Oh! Something just arrived and hopefully would lift my spirit.
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Damn All, you are getting really good with that CBC router of yours.
Feel better 
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Many things CAN’T be patented.
This would be one of them.
Thanks for the photo though. I knew that I’d seen them in the local music shop a few years ago and thought it was fantastic that Fender finally moved with the times. Traditionalists often deserve every bit of angst they cause themselves.
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Why can’t you patent a truss rod improvement?
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You need to patent more than just a nut. Take a good look at exactly what goes into the Music Man type trussrod, as compared to a regular fender trussrod.
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I don’t understand. If you can build it then you can patent it? Unless someone else holds the patent before you? No?
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That’s what I had always thought @Barney
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Oh @T_dub thats not me. I wish. It’s from my builder in Croatia. He’s building this bass.
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Unless someone else holds the patent OR someone has disclosed it into the public domain. You can’t patent what is already known, regardless of whether someone owns it or not. This is called novelty. Also, what you are patenting needs to be demonstrably technically different from previous solutions to the same problem (i.e. non obvious - US and CA patent law; or possessing an inventive step - GB and EP patent law).
By way of (stupid) example. Pretend that all barstools ever designed had four legs. You can’t patent this. One and two legged ones have been tried but don’t work due to a lack of stability. This is prior art in this case. You then come up with a three legged stool. Conventional wisdom dictates that stools with less legs than four don’t work, yet you have designed one that does. So, now you have a stool that is different than the prior art - in that it has less legs than known existing working ones, and more legs than non-functional ones. It thus has novelty. It also goes against conventional wisdom, because it has less legs than 4 but is still stable, meaning it’s non-obvious.
Sorry for the lecture, but I work with patents every day, for my sins.
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I disagree. If the nut had some new and otherwise unforeseen property then you certainly could patent it.
EDIT: Of course that’s an extreme and silly case, because generally you would be patenting a whole assembly, but the difference between that new assembly and existing ones may be just that nut and how it affects the assembly as a whole.
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Oh well, I am just gonna Believe it’s you then 
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No this is cool. Newton once said “What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean”. I love learning stuff from this forum.
That was what I didn’t understand. If it’s previously patented then you can’t patent it. But if you make a significant improvement, you can make an additional patent I think?
I mean there are some things you can’t patent like ‘Sunshine’ although Jeff Bezos has probably tried.
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The key word here is significant. It needs to add a noticeable technical effect, and it has to be something requiring an intellectual contribution and experimentation - not obtainable by routine work.
Because you were in the military, here is an example for you.
Take for example RDX. Of and in itself it’s a pretty fierce nitroamine explosive. At the same time, on it’s own it’s difficult to handle and use. So, it’s mixed with binders, plasticisers, taggants, etc. to make C-4, which is maleable, more readily field-usable and easier to store and shape. It’s the same stuff, but it’s a much improved formulation, and therefore patentable with respect to the original.
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I appreciate your sins. I have worked quite a lot with IP Australia and Government Lawyers.
I’ve also noticed that the vast majority of people have no idea how patents work, their limits, the expenses behind them, and the expense of enforcing them.
Let’s not even talk about copyright, or the fact that people try and quote laws that exist in other countries.
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Or laws that don’t exist at all, or say something totally opposite than people think they say 
Yeah, most people don’t know or realize how expensive patenting is, or that merely having even an issued patent doesn’t mean they’ll make money on it.
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This has been most edifying but I still genuinely don’t understand what you meant when you said this re the Music Man Truss Rod design.
AFAICT patents are generally actually used as a type of currency between corporations. Like, as parts of deals or partnerships.
Except the medical industry, who abuse the f*ck out of them.
Everybody abuses patents. Big Tech is the biggest bunch of patent trolls out there. All of them. Micro$oft, Scamazon, Crapple, EyeBeeEmm, Fakebook, Giggle, the lot.
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It was likely patented at one point, though I can’t find the patent. Will keep looking and pist it here. But the patent probably ran out in the mid 90’s, and now its public domain.
I’m thinking about the Warwick just a nut. Not sure if that one is even patented. 
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