A word about the claims....I am extremly encouraged to see the scope of the allowed patent claims 1-6 and 21-32(soon to be issued patent claims). Specifically, Claims 1-6 and 21-32 appear to be essentially identical to originally filed claims 1-6 and 21-32, with the exception of a minor typographical error correction to Claim 5 which does not change the scope or meaning of the claims. The USPTO in its examination of the Translock application did not appear to reject ANY of the claims based upon prior art (prior inventions)which appears to indicate that the USPTO does not believe that any technology in the shipping or related industry is even close to the Translock technolgy.
Usually, in the U.S. patent examining process, the USPTO will reject patent application claims at least once based upon prior inventions (prior art) and the Applicant may then be forced to narrow/limit the scope of his or her patent claim coverage to get the patent application allowed. Here, DDCC did not have to change their claim scope/coverage on Claims 1-6 and 21-32, and thus are getting exactly the claim coverage they want for these claims.
A patent is only as good as its claim coverage. Like the deed to a property (the claims define the metes and bounds of what the patent protects legally). The broader the coverage, the harder it is to design around or copy and therefore the easier is to infringe the patent. It appears that the soon to be issued Tranlock claims would be extremely difficult to copy or design around without infringing the patent, which in my opinion gives DDCC some very strong leverage in negotiating BIG licensing deals!!!
Disclaimer: As always, the above is my opinion only and not advice. Please do your own due diligence and research.
