Prior Art Materials have fascinated me for years and I have accumulated library of over 250,000 Consumer Product and Wholesale Trade catalogs, ( I've lost Count). Until last week, I have NEVER used them for Prior Art searches outside my own work as a product designer.

I also collect interesting prior art product samples of which I have over 35,000 samples from the fields of Toys, Games, Cooking Appliances, Cell Phones, Corded Phones, Arts and Crafts Products, Consumer Electronics, Radios, Sporting Goods, Exercise Equipment, Tools, Gadgets, Automotive, Photography, Plumbing, Clothing, Jewelry, Gizmos, Novelties, Video Games, Seasonal Products, Stationery and lots more.

I am in the process of helping someone overcome the claims in a patent filed on a type of writing instrument filed in 1998. This is my VERY first effort at Patentbusting.

I have sent over 30 prior art references to him and I have just scratched the surface. Since his case is still pending in the courts, but obviously now overcome, I won't give out his info, yet.

This company owner called me out of the blue because he had heard about my collection. He and his attorneys had pursued every avenue and spent a half a million dollars trying to overcome the patent claims to save his company.

I e-mailed 5 dated catalog prior art product references in the first 30 minutes. It seems that overnight I'm becoming the new Bountyquest site.

He suggested that I get the word out about my prior art catalogue collection to help other small business owners as nothing in the world exists like it.

I have always enjoyed reading and collecting catalogs. I have been reading them for several hours a day for at least 35 years. I have a photographic memory and can remember and draw anything that I have ever seen.

I'm now 42. I am a product designer for a living. I mostly create decorative Consumer products. I have designed a substantial amount of Walt Disney, Looney Tunes, Crayola, and many other licensed products.

I have several patents and more pending. The first person that I have ever helped find prior art has begged me to start offering a service to search through my 30 year collection of millions of catalog pages. He says if he had known about me a year ago, I would have saved him hundreds of thousands of dollars and that my work would especially benefit the small business owners in a jam with little money to defend themselves to help fight the patent.

I also pay for 3,500 square feet of space to house my prior art catalog collection. I need more space and can't afford it. If I could do some searches, I'll be able to get the space I need and buy more acid free catalog boxes. My collection is growing by 1,000 catalogs per week, and I need to get some help sorting and cataloging what I have.

I began to collect for my own personal enjoyment. The Catalogs have proved invaluable to me for prior art research purposes related to my own patents. I have about 8 issued patents with several more pending. I am hoping to offer to search for prior art for others on a case by case basis. Having my own patents gives me a background of what may be regarded as valid prior art.

My collection has vintage to brand new catalogs, both retail mail order catalogs and wholesale trade catalogs. I have been a collector of catalogs for nearly 30 years.

Some More About My Collection.

I have 1000's of catalog titles in my prior art search collection. Many of the catalogs are in very long runs covering years of publication. Some are vintage going back to the 20's right up to present times.

Regarding Toy Catalogs alone, I have Toy Fair and Pre- Toy Fair Issues from the 40's 50's 60's 70's 80's 90's 2000's. I literally have 10's of thousands of wholesale, trade and retail toy catalogs.

Only some of the over 2,000 titles in my Toy Catalog part of my Collection include;

Milton Bradley Toy Catalogs,
Kenner Toy Catalogs,
Pressman Toy Catalogs,
Coleco Toy Catalogs,
Ideal Toys Catalogs,
Tomy Toys Catalogs,
Selchow and Righter Catalogs
Little Tikes Catalogs,
Parker Brothers Bros. Catalogs
Dakin Catalogs,
Steiff Catalogues,
Applause Catalogs
Trendmaster Catalogs,
Ty Beanie Baby Catalogs,
Nasta Catalogues,
Fun 4 All Catalogs
Blue Box Catalogs
Kusan Catalogs,
HG Toy Catalogs
Laramie Catalogs,
Oddz On Catalogs,
Basic Fun Catalogs,
Amloid Catalogs,
Sears and Roebuck Christmas Wish Books,
J.C. Penney Christmas Toy Books,
Montgomery Ward Christmas Books,
Fisher Price Toy Catalogs,
Hasbro Toy Catalogs,
Mattel Toy Catalogs,
Playschool Toy Catalogs,
Spinmaster Toy Catalogs,
Disney Store Catalogs
Doll Catalogs,
Plush Toy Catalogs,
Model Car Catalogs,

I have Toy Catalogs galore from Japan, Germany, Brazil, England, Italy, China and more.

