#Patent

Tandem or duplex ammunition - where two bullets are stacked in a single cartridge - is not a new idea, but it has never gained widespread popularity. The concept is revisited over time because it’s intriguing due to its potential to enhance machine guns' fire density, dispersion significantly, and hit probability. However, despite its promise in theory, this approach often falls short of improving accuracy or lethality in practice.

Love it or hate it, the GBRS Group HYDRA mount is an optics and LAM riser that certainly has had a polarizing effect on the Gun Community. Coming in at a price of $349, it was inevitable that some knockoffs would be coming down the line to fill the “Just as Good” void. Last week GBRS Group received a US Patent 11,733,004B2 for their HYDRA Mount.

Another day, another gun industry lawsuit. Coming to you from the United States District Court for the District of Nevada, we have Glock Inc. v. Polymer80 Inc. with patent infringement claims. Let’s take a look at this complaint and see what the allegations are in this suit.

Every community has its hot-button words. Words that when they pop up in a headline or, say, a patent, rational minds storm out the door; any willingness to ask clarifying questions in tow. In this community, two of those words are “Database” and “Government”. I witnessed some of this reactionary fervor start to simmer recently when someone was rummaging around on google patent search and turned up this filing from Geissele:

As TFB recently reported, on May 11th, 2021, SIG SAUER filed a lawsuit against Springfield Armory. This lawsuit alleges that Springfield infringed upon SIG’s intellectual property in the form of patents on their pistol magazines, specific to the P365 and Hellcat model mags. Clearly, there is a great deal of overlap in terms of the sector of the market that each company is targeting with these handguns. Springfield has now fired back with their own statement, asserting that they believe this is the real cause for SIG’s lawsuit, and that their Hellcat magazines do not actually breach any of the rules surrounding US patent law. Springfield’s press release to this effect reads as follows.

The firearms industry is certainly not one unfamiliar with the occasional lawsuit. A good deal of proprietary information goes into gun design and production, so most companies are understandably protective of their patents and other intellectual property. From time to time, this can lead manufacturers of firearms and accessories to sue each other over infringements on their protected work. Some examples (among many others) of previous lawsuits upon which TFB has reported are below.

Glock is no stranger to a good lawsuit. For many years now, this titan of the handgun world has made repeated headlines for a smorgasbord of litigation. They’ve filed suit against others, they’ve been sued, and numerous times members (or former members) of the operation have even gone after each other. Thankfully, TFB TV’s own James “Not Disbarred Yet” Reeves has thus far avoided a lawsuit target for leaving his G17 out in the rain earlier this year. All the way back in 2014, the Austrian-based firm sued an airsoft company over unlicensed replicas. Six and a half years later, this lawsuit has finally concluded, as detailed in the following press release.

Competition in the firearms and firearms accessories market benefits consumers. It stands to reason, right? One of the best ways for a company to earn your business and make you a customer is to put out superior products. If they produce something that you want to buy more than you want to buy a different manufacturer’s comparable offering, they win your business – and in the process, you also win by virtue of improvements and innovations to which you gain access. Another option for a company to make themselves and their products more attractive is to sell them at a lower price point. Most consumers are mindful of their spending; they have to be judicious about how many of their dollars they are willing to relinquish and to whom for what. Buyers in general want good value – some of which will involve the quality and features of the product in question, but cost combines with other considerations to comprise a comprehensive value proposition. It’s not enough just to make a product; you have to sell it at a price that people are both able and willing to pay. Trijicon and Holosun both understand these precepts well, and they recently locked horns over how one another was going about their business.

“The M4A1 Carbine is a lightweight, 5.56 millimeter, magazine fed, gas operated, air cooled, shoulder fired weapon.” For many years, US Army Infantrymen have had this phrase, or a slight variation of it, drilled into their heads until they could recite it perfectly. The above version was the one I learned verbatim during my time training at Sand Hill on Fort Benning, and then serving as an 11C with the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum.

Ruger has filed for a patent on their popular .22 LR pistol that would strongly suggest that they’re currently working on an integrally suppressed Ruger 22/45. Judging by the patent photos, it appears that this adaptation may be released as a host 22/45 pistol that is machined to accept integrated suppressor baffle segments once the customer’s paperwork has cleared the legal hoops.

A little over a year ago, we wrote about the Discreet Ballistics PopStop which is a barrel mounted valve and a CO2 cartridge system designed to inject a non-flammable gas into the suppressor replacing the oxygen inside the can thus eliminating the phenomenon of the first round pop. Back then, the PopStop was patent pending. Lately, Discreet Ballistics has announced that the patent ( US 10,145,636 B2) has been issued.

On April 24th, 2018, the US Patent and Trademark Office awarded two patents to Franklin Armory® for their innovative Binary Firing System™. Patent numbers 9,952,012 and 9,952,013 demonstrated a total of 62 claims awarded to Franklin Armory® for their unique design! While the various claims cover a vast array of pull-release technology, the chief claims include safety technology to allow discounting of the release round by simply modulating the selector, as well as a lock-out provision to prevent switching to binary mode after the trigger has been depressed and held back in semiautomatic mode. Other claims featured parallel disconnectors controlled by a single, multi-cam selector as well as the ability to select from safe, to semiautomatic, to binary mode through the use of a single selector.

In 1882, a gentleman named J. A. Williams patented (US Patent #269,766) an idea of a mouse trap that used a percussion revolver to kill the rodent. The idea was quite simple – once the vermin touches the trigger of the trap it pulls the trigger of the revolver. At this point, the animal is right in front of the muzzle and it gets killed. You have probably come across the image from this patent in various forums and social media pages.

Technically Heckler & Koch haven’t really released the HK233 yet. It’s “just there” on their homepage and they forgot to tell the marketing department to send out the press release.

A great part of living in the Internet age is that we have far more information at our fingertips than we ever have before. Until recently we had to rely exclusively on books and magazine articles, researched with varying degrees of thoroughness. Some of the information in these has stood the test of time, but some are incorrect. A lot of claims from books and magazine articles have entered the common knowledge, but many of these just aren’t so.