Patent No.: 10,467,608 (get PDF)

Title: Golf Club Head and Method of Manufacture

Assignee: Taylor Made Golf Company, Inc.

Abstract: A customer directed golf club head manufacturing system including a self-service kiosk configured to transform a club head blank into a finished club head based upon input of a user. The self-service kiosk including a plurality of club head blanks, a kiosk control system, a user input system, and a machining system. The kiosk control system configured to prompt the user to select a plurality of predefined options that influence the configuration of the finished club head. The kiosk control system receives the user selected predefined options, identifies at least one user specific club head blank from the plurality of club head blanks that meets the requirements of the user selected predefined options, creates machining instructions, and transmits the machining instructions to the machining system to machine at least a portion of the user specific club head blank in accordance with the machining instructions to create the finished club head.

About Us: Patents directed to methods of manufacturing are often misunderstood and undervalued. In fact, a patent directed to a method of manufacturing a product can be extremely valuable, particularly when alternative methods would increase the cost of a competitor’s product or reduce the efficiency, durability, or convenience. Clever manufacturing methods can often significantly reduce the cost to product a product and should be protected (or the advantage may just walk out the door when a technician goes to work for a competitor). A well crafted patent application will include disclosure to support claims directed to both the apparatus as well as the method of manufacture, when appropriate, although the inventors should recognize that apparatus and methods claims will likely need to be pursued in separate continuation, or divisional, applications.