The toy catalogs are just one catagory in my vast collection.
I have been a serious collector for over twenty years.

I have literally thousands of toy samples made over the past 100 years as prior art product reference.

Electronic Plush Toys, over 500 different
Board Games, over 1,000 different samples
Water Sprinklers,
Play Sets,
Building Toys, RC Vehicles,
Arts and Crafts Products,
Drawing Sets,
Learning Toys,
Electronic Toys,
Leap Pad Like Products going back 40 years,
Sports Toys and Balls, Puzzles,
Kid's Furniture, Kid's Girls Jewelry Making Sets kits,
Painting Sets,
Activity Sets, Electronic Building Sets

I also have at least 200,000 catalogs in just about every other product category.

Clothing Catalogs also are included in my VAST prior art catalog research collection.

I have 1,000's and 1,000's of clothing catalogs from the 1880's to the present, vintage to modern. Clothing catalogs are more important to an inventor than you might think. There have been tens of thousands of patents on clothing and accessories.

I have 100's of titles with many nearly complete runs covering decades of some titles;

L.L. Bean Catalogs,
Orvis Catalogs,
Land's End Catalogs,
Sports Pages,
The Sporting Life Catalogs
Talbots,
Victoria's Secret,
Bacharach,
Brooks Brothers,
Harley Davidson Clothing Catalogs,
Children's Clothing Catalogs
Abercrombie and Fitch,
Appleseed's Catalogs
Johnny Appleseed's Catalogs
Old Pueblo Traders Catalogs
Unique Petite Catalogs
Speigel Catalogs,
Bloomingdales Catalogues,
Sears Catalogs,
Montgomery Ward's Catalogs
J.C. Penney Catalogs
Playboy Catalog Catalogs
International Male Catalogs
I. Magnin Catalogs Catalogs

Literally hundreds more titles. It's fun to search through old catalogs.
It is a fun resource and gives great insight to all the prior art out there to discover.

Tennis Wear Catalogs, Formal Wear Catalogs, Shoe Catalogs, Accessory Catalogs, Watch Catalogs, Handbag Catalogs, Purse Catalogs and many many more!!! The catalog collection might be useful for film producers to research fashions for period movies as well.

My personal Prior Art Patent Search Library of Vintage to modern Catalogs ( Retail and Wholesale Trade Catalogs)also includes vast numbers of;

Cooking Catalogs
Chef's catalogs
Williams and Sonoma, Hundreds
Tool Catalogs,
Gadget Catalogs
JS&A Catalogs, entire run
Sharper Image Catalogs, Over 200 different issues back to number one.
Brookstone Catalogs
Hammacher Schlemmer Catalogs
FAO Schwarz Catalogs
Trading Stamp Catalogs
S&H Green Stamp Catalogs
Plaid Stamps Catalogs
King Korn Stamp Catalogs
Top Value Stamp Catalogs
Cigarette Premium Catalogs
Marlboro Miles and Gear Catalogs, All copies
Camel Catalogs, All Copies to date
Alcohol Related Gifts and Novelty catalogs
Budweiser Catalogs
Coca Cola Collectibles Catalogs
Belnap Catalogs
Furniture Catalogs
Jewelry Catalogs
Lawn and Garden Catalogs,
Consumer Electronics Catalogs,
Telephone Catalogs,
Radio Shack Catalogs,
Garden Catalogs
Gardening Catalogs,
Home Improvement Catalogs,
Plumbing Catalogs,
Giftware Catalogs,
Novelty Catalogs, Cookware Catalogs,
Kitchen Utensil Catalogs,
Automotive Accessory Catalogs.
Video Game Catalogs,
100's of licensed character style guides,
Tupperware Catalogs

More than 80% of the consumer products that were sold in the past 100 years that were genuinely worthy of a patent were never patented. The only record that these products ever existed may be found in consumer or trade wholesale catalogs. Except for my catalog Collection, I am unaware of the existence of other comprehensive retail and trade wholesale catalog collection in the world.

Trade wholesale catalogs for most consumer products industries hold a very important secret. About 10-25% of all items offered to the trade by manufacturers were never sold or made. The price may have been too high, or the design wasn't "Sparkling" enough or perhaps the item was just ahead of it's time. These unknown catalog listings and descriptions hold the most valuable key to catalog prior art searches.

