Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I have fun sometimes browsing through various guitar patents on either the official patent registry or a google patent search. There's some cool Fender and Gibson stuff, as well as no-name random tremolo, bridge and body designs. I don't see many RIC patents though, besides the original George Beauchamp frying pan one. I'm sure they're out there as a matter of public record, but I'm not looking in the right place. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Here's the frying pan:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... sketch.png

They're not mechanical patents, except for a very few like the Frying Pan.

jingle_jangle wrote:They're not mechanical patents, except for a very few like the Frying Pan.

Oh, I see... so they aren't public? Thanks for clarifying, Paul.

Trade dress registration is in the public record. Google is your friend, despite what your lawyer may say...

The early patents were assigned to Electro Strings, so the term "Rickenbacker" would not be associated with them.

Thanks for the tip Gary. I was able to dredge these up.

Lap steel with tremolo:
http://www.google.com/patents/US2152783

Rickenbacker violin:
http://www.google.com/patents/US2130174

Banjo:
http://www.google.com/patents/USD208329

Great thread!

The "banjo" cited is actually the Bantar. Cool!

There's quite a few more but you'd need the inventor's names to find them. Rickenbacker has generally allowed patents to be held by the employee that created the invention.

However, in recent years our opinion (yes, opinion . . .) is that most patents aren't worth the paper they're printed on. A trademark is much more valuable and long lived and much of what we do can be covered better with a trademark, or even a copyright.

My opinion would probably be different if we worked in a high tech industry- but most of our amps are still tube powered . . .

Thanks John. Per your suggestion, I also found this one(looks like an archtop horseshoe) filed under Barth's name:
http://www.google.com/patents/US2310606

Hint: try Clayton Kauffman

Don't forget he worked for ESIC long before he worked for Fender.

Thanks John, I forgot about Kauffman.

This one is cool, it has a motor-driven Kauffman vibrola, with all the motorized parts contained inside the lap steel.
http://www.google.com/patents/US2241911

Also here is the full frying pan patent, I only posted the first sheet before:
http://www.google.com/patents/US2089171

There's also the Kauffman dishwasher.