This week's Faceoff is about vices, cigarettes and beer. It's St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch versus Pittsburgh-based Marlboro (Philip Morris).
Marlboro has 40 patents, you can see them here from the most recent.
Anheuser-Busch has 197 patents as of this date, they're listed here.
On 1/8/2009, Anheuser-Busch inventors Matthew Call and Chris Luber earned U.S. Patent Application 20090008225 , Conveyor Apparatus and System:Typical roller conveyors suffer from excess noise and frequent maintenance due to worn rollers and roller bearings. Continuous loop belt conveyors solve some of these problems, but still suffer from an inability to change the width of the conveyor belt without significant rework or adjustment. Although a narrower belt can be used without major adjustment, prior continuous loop conveyor systems still suffer from belt drift. To alleviate these problems, a belt conveyor system that easily adjusts to accommodate continuous loop belts of varying widths is provided. The system comprises a rigid conveyor frame having at least one pair of generally parallel side walls traversed by one or more support brackets. The support brackets are secured to the conveyor frame. Additionally, one or more belt guides, having at least one surface for guiding a conveyor belt, are secured to the support brackets. The system further comprises one or more belt supports each having a substantially horizontal surface for guiding the conveyor belt, wherein the belt supports are secured to the support brackets.
This patent is about more bottle throughput at the factory level.
So there you have it, for this week's Patent Faceoff:
Anheuser-Busch: 197
versus
Marlboro: 40.
versus
Marlboro: 40.
Have a Patent/Know About a Patent you want us to spotlight in our blog? Email plaque [@] freepatentsonline.com. And check out http://www.freepatentsonline.com/ : All the Inventions of Mankind.
