Historic Hood River

Notes

Captain Dean Nichols presented this image with this caption:

Bundled logs at the Nichols log boom, Hood River, Oregon about 1946. The system, widely used today, was invented and patented by Capt.’s Dean and Luke Nichols.  However, their lawyer, and they themselves, naive in patent law, made the fatal mistake of patenting a specific method instead of the general “idea” of bundling. It was then a simple matter for others to sidestep the Nichols patent.

The men never made any money on the patent, but their work did mark a turning point in the history of log towing in the Pacific Northwest.

I reviewed this assertion with a patent agent.  He said, “Not quite…”  You can’t patent a concept like “bundling.”  You have to claim a method for accomplishing the task.  The trick is to write the claims broadly enough that you cover all the different variations one might use to accomplish the same task.  Without knowing much about log boom systems, it’s impossible to know if the Captains Luke and Dean Nichols could have written a set of claims to cover all the different ways of bundling logs, but they could not have patented the general concept of bundling logs which this caption suggests.

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