Another interesting fact - Solo did change some (but not all) of its Traveler lid molds rather recently. But, it did so after it obtained a trade dress registration and then replaced the expired patent number with the wording "Product Configuration" (presumably to indicate that you can't copy the lids because of its asserted trade dress). The trade dress application was filed about a year before the Traveler lid related patent expired, but because of an opposition and rejections and things, it took 4 years plus (give or take) to get the trade dress issued. "Coincidentally", the expired patent numbers were on kept on the Traveler lids UNTIL after the trade dress registration issued.
Looks like the patent expired and they replaced the number with something else; cf. http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/07/false-marking-case-dismissed.html
From the link above:
Another interesting fact - Solo did change some (but not all) of its Traveler lid molds rather recently. But, it did so after it obtained a trade dress registration and then replaced the expired patent number with the wording "Product Configuration" (presumably to indicate that you can't copy the lids because of its asserted trade dress). The trade dress application was filed about a year before the Traveler lid related patent expired, but because of an opposition and rejections and things, it took 4 years plus (give or take) to get the trade dress issued. "Coincidentally", the expired patent numbers were on kept on the Traveler lids UNTIL after the trade dress registration issued.
Posted by: Tom McMahon | 03/21/2010 at 04:57 PM
Looks like the patent expired and they replaced the number with something else; cf. http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/07/false-marking-case-dismissed.html
Posted by: Joe | 03/21/2010 at 02:47 PM