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In reference to the patent: US4010057

I am doing a research project on hydrographic printing and am looking for some information on the history. Two separate patents published on different dates by the same inventor are claiming to have invented the same technology of hydrographic printing.

the other patent number is:

US 4436571 A

which can be accessed here:

https://www.google.com/patents/US4436571

Just trying to figure out who did what and when.

Thank-you,

Iain

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    Look at the claims and you'll see they aren't the same. Clearly the second patent covers an improvement over he first. – Eric Shain Mar 10 '17 at 0:53
  • @EricShain Make that an answer ;) – DonQuiKong Mar 10 '17 at 9:43
  • @DonQuiKong just lacking time at the moment. – Eric Shain Mar 10 '17 at 11:53
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Few things are less informative than the titles of patents. In some cases this may be intentional in order to make prior art searches more difficult. If you look at the two patents, you'll see the claims are different. Without careful reading, I'm assuming the later patent is an improvement in the same field. I've had patents split by the patent office when they thought there were two inventions present. In those cases you can have multiple patents that are identical except for the patent numbers and the claims.

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  • @IainAilles If this answer is acceptable, please consider accepting it. If you need additional information, please comment so I can improve the answer. – Eric Shain Mar 11 '17 at 15:12

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