club. Accordingly to embodiments of the invention golf clubs imparting increased driving range through an overall increase in the mass of the golf club are presented. Additional aspects of the invention relate to achieving this without imparting a corresponding reduction in the swing velocity as well as providing for the addition of the mass a manner that reduces the tendency for the golfers swing to change, and allows for adjustment to address their natural tendency to hook or slice. As such the additional mass added to a driver may, according to embodiments of the invention, be compensated by the adjustment in the balance of the golf club and allowing for the additional mass to be added non-uniformly to the golf club head. | 09-20-2012 |
20120255477 | METHODS AND DEVICES FOR PERSONAL WATER CRAFT - Jet-powered water craft have become popular recreational pleasure craft for people worldwide as well as providing rapid response in a water environment for life savers, police, customs, etc. However, once the throttle has been cut there is no braking or steering mechanism for such craft. Equally such braking or steering is limited at low speeds. Accordingly it would be beneficial to provide means for braking and/or steering such jet-powered water craft under low speed operation and/or when the throttle is cut. According to embodiments of the invention such mechanisms are provided whilst providing for ease of use during operation as well as beaching/launching/storage. | 10-11-2012 |
20120256388 | METHODS OF VEHICLE SUSPENSION - Suspension systems must tradeoff multiple purposes including contributing to the vehicle's road holding/handling and braking for good active safety and driving pleasure as well as keeping vehicle's user(s) comfortable and reasonably well isolated from road noise, bumps, and vibrations, etc. Over the past 100 years many suspension systems have evolved but have in common the disposition of the hock absorber between the wheel and the fulcrum point of the wheel mounting to the vehicle. It would be, however, be beneficial to provide a suspension exploiting a dual-shock system wherein the two shock absorbers are in opposite states so that even under absorption of the vertical shock from the road surface there was still applied additional force for road contact to be maintained. It can also be shown to be beneficial in single-shock systems to place the shock the opposite side of the fulcrum point of the suspension system, counter to previous prior art solutions. | 10-11-2012 |
20120279603 | BLOW OUT PREVENTER METHOD AND APPARATUS - Existing BOP devices are complex electromechanical systems exploiting hydraulic activation of pipe rams and/or shear rams. With tens of thousands of oil wells in the 1,500 oil fields that account for 97% of global production of the over 40,000 oil fields identified to date and failure rates as high as 50% in disaster situations it is evident that a simpler, increased reliability approach would be beneficial to the oil and gas industries. It would be further beneficial if the BOP was automatic requiring no monitoring locally to the BOP or remotely from the rig or production facility. | 11-08-2012 |
20120282092 | METHOD AND DEVICES FOR COMPACT FORCED VELOCITY TURBINES - Betz's law establishes an efficiency limit of 0.59 for wind turbines. Increasing turbine output power requires making the blades larger thereby increasing the radius of the turbine, which increases power by that factor squared, or by increasing the velocity of the air which increases the power according to that factor cubed. It would be beneficial to provide a wind turbine that overcame some of the disadvantages of prior art horizontal and vertical turbines including but not limited to, installation infrastructure, operation in non-laminar flow environments, operation over a wider range of air velocities, operation in low air velocity that defines many regions of the world and continental United States, and capable of supporting installations over a wide range of instances from discrete residential/commercial installations to large wind farms as well as providing increased output power through increased air velocities generated within the turbines. | 11-08-2012 |
20120292055 | PRESSURE ASSISTED OIL RECOVERY - Estimates of global total “liquid” hydrocarbon resources are dominated by structures known as oil sands or tar sands which represent approximately two-thirds of the total recoverable resources. This is despite the Canadian Athabasca Oil Sands, which dominate these oil sand based reserves at 1.7 trillion barrels, are calculated at only 10% recovery rate. However, irrespective of whether it is the 3.6 trillion barrels recoverable from the oil sands or the 1.75 trillion barrels from conventional oil reservoirs worldwide, it is evident that significant financial return and extension of the time oil is available to the world arise from increasing the recoverable percentage of such resources. According to embodiments of the invention pressure differentials are exploited to advance production of wells, adjust the evolution of the depletion chambers formed laterally between laterally spaced wells to increase the oil recovery percentage, and provide recovery in deeper reservoirs. | 11-22-2012 |
20120312548 | IN-BORE BLOW OUT PREVENTER METHOD AND APPARATUS - Existing BOP devices are complex electromechanical systems exploiting hydraulic activation of pipe rams and/or shear rams. With tens of thousands of oil wells in the 1,500 oil fields that account for 97% of global production of the over 40,000 oil fields identified to date and failure rates as high as 50% in disaster situations it is evident that a simpler, increased reliability approach would be beneficial to the oil and gas industries. It would be further beneficial if the BOP was automatic requiring no monitoring locally to the BOP or remotely from the rig or production facility. | 12-13-2012 |
20120322536 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CARD GAMES - Over hundreds of years card games have been the source of amusement, argument, and financial gain/loss to players. Today casino, gaming machine and online gaming represent a multi-billion dollar industry. In online and live poker for example the initial stages where a larger number of players are involved can be time consuming and not present the “hook” to keep the individuals attention either to watch how the play progresses or engage in playing online. Accordingly it would be beneficial to provide a mechanism that accelerated the early stage of the game. Further, card games are played at multiple levels of experience. It would therefore be beneficial to provide a mechanism within a game of poker for players at multiple skill levels that added a degree of equalizing their skill/experience by incorporating elements that were independent of or reduced dependency upon their skill/experience or required. | 12-20-2012 |
20130138956 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS OF AUTOMATIC MULTIMEDIA TRANSFER AND PLAYBACK - Digital rights management to protect copyrighted materials is a common element of consumers accessing content for a variety of uses including business and recreational. Such techniques have been generally deployed on small items of multimedia content such as individual tracks of music. However, at present despite the penetration of portable electronic devices for texting, telephony, email, and music their use by consumers for video, film, and large multimedia content has been limited in part due to the issues of downloading and handling individual files of hundreds or thousands of MB. It would therefore be beneficial to provide a means to download large multimedia content files and render these upon a variety of portable electronic devices whilst allowing the downloaded multimedia content to be securely stored within a portable memory device allowing the user to render the content upon their own electronic devices or other electronic devices without re-distributing the content. | 05-30-2013 |
20130179304 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR NOTIFICATIONS RELATING TO CONSUMER ACTIONS - Shopping, the examining and purchase of goods or services from retailers is considered a leisure activity and an economic one with some people considering it recreational and therapeutic and others a task of inconvenience and vexation. Except for the advent of the Internet the fundamentals of shopping have not changed for centuries. However, at the same time the Internet provides unprecedented access to information such as maps, inventory, and pricing to users with fixed and portable electronic devices. Embodiments of the invention allow users to define needs and preferences against which the software application and software system establish results which may be presented to the user in a variety of formats allowing users to plan shopping activities to meet their preferences which may include visiting minimum number of outlets, travelling minimum distance within shopping environment, lowest cost, and stock of outlets as well as comparing Internet and “bricks-and-mortar” retail outlets. | 07-11-2013 |
20130269799 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR USER NOTIFICATION - Domestic uses of hot water are cooking, cleaning, bathing, and space heating. However, boiling water burns and even below 88° C. burns from hot water, commonly referred to as scalding, occur quickly in a matter of seconds. Even at lower temperatures whilst the time for burns increases for older people and children serious scalds can still occur due to disabilities or slow reaction times. Accordingly, embodiments of the invention provide visual indications of the temperature of water within a faucet or provide an in-line thermal restrictor. | 10-17-2013 |