Finding Inspiration at the U.S. PTO

If you are looking for novel designs that can be 3D printed, New York-based intellectual property lawyer Martin Galese has lots of ideas, and none of them are his own.

Mr. Galese instead has a very creative approach for sourcing his designs; he finds them in detailed drawings from expired patents from the U.S. PTO.

Here, for example, is a cutting edge watch stand concept from 1979, U.S. Pat. No. 4,293,953, which claims, ”an improved watch stand so that a wrist watch can serve as a night table clock when no being worn on a wrist.”

And here is a self-measuring bottle from U.S. Pat. No. 836,466, dated 1906. It’s incredible that the original designer developed this concept without the support of CAD software, and now it can be brought to life through 3D printing.

Mr. Galese maintains the designs on his blog “Patent-able” and as a collection on Thingiverse.

His work was recently featured in the New York Times blog, including a chopstick holder from the 1960s and a portable chess set from the 1940s. He told the New York Times, “If you look at the figures in older patents, the 19th century patents are really beautiful. They’re really works of art.”