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In reference to the patent: US20130062225
I see 19 cited patents, will this get approved? I see many wrist and forearm tools which are magnetic, just by simply stating you can mix makeup on a flat surface deserves a patent? Will this get approved or is it obvious?
I see 19 cited patents, will this get approved?
Hopefully the main independent claim will not make it through unamended (see my analysis below).
[Does] simply stating you can mix makeup on a flat surface deserve[] a patent?
Probably not, because it's hard to imagine that no wrist-mounted flat surfaces capable of "receiv[ing] a product" were described before Sep, 2011. But someone has to do the work of actually finding prior art. Otherwise, inventors would be arbitrarily deprived of patent rights, which is IMHO a greater evil. Note that prior art need only show a flat surface that is actually capable of receiving a product, and need not describe that use in particular to anticipate the main independent claim. That's because the main independent claim is to an article and not to a method or process, therefore statements of intended use or function cannot be used to distinguish over the prior art.
Will this get approved or is it obvious?
Nothing is obvious in a vacuum. So the question is, is it obvious in view of the cited prior art? The prior art does show wrist mounting. The application contains the applicant admitted prior art (AAPA) that:
Artists have used palettes to arrange and mix paints for hundreds of years. More recently, makeup artists have begun using palettes for applying cosmetics. A palette for applying cosmetics can be a surface on which cosmetics are arranged and mixed.
So just attaching one of these AAPA "palettes", which are also admittedly "surfaces on which cosmetics are arranged and mixed", to a prior art wrist mount yields Claim 1.
Given, as you say, "many wrist and forearm tools" in the prior art and cited in the application, a strong obviousness argument pieces together whereby the motivation of having hands free identified in the patent application is shown to have been identified in the prior art and solved in the same way by the prior art.
Hopefully, Claim 1 will not issue unamended.
prior-art-request
