DICE THROWING DEVICES 

Dice Classes

I have been working almost all my working life in the World of Patents, more specifically with the "Institut International des Brevets",  which in 1977 was integrated into the then founded European Patent Office.

For that reason I am  more than an ordinary dice collector interested in patents on dice.

As, in the past twenty years,  many fellow dice collectors and other people interested in this collection field have been asking me questions about patents with respect to DICE, I herwith give you a means of gathering yourself some worldwide patent information concerning the endless dice possiblities.

As you probably know, all existing patents are classified according to international systems, the most important ones of which being the IPCL (International Patent Classification) and the ECLA (European Patent Classification). 

Since a couple of years, the European Patent Office has started giving access to all interested people to its very sophisticated documentation consisting of millions of documents. This gigantic documentation can be consulted for free via the EPO website, the address of  which is:

www.european-patent-office.org/espacenet/

At the Homepage you have to select 

"Access via the EPO" and next: 

"Patent applications with an English abstract and title from worldwide-30 million documents"

"You have to enter now one of the respective ECLA or IPC classes in which patents concerning all kinds of dice, tops, dice throwing devices and so on are classified.

Below you will find the most important classes:

ECLA Classes:

A63F9/04 is undoubtfully the most important class in (y)our field. It contains patents on dice, dice boxes and mechanical dice-throwing devices.

Sub-classes:

A63F3/00W .. N: (Casino or betting games played on boards);

A63F5/04     .. N: (Dice tops);

A63F9/04B   .. N: (Dice cups; Dice-throwing devices)

A63F9/04C   .. N: (Cuboid dice)

A63F9/04D   .. N: (Non-cuboid dice)

A63F9/04E   .. N: (Electronic dice simulators)

A63F9/04R   .. N: (Rolling boards) 

For IPC only:

A63F9/04      .. Dice, dice-boxes and mechanical dice-throwing devices 

A63F5/04      .. Dice tops

Some technical drawings borrowed from international patents on dice.

Some remarks:

With  ECLA it is possible to refine your search by choosing for one of the subclasses. (04B....04R). You then get a list of documents, possibly distributed over several pages, which can be selected by clicking, on top of the page, on the page number concerned. Clicking on a document will give you bibliographic information of the patent concerned. However, by clicking in that very page, on some number which is underlined, the system (ESPACENET) will show you the respective document in facsimile.

I wish you a lot of good luck.

Some technical drawings borrowed from international patents on throwing-dice devices.

A very important link to Kevin Cook's Website where you can find the numbers of all possible patents on dice:

                     http://www.dicecollector.com/diceinfo_patents.html

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A63F5/04

A63F9/04B

A63F9/04C

A63F9/04D

A63F9/04E

A63F9/04R

German Patent of the so-called Knobellatte containing a set of 6 dice and 6 different windows for different games

German Patent of a random device consisting of 3 (or 2)  independant 6-sided wheels

Patent drawing of the well-known 6-sided Owthat dice