Origin of the invention
Mr. Rade Dimitrijev is self-employed as a drywaller together with his wife Jasminka.
Drywall construction involves laying plasterboard to create smooth walls, ceilings, pitched roofs and the like. The adjoining plasterboard panels can form joints between them, which are then filled with a filler. The filler should be applied or smoothed to create a smooth surface.
A fabric-like binder is usually incorporated into the filler, which serves to prevent cracking in the filled joint and can also be referred to as a glass fiber joint strip or simply as a gypsum binder. The gypsum binder is rolled up and pulled over the filled joint by hand. The length of the gypsum binder can be cut off using the edge of a filling tool, for example. All these steps are usually carried out by hand by one and the same person.
During this activity, Mr. Rade Dimitrijev noticed that it is necessary to put the filling tool away after the first filling of the joint in order to be able to apply the plaster binder to the filling compound with both hands and roll it off or pull it over the filling compound. After removing the excess roll of gypsum binder from the applied gypsum binder, the remaining roll of gypsum binder must be removed from the hand so that the second layer of filler can be applied over the applied gypsum binder.
The rolls of material, such as plaster binders, have an inherent tension and can therefore unroll themselves as soon as they are set down freely. A roll of material should also not be placed on the floor, as people may trip over it. Furthermore, the roll of material can get dirty and/or wet on the floor. Furthermore, a person can step against or on the roll of material lying on the floor, which can damage or at least partially flatten the roll of material and thus render it unusable.
To avoid these disadvantages, Mr. Rade Dimitrijev built a belt holder for such rolls of material from an endless, stable metal wire bent into a U-shape and a metal sheet bent into a U-shape. The belt holder can be inserted behind the belt or into the waistband from above by means of the U-shaped bent metal sheet in order to be held there. The U-shaped bend of the metal wire is welded to the outside of the metal sheet and protrudes upwards at a distance from the belt or waistband, whereby the U-shaped bend of the metal wire serves to hold the roll of material, which is clamped from the inside and thus held securely. All these technical features are realized by the correct bending of the metal wire and the metal sheet.
A search for prior art by the EZN Erfinderzentrum Norddeutschland GmbH, see https://www.ezn.de/, provided several documents from the patent literature, but the invention could be easily distinguished from them. Accordingly, the decision was made to prepare a German patent application. The German utility model DE 200 07 490 U1 was cited in order to prove to the patent offices that the described prior art was patent literature:
The German patent application 10 2016 100 946.6 was then filed with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) on January 20, 2016.
OfficialExamination procedure
The reaction of the DPMA as the first examination decision of August 30, 2016 was extremely positive. It was stated that no prior art more relevant than the already self-cited DE 200 07 490 U1 could be searched for by the office. Only the correction of some reference signs in some sub-claims was requested by the office.
After these formal amendments had been submitted, the German patent DE 10 2016 100 946 B3 (DE patent) was granted and published on March 2, 2017:
In the meantime, the 12-month priority period of the German patent application 10 2016 100 946.6 had already been used to file a European patent subsequent application 17152431.7 (EP application) on January 20, 2017, which was published on August 9, 2017 as EP 3 202 296 A1: Patent Publication at Espacenet.
With the US patent application US 4 919 317 A as document D1, the European search report revealed further prior art which was previously unknown and was regarded by the European Patent Office (EPO) as prejudicial to novelty at least for claims 1, 3 and 5 to 10 of the EP application. The grantability of the remaining claims 2 and 4 of the EP application, on the other hand, was held out by the Office. Irrespective of the question of novelty, the wording of claim 5 was not considered clear.
In order to obtain the originally requested maximum scope of protection for the EP application as for the DE patent, the European search report was first countered with arguments in order to change the examiner’s point of view.
According to the first office action of May 17, 2021, this was not successful. Rather, claim 1 of the EP application was criticized more clearly than before in the EPO’s first office action, but the examiner also made a proposal to substantiate claim 1 of the EP application, which should lead to grant. This proposal was also taken up in the reply to the first office action.
Whether the expected grant would have taken place was not waited for, as the EP application was withdrawn by the applicant on February 6, 2023 to avoid the due date of the 7th renewal fee. The DE patent still exists today (as of July 2025).
Mr. and Mrs. Dimitrijev enjoy using the product according to the invention very much and successfully in their professional activities:
Currentstatus and contact
The invention is still awaiting commercial use. Interested parties are welcome to contact Mr. and Mrs. Dimitrijev: