Rudy finally gets his Whale

Christopher Rudy filed his fishing hook patent application back in 1988 with a file-wrapper-continuation in 1989.  At the time he was already a patent attorney and so worked his own case.  But, the USPTO offered some resistance.  The BPAI/PTAB issued three different opinions on record, and the Federal Circuit also issued a 2020 decision holding that some of the claims were directed to the unpatentable abstract of “selecting a fishing hook based upon observed water conditions.”  In re Rudy, 956 F.3d 1379 (Fed. Cir. 2020). Back on remand, Rudy cancelled the offending claims and finally received his U.S. Patent No. 11,406,092.  As a pre-GATT patent, the term should last for 17-years from issuance.  That makes a pretty good run going forward: the patent will issue 51 years after its original filing date.  This is the first pre-GATT patent issued since 2020.  Over the past five years, the Office has issued about 25 (none to Gil Hyatt). A number of these were held in abeyance due to DOD Secrecy Orders. As far as I know, the only one being litigated is 9,674,560 owned by Personalized Media Communications.

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Rudy’s basic discovery was that fishing-lure selection is not a one-size-fits-all situation.  He particularly noted that factors such as water-clarity and light intensity at fishing depth will impact lure color selection.  The patent includes a nice table:

The recently issued patent includes a number of apparatus and method claims.  My favorite is No. 16, which claims a surefire method for catching a fish.

16. A method to catch fish, comprising steps of

(1) observing clarity of water to be fished to determine whether the water is clear, stained or muddy,

(2) measuring light transmittance at a depth in the water where a fishing hook is to be placed, and then

(3) selecting a color of the fishing hook to be used by matching the observed water conditions ((1) and (2)) with a color [from the table above]

then attaching the selected hook to a fishing line,

then placing the attached, selected hook in the depth in the water where fishing is to take place,

and then catching the fish with the attached, selected hook,

wherein the fishing hook used is disintegrated from but is otherwise connectable to a fishing lure or other tackle and has a shaft portion, a bend portion connected to the shaft portion, and a barb or point at the terminus of the bend, and wherein the fishing hook used is made of a suitable material, which permits transmittance of light therethrough and is colored.