Patent Application
20150135449
The following is a tabulation of some prior art that presently appears relevant:
This invention relates to the soles, specifically to the protection of leather soled shoes. Consumers of leather soled footwear are constantly looking for effective methods to protect the soles of their shoes, since damage is often inevitable when shoes are worn on abrasive surfaces. The two most common materials that shoe soles are made out of are leather and rubber. Generally, leather soled shoes are more expensive than rubber soled shoes. Consumers often look at a quality pair of leather shoes as an investment. However, one of the major disadvantages to wearing shoes with a leather sole is that the sole gets damaged far more quickly than rubber soled shoes. The leather sole quickly attracts dirt, grime, scratches, and scrapes from contact with the ground. After only a few wears the soles of leather shoes often become very unattractive, dirty, dingy, and old looking. In addition to seeking protection for the soles of their shoes, many consumers like to keep the look and feel of the original sole.
For years consumers have addressed this issue using various methods. The most common method is having the shoe “resoled.” In order to have your shoes resoled, one must take their shoes to a professional shoe repair shop and have the sole replaced after the damage has already occurred. Furthermore, they can also send their shoes to a professional shoe repair shop to have a rubber overlay placed on the sole of their shoe. These methods are very inconvenient to the consumer, as they need to be administered by a professional. Also, these methods can be time consuming.
Other protective measures for the soles of shoes have been proposed, the most relevant is U.S. Pat. No. 4,587,746 by Williams. This patent relates to a metal shoe tap which is secured to the sole of the shoe. Although the metal tap provides some level of protection, it also presents several disadvantages. First, the metal used to cover the sole can often be heavy and present some discomfort to the user during wear. Second, the application of the sole tap, is not something which often requires screws and is not something which can be easily self applied by the user. Lastly, the metal tap covers the original sole. For example, if a woman has a colored shoe sole she does not want to cover, this metal tap will hide the original sole. This is often undesirable for consumers of luxury footwear, who are opposed to covering the original sole.
A method of protecting the soles of shoes using a transparent adhesive, allowing footwear consumers to preserve the original sole.
Several advantages of one or more aspects are as follows: to provide protection for the soles of leather shoes that is convenient and easy for the consumer to self apply, that can be used on various type of leather soled shoes, that does not require the user to replace the original sole of their shoe, prolongs the life of leather soled shoes. Other advantages of one or more aspects will be apparent from a consideration of the drawings and subsequent descriptions.
The two drawings are closely related figures, therefore having the same number but different alphabetical suffixes.
1. Adhesive film
2. Sole of a shoe
Accordingly, the reader will see that the method of using a transparent adhesive provides a more effective, convenient, and economical solution to protecting the soles of leather soled shoes. In addition, when a consumers uses a transparent adhesive prior to wearing a new pair of shoes, they are able to prevent the leather sole from having direct contact with the ground, dirt, or abrasive surface Furthermore the method of using a transparent adhesive has the additional advantages in that:
Although the description above contains many specifics, these should not be construed as limiting the scope of the embodiments but merely providing illustrations of several embodiments.
Thus the scope of the embodiments should be determined by the appended claims and their legal equivalents, rather than by the examples given.
This application claims the benefit of provisional patent application Ser. No. 61/796,637, filed Nov. 17, 2012 by the present inventor.
