Patent Application
20080176680
Our U.S. Pat. No. 6,971,963 discloses a toy that uses a ball on an elastic string, to bounce back toward the thrower. The ball can be thrown either against the surface or simply into air. The force of the elastic brings the ball back to the original wearer. This system uses a Velcro® based wrist strap, that can be tightened around a user's wrist.
The present invention teaches a toy formed with an elastic cord and ball, where the hand connection part is a glove.
These and other aspects will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein:
The general structure and techniques, and more specific embodiments which can be used to effect different ways of carrying out the more general goals, are described herein.
Systems such as our previous U.S. Pat. No. 6,971,963 uses a wrist band that connects to a user's wrist, so that a ball can be thrown and easily caught. This system is easy to use and inexpensive to produce. However, there may be certain limitations with such a system.
First of all, since the wrist band is used, the ball must be light and soft, because a harder ball could be difficult to catch and/or could cause injury.
Another issue is caused by the inconvenience of having to attach the wrist band to a user's wrist. If the band is too loose, it will fly off the wrist. This requires that the strap be attached each time the device is going to be used.
The present application uses the hand attachment mechanism as being a glove, e.g., a baseball mitt. A glove enables a different way of using this kind of toy. The ball can be made heavier, since it can be caught in the glove, e.g., the mitt. Even if a light ball is used, moreover, this provides some practice in using a baseball mitt. In addition, wearing and removing may become simpler, for example, it is much easier to simply slip on the baseball mitt, over a user's fingers, as compared with the wrist band which requires actually attaching and detaching. This toy also allows throwing the ball with one hand, and catching the ball in the glove on the other hand.
While the present device uses a baseball mitt as the hand attaching part, it should be understood that any glove or partial glove could be used, basically anything that fits over a user's hand and/or palm and/or fingers could be used as the hand attaching part.
An embodiment is shown in
There may be a padded area such as 110, which is padded with foam or other similar material. The baseball mitt may, as conventional, include other finger parts such as 106, 107, 108, and may also include a webbing part 109 that extends between the thumb portion 102 and the index portion 104.
In one embodiment, the baseball mitt may also include tied portions such as 111 between fingers such as 104, 106. The baseball mitt is open at its bottom portion 115, allowing the user's hand to be placed therein. Other stitching parts may also be provided.
As shown in
In the embodiment, the elastic 120 has an end connection portion 212 that is connected through the open area 211. In this embodiment, the attachment portion can be a loop formed in the elastic cord, either formed by feeding a portion of the elastic through the open portion 211 and forming a knot 213. The knot is preferably covered by a shrink-wrap covering 213. At the other end of the elastic cord 120, it is attached to the ball, for example by gluing or by any other technique.
In an alternative embodiment shown in
The elastic cord 350 includes an attachment mechanism 301 that attaches under that leather stitching. In this embodiment, the attachment mechanism includes a metal clip 302, for example a clip that has a deformable portion that maintains its closure, but which can be squeezed to reopen. The bottom of the clip 302 ends in a connection loop 303 which in this embodiment is attached to a swivel mechanism 304. The swivel mechanism 304 then connects to the elastic cord 350.
A connection to the elastic cord 350 is made by making knots or other types of connections between different sections of the elastic cord. A first section 310 of elastic cord extends through the bottom hole 305 of the swivel. In the figure, the section 310 is simply passed through the hole 305, with both its end pieces being connected to the second section 320.
The connection between the first section of elastic cord 310 and the second section of elastic cord 320 is made at 315. The connection at 315 may be made by making a knot or by any other type connection, for example by gluing. The connection 315 is then covered by a shrink sleeve 316 to avoid seeing the knot or fraying it.
The main section 320 of elastic cord may be between 2 and 3 feet in length. The section 320 terminates in another connection area 325, formed by a knot connecting to another section 330. The knot is similarly covered by a shrink sleeve 327. Section 330 extends through a central through hole 340 within the ball 130. Like section 310, this may simply extend through the connected part, back to itself.
As an alternative, there may be another interface 333 between the section 330 and a more rigid section of material that extends through a through hole 340 in the ball 130. The use of a more rigid material may facilitate a very small through hole in the ball. For example, the rigid material can be forced through a small hole in the ball, or can itself be used to puncture the ball.
According to another embodiment, the cord portion 330 may be attached to an interface plate which has a hole therein, and the interface plate may be glued or otherwise attached to the ball.
The general structure and techniques, and more specific embodiments which can be used to effect different ways of carrying out the more general goals are described herein.
Although only a few embodiments have been disclosed in detail above, other embodiments are possible and the inventor(s) intend these to be encompassed within this specification. The specification describes specific examples to accomplish a more general goal that may be accomplished in another way. This disclosure is intended to be exemplary, and the claims are intended to cover any modification or alternative which might be predictable to a person having ordinary skill in the art. For example, other gloves and balls can be used.
Also, the inventors intend that only those claims which use the words “means for” are intended to be interpreted under 35 USC 112, sixth paragraph. Moreover, no limitations from the specification are intended to be read into any claims, unless those limitations are expressly included in the claims. The computers described herein may be any kind of computer, either general purpose, or some specific purpose computer such as a workstation. The computer may be a Pentium class computer, running Windows XP or Linux, or may be a Macintosh computer. The computer may also be a handheld computer, such as a PDA, cellphone, or laptop.
The programs may be written in C, or Java, Brew or any other programming language. The programs may be resident on a storage medium, e.g., magnetic or optical, e.g. the computer hard drive, a removable disk or media such as a memory stick or SD media, or other removable medium. The programs may also be run over a network, for example, with a server or other machine sending signals to the local machine, which allows the local machine to carry out the operations described herein.
