The document summarizes the history and development of the zipper. It discusses early inventions of shoe fasteners in the late 1800s. In 1913, Swedish inventor Gideon Sundback was granted a patent for the "hookless fastener", considered the first modern zipper. Sundback improved on previous designs by adding parallel rows of interlocking teeth that were drawn together by a sliding tab. In the following decades, zippers were mainly used in boots and tobacco pouches before gaining popularity in clothing in the 1930s. The zipper eventually replaced buttons as the dominant closure mechanism in garments. Today zippers are ubiquitous and produced worldwide by companies like YKK.

1. Term paper
Intellectual Property Rights
“Study of the patents on Zipper”
Submitted by:
Amit Rander 2010SMF6569
Bhushan Jain 2010SMF6528
Lokesh Bahety 2010SMF6555

2. Zipper: An introduction
Invention: ‘Hookless Fastener’ in 1913
Function: Noun / zip-per / originally a trademark
Definition: A fastening device consisting of parallel rows of metal, plastic, or nylon teeth
on adjacent edges of an opening that are interlocked by a sliding tab.
“Slide fastener with two edges of teeth attached to a fabric tape. The teeth lock into a
snug fit when they arc drawn together by a slide. When the slide is pulled back, the
teeth separate. ‘’
Patent: 1,060,378 (US) issued April 29,1913
Class: 206 ‘Special Receptable or Package’
Inventor: Gideon Sundback
Nationality: Swedish
Source: USPTO official website
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspcindex/indexp.htm

3. Milestones
1851 Patent # 8,540 issued Nov. 25, Automatic, continuous clothing closure, Elias Howe
1893 Patent # 504,037 issued Aug. 25, shoe fastener, hook-and-eye, Whitcomb L. Judson
1894 Universal Fastener Company formed
1904 Automatic Hook and Eye Company
1905 C-urity, Whitcomb L. Judson
1913 Patent # 1060378 Hookless fastener, Otto Frederick Gideon Sundback
1917 Patent # 1,219,881 (US) issued Mar. 20, 1917, Separable fastener, Gideon Sundback
1925 Zipper name trademark, B. F. Goodrich Company,
1928 Hookless Fastener Comapny renamed Talon, Inc.
1934 Zipper manufacturing, YKK group

4. Journey to the zipper 1913
In 1893 Whitcomb Judson of Chicago (who also invented the
'Pneumatic Street Railway') marketed a 'Clasp Locker' a complicated
hook-and-eye shoe fastener. The clasp locker was an assemblage of
hooks and eyes that Judson thought would save people time and sore
backs fastening their shoes with one hand. Together with businessman
Colonel Lewis Walker, Whitcomb launched the Universal Fastener
Company to manufacture the new device. Hook and eye clasp
• Swedish immigrant and electrical engineer, Gideon
Sundback hired for Universal Fastener Company
• Good design skills and a marriage to the plant-
manager's daughter Elvira Aronson led Sundback
to the position of head designer at Universal.
• He was responsible for improving the 'Judson C-
curity Fastener
• After his wife’s death in 1911, he busied himself at
the design table
• By December of 1913, he came up with the Hookless fastener: Original Design
modern zipper. Patent: 1060378

5. Journey to the Zipper (cont.) 1917
Sundback increased the number of fastening elements from four per inch to ten or eleven, had
two facing-rows of teeth that pulled into a single piece by the slider, and increased the opening
for the teeth guided by the slider.
• The patent for the 'Separable Fastener' was issued in 1917
• Sundback also created the manufacturing machine for the
new zipper.
• The 'S-L' or scrapless machine took a special Y-shaped wire
and cut scoops from it, then punched the scoop dimple and
nib, and clamped each scoop on a cloth tape to produce a
continuous zipper chain
• Within the first year of operation, Sundback's zipper-making
machinery was producing a few hundred feet of fastener per
Separable fastener: Original Design
day.` Patent: 1219881
The popular 'zipper' name came from B. F. Goodrich Company president Bertram G. Wrok, when
they decided to use Gideon's fastener on his "Mystic Boot", which were rubber boots or galoshes,
and called it the Zipper Boot.
Boots and tobacco pouches with a zippered closure were the two chief uses of the zipper during
its early years. It took twenty more years to convince the fashion industry to seriously promote
the novel closure on garments

6. The rise of the zipper 1930s
Not until 1934 when Lord Louis Mountbaten persuaded the Prince of Wales and George, Duke
of York to give up their buttons for zipper flies. Tailors who disdained zipper flies as vulgar
created a fold of cloth to conceal the zipper.
• In the 1930’s, a sales campaign began for children's clothing featuring zippers. The campaign
praised zippers for promoting self-reliance in young children by making it possible for them
to dress in self-help clothing.
• In 1934, YKK (Yoshida Kogyo Kabushililaisha) was founded. Sixty years later they changed
their name to YKK Co. The privately owned firm, headquartered in Japan, now is made up of
80 companies at 206 facilities in 52 countries.
Why the name ‘Zipper?’
• The B. F. Goodrich Company galoshes could be fastened with a single zip of the hand.
• A Goodrich executive is said to have slid the fastener up and down on the boot and exclaimed,
“Zip 'er up,” echoing the sound made by this device and the fasteners came to be called
"zippers."
• Registered in 1925, zipper was originally a B.F. Goodrich trademark for overshoes with
fasteners
• As the fastener that “zipped” came to be used in other articles, Zipper itself had moved into
the world of common nouns

7. Modern day Use Now
• The zipper beat the button in the • The next big boost for the zipper
1937 in the "Battle of the Fly," came when zippers could open
when French fashion designers on both ends, as on jackets
raved over zippers in men's • Today the zipper is everywhere,
trousers in clothing, luggage and leather
• Esquire magazine declared the goods and countless other
zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea objects
for Men" • Thousands of zipper miles
• Among the zippered fly's many produced daily meet the needs of
virtues was that it would exclude consumers, thanks to the early
"The Possibility of Unintentional efforts of the many famous zipper
and Embarrassing Disarray“ inventors.

8. THANK YOU