The specification and drawings of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/396,982, filed Sep. 20, 2016, specifically incorporated herein by reference as if set forth in their entirety.
The present disclosure generally relates to necklaces or lanyards, and in particular to a customizable, modular lanyard system that can be used in a variety of configurations and can be customized with multiple varying parts or sections according to user preferences.
Necklaces or lanyards, including simple cords or fabric strips have been used for some time both as primarily decorative articles, such as in the case of jewelry or costume jewelry, and, more recently for holding badges, tickets or other articles, suspended around the neck of a wearer. For example, at many conventions or trade shows, the old-style or traditional nametag in the form of a card pinned or clipped to a person's shirt or jacket or a sticker with simple printing of a person's name and company and/or other affiliation, has been replaced by necklaces or lanyards that can be looped around the neck of a wearer, and also generally can include badge holders or pouches to hold tickets, ID cards, etc. At some conventions now, such as Science-Fiction and/or comic conventions, it also has become commonplace for attendees to wear clothing with various character insignia and/or to even dress up, i.e., as a Star Wars® Storm Trooper® or the like, and more and more, the attendees at these and even more conventional trade shows and/or conferences are expressing an interest in being able to personalize and/or create their own looks to differentiate themselves and/or otherwise stand out from other attendees.
Accordingly, it can be seen that a need exists for a lanyard and/or similar system that addresses the foregoing and other related and unrelated problems in the art.
Briefly described, in one aspect, the present disclosure relates to a customizable modular lanyard system. The customizable modular lanyard system will include a series of interconnectable lanyard sections or pieces, typically formed from a fabric or other, similar flexible material, and each of the lanyard sections also generally can be printed with various graphics or themes. For example, the lanyard sections can be printed with different movie or video game scenes, or with pictures of characters from a person's favorite movie, science fiction series, comic books, etc. Each lanyard section further will include a connector at each end thereof. The connectors can comprise universal type connectors, rather than requiring male and female type connection parts. As a result, the ends of each of the lanyard sections can be connected to a variety of different lanyard sections. Each end of a lanyard section further can be connected to itself so as to form a smaller loop such as for use as a bracelet.
A series of selected lanyard sections can be connected together, based on user preference in terms of design, as well as length, so as to create a customized lanyard of a desired length for the user. At a lower end of the lanyard, a lanyard base can be connected. One or more articles also can be attached, such as by a spring loop, ring, snap or other connectors, to the base; or alternatively, an additional lanyard section simply can be looped through a ring or slot in the article(s) and its end connectors attached to the connectors of the base or to adjacent lanyard sections. In addition, the customizable modular lanyard system further can be designed/customized by its wearer through the use of slidable charms that can be placed on one or more of the lanyard sections and can be slidable along the length thereof. For example, decorative pieces such as a shield (e.g., a Captain America® shield), a banner, or other decorative ornamentation can be mounted on the slider, which further can include a biased protrusion, an adjustable clip or other, similar mechanism to fix the slider in place as needed.
These and other advantages and aspects of the embodiments of the disclosure will become apparent and more readily appreciated from the following detailed description of the embodiments taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, as follows. In addition, those skilled in the art further will appreciate and understand that, according to common practice, the various features of the drawings discussed below are not necessarily drawn to scale, and that the dimensions of various features and elements of the drawings may be expanded or reduced to more clearly illustrate the embodiments of the present invention described herein.
It will be understood that the drawings accompanying the present disclosure, which are included to provide a further understanding of the present disclosure, are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate various aspects, features, advantages and benefits of the present disclosure, and together with the following detailed description, serve to explain the principals of the present disclosure. In addition, those skilled in the art will understand that, accordingly, in practice, various features of the drawings discussed herein are not necessarily drawn to scale, and that dimensions of various features and elements shown or illustrated in the drawings and/or discussed in the following Detailed Description may be expanded, reduced or moved to an exploded position in order to more clearly illustrate the principles and embodiments of the present disclosure as set forth herein.
In one example embodiment, as illustrated generally in
In addition, the lanyard sections 11 can be customized further such as by placement of stickers, appliques or similar decals or embellishments that can be applied and attached, such as adhesively or by application of heat. As another alternative, users could select various graphics such as from an online website, or at the convention itself, order and have their own customized looks and/or printed scenes or other decorative effects created on a series of lanyard sections for forming and/or matching such sections to make their personalized lanyards L. Still further, the lanyard sections can be selectively printed with various thermochromic and/or photochromic inks and/or have appliques with such printing or inks so that they can change colors in different light conditions or upon contact with a person's body, to provide even more variation.
As further illustrated in
As illustrated in
As illustrated in
The charms 30 generally can be mounted to a slider 31 (
Each of the charms can be made of a plastic or synthetic material, such as a silicone or similar plastic material. In some embodiments, however, other types of charms, such as die cast metal charms or the like, also can be used. The slider body further generally can be made from a plastic material, although other types of materials also can be used, and typically also can have a reduced profile and/or size so as to be as unobtrusive as possible when mounting a charm to a lanyard section.
In use, for example, at a convention or trade show, a variety of different printed or decorative lanyard sections can be provided as can a series of different decorative charms. Users can simply select from the variety of different lanyard sections provided to create their own personalized, and/or customized lanyard L. Users can also select different length or size and different numbers of lanyard sections to create varying or different length lanyards as desired, and further also can select additional lanyard sections or utilize one of their previously selected lanyard sections as a complementary bracelet. Each of the lanyard sections will interconnect using the universal connectors at their ends to form a user customized lanyard of the desired length, with the distal ends of the bottom lanyard sections being connected to a lanyard base so as to close and form the completed lanyard with the lanyard base and its associated connector(s) at the bottom thereof. The wearer can clip their badge holder or other articles to the bottom of the lanyard, such as illustrated in
In an alternative embodiment, users could select, such as online before the convention or at the convention itself using a terminal or kiosk, various designs to be used or printed for their lanyard sections. The sections can be preprinted and a personalized lanyard assembled and mailed or provided on-site for each user or attendee, or could be printed or otherwise customized on-site. For example, screen-printing of the lanyard sections could be done on-site, or the lanyard sections could be provided with more generic backgrounds or scenes and heat-activated appliques or stickers selected and applied to the lanyard sections as desired by the wearer/user.
In addition, users can select and attach one or more charms, which can be slid and located at a desired position along a lanyard section. Users can select from available charms that they can use, or can bring their own charms which can be quickly and detachably mounted to a slider for slidable attachment to their lanyard.
Accordingly, it can be seen that the present disclosure provides a customizable and modular lanyard system that enables users to select and personalize or customize their lanyards or badge holders to provide a more personalized look and appearance.
In addition, while the foregoing description generally illustrates and describes various embodiments of the present disclosure, it will, however, be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes and modifications can be made to the above-discussed construction of the present disclosure without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosure as disclosed herein, and that it is intended that all matter contained in the above description or shown in the accompanying drawings shall be interpreted as being illustrative, and not to be taken in a limiting sense. Furthermore, the scope of the present disclosure shall be construed to cover various modifications, combinations, additions, alterations, etc., above and to the above-described embodiments, which shall be considered to be within the scope of the present invention. Accordingly, various features and characteristics of the present disclosure as discussed herein may be selectively interchanged and applied to other illustrated and non-illustrated embodiments of the disclosure, and numerous variations, modifications, and additions further can be made thereto without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention as set forth in the appended claims.
The present Patent Application is a formalization of previously filed, co-pending U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/396,982, filed Sep. 20, 2016, by the inventors named in the present Application.
Number | Date | Country | |
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62396982 | Sep 2016 | US |