Catalogs are a very valuable tool to find true product introduction dates. A patent must be filed within a year of being shown publicly. I have noticed literally HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of products that were filed for US patents two or more years from the catalog introduction date.

Often patents are filed before the catalog introduction for electronic devices. Afterwards, the designs are constantly improved during, for example, a ten year life span. However the subtle changes made in years two and three are not properly filed for an improvement patent UNTIL year 7 or year 8. Catalog descriptions PROMINENTLY feature the new "Improvements" as a selling tool. I notice this pattern occurring literally hundreds of times across all industries. How would you know about the invalid late patent filing without a catalog reference?

Catalogs can determine the state of existing product design from any time period, and what should have been considered "Obvious" at the time.

Children's toy versions of consumer products may hold the keys to overcoming patents filed on the genuine "made for grown-up market" items. There are over 5,000 different toy companies that have come and gone worldwide in the 20th century. At least 100 toy companies made unusual toy cell phones that were never patented. How many of these could be used against Utility or Design Patents filed today? Toy Computers? Toy Cameras? The list is endless.

The Prior Art Search Catalog Collection also includes an astonishing collection of all known important, ( and some obscure), working video game systems, controllers, packaging, literature and rare accessories and probably over 2,500 total different games for;

Atari, Atari 2600, Atari 7800

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Nintendo Virtual Boy 3-D Visor Game, Game Boy Advance, N 64, Game Cube, Gameboy Advance SP, Nintendo DS

Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Sega CD, Sega 32X, Sega Game Gear, Sega Nomad, Sega Dreamcast

Sony Playstation, PS2, ( And several odd systems that failed, Turbo Graphix 16, Mattel Intellivision, etc.)

Games may be important to overcome screen icon design patents as well as many other patents related to methods. I have several dozen handheld video game toys with lots of catalog references;
Tomy, Tiger, MGA, Vanity Fair, Mattel, and many others.

PDA's

The Collection includes 20 or so vintage PDA Devices, Da Vinci, Palm Pilots, Scion Devices, Apple Newtons, and some odd older units. Accessories for PDA's include Folding Keyboards, Projection Keyboards, Roll up vinyl keyboards, cameras, fax modems, cell phone links for data transmission and more. The collection also includes a number of child's toy PDA's that used some very clever techniques BEFORE they were introduced in the business versions.

Cell Phones

Over 70 vintage cell phones and literature that accompanied them from the big "Bricks" to the Blackberry. Phones in Bags, First Camera Phones, etc. Many have unusual accessories, instructions, packaging, early contract paperwork for plans, and more. The collection includes one of the very first cell phones that was ever in service, from an NYC limo. The entire setup including the trunk mounted receiver weighs over 75 lbs without a battery.

Computers

the Collection maintains a perfectly working collection of 30 computers back to the Osborne portables, Most Mac Models including the Lisa, Early 5.25 inch disc Apple Series Machines, Commodore 64, Vic 20, Atari brand Computer Systems, and a variety of PC's running every important, and some rare versions of operating systems including;

Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 95 USB Enabled, Windows 95 Y2K Edition, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT ( Several Versions), Windows XP, every version of DOS.

All software is from original source discs or tapes with matching keys. I have NO copy software in my collection.

These computers are used to demonstrate and to test all of the unusual programs and accessories that were available throughout computer history. Included is a fair collection of computer games, ( About 400 different).

The computer sample collection includes many unusual and forgotten accessories. The collection includes at least 12 Laptop Computers from history, First Macintosh Portable, First Mac Notebook size, First HP Portable, and many others. External Drives, Obsolete Tape and Disc Storage readers.

Calculators;

Nixie Tube Calculators, Red LED calculators, Specialty and engineering calculators, mechanical adding machines; Toy Calculators with games, watch calculators, pen calculators and more.

I'm always looking for catalogs to add to my collection!!

I probably the world's largest, and least known, collection of prior art patent research reference material, Catalogs and Samples.

If Patent Prior Art Help is needed, Please contact me. I am brand new at this, however, I believe that my collection could prove to be a huge benefit to society.

Please contact me at;

Mikewotton@aol.com

Best Regards,
Mike Wotton