Tiddlywinks Patents

U.S. Patents are categorized using a classification scheme. In 2013, the U.S. in conjunction with the European Patent Office adopted the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system as the primary taxonomy for classifying patents. The CPC was based on the existing International Patent Classification (IPC) scheme and others. The IPC scheme is less granular than the CPC scheme. Many patents are identified with both CPC and IPC classifications.

In the CPC system, tiddlywinks games are generally classified under the following major class of utility patents, although they can also be found under other classes, such as sports simulations:

•  CPC A63: Sports; Games; Amusements
  • CPC A63F: Card, Board, or Roulette Games; Indoor Games Using Small Moving Bodies; Video Games; Games not otherwise provided for
    • CPC A63F 9/02: Shooting or hurling games
      • CPC A63F 2009/0295: (Tiddley winks type games)

To be precise: for “A63F 2009/0295”, the “A” is the CPC section, “63” is the class, “F” is the subclass, and “2009/0295” the group and subgroup. The full classification, “A63F 2009/0295” in this case, is called a CPC symbol.

Each patent is assigned one or more primary CPCs symbols and sometimes additional symbols for cross-reference purposes. The collection of all CPC symbols assigned to a patent is called a combination set.

In the prior U.S. Patent Classification (USPC) scheme, games were generally classified under the following major classes of utility patents:

• Class 273:  Amusement Devices: Games (manual)
  • Subclass 317
    Aerial Projectile Game, Game Element (e.g., target, etc.) or Accessory Therefore Other Than Projector or Projectile, per se
  • Subclass 348
    . Target
  • Subclass 353
    .. Tiddlywink game

Before 19 February 1980, the following unofficial subclass was used under class 273 prior to the adoption of subclass 353:

• Subclass 95E
  Aerial Projectile, “Tiddly-Wink”

The U.S. also issues design patents to protect the unique appearance of an item. Games generally fall within the following design patent class:

• Class D21: Games, Toys, and Sports Goods

Games may also be found in other classes and subclasses, or cross-indexed with multiple classifications.

Note that each U.S. patent number is assigned on the date the patent was granted/published. Unlike early U.K. patents, U.S. patent numbers have always been consecutive from one year to the next, and hence, are unique.

Brief summaries of patent claims are printed in the Official Gazette (OG) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. 

U.S. Patent Resources Online

• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Presentation on Patents and Patent Searching at 2022 AGPI convention by patent examiners David Duffy and Julie Brocketti on 13 May.
• Google Patent Search. Search the text of all US patents since 1790, and retrieve matching patent images.
• U.S. patents.  All U.S. patents are online at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.  However, only images are available for most patents from 1790 to 1975.  Patent images are provided in .PDF format.  Searching of the patent text is available for patents since 1975. Searches before 1975 can only be performed on Issue Date, Patent Number, and Current Classification.
• Free Patents Online includes PDFs of all U.S. patents, and recent European patents.

U.K. Patent Resources Online

• Early patents at the British Library
• Registered designs at The National Archives at Kew
• Great Britain’s The Patent Office

Worldwide Patent Resources Online

• The European Patent Office‘s Espacenet contains patents for over 130 million patents worldwide (including the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada), including complete coverage for some countries. Text in all patents can be searched (though many early ones only have text produced through optical character recognition which isn’t always accurate). In addition, the text in patents can be translated to a variety of languages. Cross-references are provided for the same or quite similar patent granted in multiple countries.