Patent Application
20180256997
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The disclosure and prior art relates to building brick devices and more particularly pertains to a new building brick device for allowing vertical and lateral building of toy brick structures.
An embodiment of the disclosure meets the needs presented above by generally comprising a mounting brick that has a plurality of sides including a top side, a bottom side, a first side, a second side, a third side and a fourth side wherein the first and third sides are positioned opposite of each other. A plurality of male interconnection members is integral to the mounting brick and extends away therefrom. The male interconnection members are located on at least one of the sides. A plurality of female interconnection members is integral to the mounting brick and extends into a surface of the mounting brick. The female interconnection members are located on at least one of the sides. The male and female interconnection members releasably engage bricks from a building brick system and may also engage male and female interconnection members of other mounting bricks. The male interconnection members is positioned on the top side and at least one of the first, second, third or fourth sides includes the male interconnection members.
There has thus been outlined, rather broadly, the more important features of the disclosure in order that the detailed description thereof that follows may be better understood, and in order that the present contribution to the art may be better appreciated. There are additional features of the disclosure that will be described hereinafter and which will form the subject matter of the claims appended hereto.
The objects of the disclosure, along with the various features of novelty which characterize the disclosure, are pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this disclosure.
The disclosure will be better understood and objects other than those set forth above will become apparent when consideration is given to the following detailed description thereof. Such description makes reference to the annexed drawings wherein:
With reference now to the drawings, and in particular to
As best illustrated in
Additionally, the Figures show different embodiments of the bricks 12 as will be more fully understand below. The mounting brick 12 may have a rectangular cross-section taken parallel or perpendicular to an axis of the mounting brick extending through the top and bottom sides. The mounting brick 12 may be cube shaped or may be elongated in any direction. The Figures depict variously shaped mounting bricks 12 though it is understood that these are examples only and the shapes of the mounting bricks 12 are not limited to that depicted in the Figures.
A plurality of male interconnection members 28 is integral to the mounting brick 12 and extends away therefrom. The male interconnection members 28 are located on at least one of the sides 14. A plurality of female interconnection members 30 is integral to the mounting brick 12 and extend into a surface of the mounting brick 12. The female interconnection members 30 may also be located on at least one of the sides 14. The male 28 and female 30 interconnection members are configured to releasably engage toy bricks 32 from a building brick system and to engage male 28 and female 30 interconnection members of other ones of the building brick assembly 10. Thus, while the assembly 10 may be used with toy bricks 32 already commercially available, the assembly 10 may include a plurality of interconnectable mounting bricks 12.
Brick systems utilizing similar structures for frictionally coupling together toy bricks 32 are ubiquitous in the toy arts and are found in multiple references such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,005,282. These toy bricks 32 may be found, for instance, being sold under the names Lego and Duplo. Generally, the male interconnection member 28 includes one or more male protrusions that extend upwardly from an upper surface of the toy brick 32. The female interconnection member 30 includes one or more recesses for receiving the male interconnection member 28 that would be found on the toy bricks 32. The recesses may be formed in any conventional manner.
In the assembly 10, the male 28 and female 30 interconnection members, unlike those toy bricks 32 discussed above, are positioned not only on the top 16 or bottom 18 sides, but also may be positioned on a perimeter surface, of the mounting brick 12, wherein the perimeter surface includes the first side 20, second side 22, third side 24 and fourth side 26. Typically, the male interconnection members 28 are positioned on the top side 16 and the female interconnection members 30 is positioned on the bottom side 28. However, only one of these might be provided and positioned in opposite locations than stated above. Alternatively, as shown in the embodiment of
In use, the mounting brick 12 is used as a generally conventional toy brick 32 which frictionally engages other toy bricks 32 which frictionally and releasably are coupled to each other. However, the male 28 and female 30 interconnection members positioned on the perimeter surface of the mounting brick 12 also facilitate lateral attachment and building with respect to the mounting brick 12.
With respect to the above description then, it is to be realized that the optimum dimensional relationships for the parts of an embodiment enabled by the disclosure, to include variations in size, materials, shape, form, function and manner of operation, assembly and use, are deemed readily apparent and obvious to one skilled in the art, and all equivalent relationships to those illustrated in the drawings and described in the specification are intended to be encompassed by an embodiment of the disclosure.
Therefore, the foregoing is considered as illustrative only of the principles of the disclosure. Further, since numerous modifications and changes will readily occur to those skilled in the art, it is not desired to limit the disclosure to the exact construction and operation shown and described, and accordingly, all suitable modifications and equivalents may be resorted to, falling within the scope of the disclosure. In this patent document, the word “comprising” is used in its non-limiting sense to mean that items following the word are included, but items not specifically mentioned are not excluded. A reference to an element by the indefinite article “a” does not exclude the possibility that more than one of the element is present, unless the context clearly requires that there be only one of the elements.
