Mann’s Bait Company recently unveiled its HardNose™ soft plastic bait series. Each HardNose™ bait is manufactured by Mann’s in the United States using certain proprietary technology, which technology is the subject of a pending patent application, U.S. Patent Application No. 11/083,422 entitled Fishing Lures Having Elastomeric Portions. The company expects claims of broad scope to issue from this patent application.
Mann’s has expended considerable resources developing its proprietary technology and intends to seek all available protection under the U.S. patent laws to prevent the unauthorized use of the technology. In this regard, a recent addition to the U.S. patent laws provides the owner of a patent application with “provisional rights.” These provisional rights offer the patent holder several options including the ability to seek royalties from any person that makes, uses, offers for sale, or sells in the United States the invention as claimed in a published patent application or imports such invention into the United States when the invention as claimed in the issued patent is substantially identical to the invention as claimed in the published patent application. In order to establish provisional rights for its proprietary technology, Mann’s requested early publication of its patent application by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Mann’s is pleased to announce that its patent application was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on October 27, 2005, as Publication No. US-2005-0235550-A1. Those parties wishing to receive a copy of the published patent application should contact R.A. Burggrabe at Mann’s Bait Company, Inc., 1111 State Docks Road, Eufaula, AL 36027, Ph. (334)687-5716.
