FAIRMONT — After years of attending West Virginia University football games and flashing a “W” and “V” sign with both hands — sometimes to people who thought she was merely holding up five fingers — Suzy Warman finally came up with a solution.
“Nobody understood it,” she said of the “W” she and her friends would flash with their right hands and the “V” they would make with their left hands.
Warman, who owns Morgantown’s two Slight Indulgence stores with her husband, J.C., hopes those days are over.
She just got a patent pending on a pair of blue gloves that, when used properly, highlight the “W” and “V” being flashed by the wearer. She has dubbed them the “WV ‘FAN’cy Gloves.”
Warman first tried to make the gloves herself but had trouble coming up with a design in which the material used to differentiate the gold “W” and “V” fingers from the blue gloves cracked.
So through her daughter, Jocelyn, a design and merchandising student at WVU, Warman got in touch with a professor that referred Warman to a company in Milwaukee, Reliable Knitting Works, that came up with a usable prototype.
“I wanted the “W” and “V” to be knitted,” Warman said. “But it turned out that it was too expensive. I asked if that could be done in the United States, and he said ‘No, we can’t do it, we have to take it to China.’”
Warman settled for a screening process that stretches with the 100 percent acrylic gloves, which had to be done in China anyway but was less expensive.
After settling on a process, Warman then wanted to find someone who could help her protect the actual design.
For that, she turned to the WVU College of Law, where a recent law school graduate, Robert Akers, took on her case.
Akers, who is studying for the bar, is not yet an actual attorney, but he has a license to act as a patent agent. Warman filed her application and has a patent pending status, which means that she is in line to have her invention reviewed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
“We’re hopeful the patent office will grant her a patent,” Akers said. “Generally, nothing is certain until it’s issued.”
Generally, it takes at least 18 months for a case to even be assigned, said Michael Risch, an associate professor at WVU College of Law who teaches patent law.
Then, it can take several more years to perform the research to make sure the product is original and does not infringe on an existing patent.
Whether or not Warman’s “WV” would infringe on anything already owned by WVU through its Trademark Licensing Services office would be subjective, Risch said. Warman’s letters are not configured in the same way as WVU’s patented Flying WV logo.
“The Flying WV is a very particular trademark in a very particular shape and configuration, whereas the letters ‘W’ and ‘V’ stand for West Virginia, which anybody can use,” Risch said.
However, add in the colors blue and gold and a context meant to be used at a WVU football game, and potentially, the matter could get murkier.
“That’s more of a trademark question than it is a patent question,” Risch said. “There is an argument that team colors, if distinctive enough, can be associated with the university such that only the university can use those team colors.”
He used the example of the Steelers and black and gold.
“But it’s got to be a very particular black and gold,” Risch said. “I would be impressed if these gloves had the exact blue and gold of the uniforms used by the school.”
Dale P. Olson, a WVU professor of law with a specialty in intellectual property, noted that companies pay WVU for the right to use the Flying WV logo and often urge the school to go after anyone with a product that might lessen the value of what they are paying to use.
“Companies that are paying royalties are insistent that the licensor take action,” Olson said. “Otherwise, a potential competitor is able to use the design for free while they are paying royalties. Companies are aggressive in attempting to define broad limits to trademark protection.”
A call to WVU’s Trademark Licensing Services office was not returned before Thursday’s deadline.
Warman was urged by Akers to act quickly on the patent because she gave a pair as a gift to someone on Aug. 4, 2007, which potentially put the gloves in the public domain.
“That means you have one year from Aug. 4 to get your patent filed, because the patent office gives you one year from the time it becomes public,” Warman said. “So I had to hurry up and get the design patented.”
In the meantime, Warman is preparing to sell the gloves, and she expects to have her first shipment on Sept. 25.
The gloves, which cost $15, can be ordered on the Slight Indulgence Web site, www.slightindulgence.com, where an animated pair can be viewed, or in the stores. In a week, she has taken orders for more than 100 pairs.
“People aren’t ordering just one pair,” Warman said. “They are ordering three pairs or five pairs and giving them as gifts.”
E-mail Mary Wade Burnside at mwburnside@timeswv.com.
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PHOTO BY DANNY SNYDER
July 25, 2008
WV ‘FAN’cy Gloves
Shop owner shows pride with warm fingers
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