NeXT US Patent Section Online

Our NeXT US Patent section is now online.  It's a collection of more than 700 individual scanned pages of NeXT drawings and intellectual property that have been buried at the US Patent Office for the past 15 to 18 years.  The patents that will probably interest most people are the NeXT hardware design patents, those numbers that have the letter "D" prefix.  Some of the most classic NeXT Black Hardware was designed by Hartmut Esslinger and the talented people at frog design. (http://www.frogdesign.com/inside_frog/timeline.html)


Hartmut Esslinger


Here's a short preview of the the NeXT hardware design patents:







I enlarged the NeXTcube patent a while back and printed it on photo paper for some geek room art. :)



You can grab a copy of the image here:

http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Posters/Patents/us0d0310661-001.tif

All of the patents have been converted to PDF format, and some are more than 50 pages each.  Please enjoy the NeXT US Patent section. (http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Patents/)

http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Patents/

So if the cube patent was filed in 1980, and it is good for 14 years, does that mean someone could manufacture an identical looking machine now?

Chef

Quote from: "nextchef"So if the cube patent was filed in 1980, and it is good for 14 years, does that mean someone could manufacture an identical looking machine now?

Chef

That's an interesting thought.  I'm not sure if a company can extend a patent beyond 14 years or not.  They may have some additional protection through copyrights and trademarks, but there probably isn't much interest to do so.

Copywright/trademark would most likely keep someone from putting a NeXT logo on it from the factory, or using the NeXTstation/cube name in referring to it.  I think it might be interesting to take the schematics and scale down the cube to a more managable size.  You could go to the size of the apple cube, or the footprint of an apple mini, and I think it would be a neat sized machine.  Mabey some sort of "retrofit" kit for the cube/mini, as opposed to a full blown system, sort of like all the iPod cases/shells that are around.

Probably not enough interest for mass production, but still an interesting idea to ponder further.

Chef

Man, that's a great collection of patents.   8)  It's amazing that some of them were issued as late as 2003.

Quote from: "Slab"Man, that's a great collection of patents.   8)  It's amazing that some of them were issued as late as 2003.

Leave it to Steve to want to patent the arrangement of "ridges" on the power cord ends.

Blazing speed there from the US patent office.  Too bad they dont give all patent requests the "due diligence" they deserve.

A small request.  Please post an image of the slab patent for the purpose of making a poster.  Thanks in advance!

Quote from: "Slab"A small request.  Please post an image of the slab patent for the purpose of making a poster.  Thanks in advance!

Here is the link to the slab patent.

http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Patents/US_Patent_D331,227.pdf

Chef

Quote from: "Slab"A small request.  Please post an image of the slab patent for the purpose of making a poster.  Thanks in advance!

No problem. I placed all of the NeXT hardware patent front page images in the poster section, available here:

http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Posters/Patents/

The file you're probably looking for is this one:

http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Posters/Patents/us0d0331227-001.tif

Have fun. :)

Quote from: "Nitro"The file you're probably looking for is this one:

http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Posters/Patents/us0d0331227-001.tif

Have fun. :)

That's perfect.  Thank you!

I totally missed this thread.  What a great piece of history.  Nice catch.  :)

https://www.behance.net/hartmutesslinger (https://www.behance.net/hartmutesslinger)

https://www.behance.net/gallery/52319323/NeXT-Cube

Hello NeXT Community:  I actually integrated a nice NeXT Cube system for Hartmut Esslinger in 2015.  He drew up the cube design, monitor on napkins on his kitchen table in one night, the competition from Europe had the NeXT box resembling a human head lol.