March 30, 2011. KEE Action Sports, LLC. announces today that it has acquired the intellectual property portfolio of Smart Parts. KEE believes it was critical to paintball that the portfolio stayed inside the industry. KEE’s President and CEO, John Robinson, said that “KEE is committed to growing paintball participation industry-wide and that KEE intends to use the intellectual property assets in a manner consistent with that goal.” In a letter to be sent out shortly, KEE will inform current license holders how it intends to continue to work with them under their current license arrangements. KEE welcomes contacts from other companies interested in pursuing a partnership relating to its new IP assets.
Category: Patents
Planet Eclipse Rotary Breach Paintball Marker Patent
This seems interesting. Planet Eclipse filed a patent that was published today detailing a marker with a rotary breach. No clue if this become a reality, though I kinda doubt it will. But here’s the patent and some pictures from it.
Planet Eclipse Rotor Patent Application
New Patent Thursday With JT And Some Other Company
A couple of patents came through earlier this week.
First up, we have JT’s design patent for one of their barrels. I think their Tactical barrel, not really sure. But it’s just a design patent, meaning that you can’t create a barrel that looks the same as the one in the patent. It’s nothing special.
The next one is from Avalon Advanced Products, who make some weird barrel plug thing that I’ve never seen or heard about. Anyways, they have a patent for a gun that has a threaded paintball dispenser.
Now, I didn’t read all of it, mainly just looked at the pictures, but basically you have a hopper that you screw on, instead of the whole clamp on deal. An original idea? I guess. A completely new, invented method? Not really. Hell, a lot of people put their hoppers on using a screwing in method. But, it was filed in 2002, so it was conceived
Couple of problems I see with this. First, the threading has to be done nearly perfect in order for the hopper to stay on straight. If the threading is off, then when you screw it all the way in, it could be crooked, and in order to make it straight, you would have to leave it unscrewed partially. The other problem, I’m not sure how well the hopper will stay secure. The threading design prevents it from falling off, but it doesn’t really prevent it from moving side to side. Any sort of rapid movements I would think could cause it to move back and forth.
Also, this company, that I’ve never heard of, makes 1 hopper, the spin loader, which is a gravity feed loader with a little switch thing that stops the balls from falling down that prevents you from firing accidentally. Let’s just forget the balls under the switch thing, because I’m sure a lot will. I’m not sure how old it is, but I’m guessing really. It doesn’t screw in or anything. It’s just a regular ol’ hopper. Way to use that patent, guys.