METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROTECTING A FOOT
Disclosed is a method and apparatus for protecting a foot of a user. The apparatus may be applied to an article of footwear having laces worn by the user or may be integral therewith. The apparatus comprises a first tongue guard portion engageable with a first portion of said laces so as to lie adjacent thereto and a second tongue guard portion pivotally supported from the first tongue guard portion and biased so as to lie adjacent to a second portion of the laces. The first and second tongue guard portions may comprise a rigid exterior shell and an interior cushioning layer disposed thereunder. The method comprises securing the first tongue plate to the article of footwear so as to lie adjacent to the first portion of the laces and biasing the second tongue so as to lie adjacent to a second portion of the laces.
1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to guards in general and in particular to an apparatus for protecting the foot of a user wearing an article of footwear.
2. Description of Related Art
In many activities, it is necessary to protect body parts from injury. For example, it is known that in many sports and work places, injuries can frequently occur to the feet of an athlete or worker. A common location for injury is on the top or side of the foot to the metatarsus bones. Such injuries often arise from impact due to dropping objects upon this region of the foot or side and top impacts during sporting activities such as ice hockey. Injuries, such as fractures to the metatarsal bones often require extensive rest time away from either the sporting activity or work to heal. These rest periods may cause significant lost revenue or productivity.
During Ice hockey in particular it is known that injuries to the feet of the players are common due to impact of pucks, sticks and other players skates on the feet of the player. Although the ice hockey skates protect the foot of the player to a limited amount by a solid boot made of leather and plastic, foot injuries still occur frequently in hockey. In particular, the tongue or lacing portion of skates are often flexible so as to facilitate application to the feet as well as mobility of the wearer. Such flexible portions are often inadequate to protect the foot of the wearer from impacts upon such portion. Similarly, work boots often include a flexible leather tongue which is inadequate to prevent injury due to impact.
Previous attempts have been made to protect the foot of a wearer from injury due to impact. Such attempts have not been satisfactory. Some previous attempts, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,234,230 to Crane et al. disclose the use of a releasably attachable support layer to the outside of a skate and a protective pad securable to the support layer. Such devices have added considerable size to the footwear, in particular to the width of the footwear. Such added width is undesirable for use in sports such as hockey where the additional width to a hockey skate would impede the skating motion of the player wearing such a device. Additionally, devices such as disclosed in Crane et al. typically include front and rear edges of the pads which would be subject to catching on each other during the motion of skating or walking by a user further impeding mobility of the wearer.
An additional deficiency of a device as disclosed by Crane et al. is that the exterior padding would have limited impact dispersion and would only significantly reduce the degree of the impact if the padding was sufficiently thick. Accordingly, for a padding device such as Crane et al. to provide noticeable protection, it would need to be so thick as to further impede the movement of the wearer as discussed above.
Other solutions have attempted to provide a cover of rigid plates to surround the footwear of as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,555,900 to Roberts or U.S. Pat. No. 7,021,663 to Moran. Such solutions have either required the rigid plates to be spaced apart from the footwear such as in the Roberts device or have complicated the process of putting on the footwear as is the case in the Moran device. Where the rigid plates are required to be spaced apart from the footwear, this will reduce such devices functionality due to decreasing the mobility of the wearer. In the case of devices such as Roberts, the increased complexity of putting on the footwear with such a device applied may decrease users willingness to use such a device.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTIONAccording to a first embodiment of the present invention there is disclosed an apparatus for protecting a foot of a user, the user wearing an article of footwear having laces. The apparatus comprises a first tongue guard portion engageable with a first portion of said laces so as to lie adjacent thereto and a second tongue guard portion pivotally supported from the first tongue guard portion so as to lie adjacent to a second portion of the laces.
The second tongue guard portion may be biased against the article of footwear. The first and second tongue guard portions may have shapes corresponding to the shape of the first and second portions of the laces. Each of the first and second tongue guard portions may comprise a rigid exterior shell and an interior cushioning layer disposed thereunder. The shells of the first and second tongue guard portions may be molded.
The first tongue guard portion may be locatable between the tongue and laces of the article of footwear. The second tongue guard portion may be biased against an exterior of the laces of the article of footwear. The second tongue guard portion may be locatable between the tongue and laces of the article of footwear.
The first and second plates may be connected by a flexible connector. The flexible connector may be resilient. The flexible connector may comprise an elasticized fabric.
The first tongue portion may be affixed to the article of footwear. The first tongue portion may be connectable to the article of footwear by a connector. The connector may comprise at least one bore extending through the first tongue guard portion at a first end thereof so as to pass the laces therethrough wherein the second tongue guard portion is supported from an opposed second end of the first tongue guard portion. The connector may comprise a flexible member extending between the article of footwear and a first end of the first tongue guard portion.
The apparatus may further comprise a third tongue guard portion pivotally supported from the second tongue plate so as to lie adjacent to a third portion of the laces. The first tongue guard portion may be locatable over the laces and further includes side skirts extending to opposite sides of the article of footwear so as to enclose the article of footwear therein. The first portion of the laces may be disposed closer to a toe of the article of footwear than the second portion of the laces.
According to a further embodiment of the present invention there is disclosed an article of footwear having laces and a first tongue guard portion located to lie adjacent to a first portion of the laces and a second tongue plate pivotally supported from the first tongue guard portion so as to lie adjacent to a second portion of the laces.
According to a further embodiment of the present invention there is disclosed a method for protecting a foot of a user comprising securing a first tongue plate to an article of footwear having laces adjacent a first portion of the laces so as to lie adjacent to the first portion of the laces and biasing a second tongue plate pivotally supported by the first tongue plate so as to lie adjacent to a second portion of the laces.
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures.
In drawings which illustrate embodiments of the invention wherein similar characters of reference denote corresponding parts in each view,
Referring to
Turning now to
The first and second plates 12 and 14 may be formed of a rigid impact resistant heat mouldable material. In particular, applicants have found that carbon fibre impregnated polypropylene such as distributed as XT Carbon Composite for Orthotics by A. Aleos Ltd. has been particularly useful. It will be appreciated, however that the first and second plate may also be formed of any rigid material, such as, without limitation, carbon impregnated thermoplastic resin composite materials or thermoplastic polymers, thermosetting polymers or metal. The first and second plates 12 and 14 may be up to 3.0 mm (0.12 inches) thick, with a thickness of 2.7 mm (0.11 inches) having been found particularly useful.
The first and second plates 12 and 14 may include a layer of padding material applied to a bottom side thereof. As illustrated in
The first end 28 of the second plate 14 is flexibly connected to the second end 18 of the first plate by flexible biasing tension members 32. The flexible biasing tension members any suitable flexible biasing member, such as elastics or elasticized fabrics and will bias the second plate 14 to a substantially end to end co-planar relationship with the first plate as illustrated in
The first and second 12 and 14 plates are sized and shaped to correspond to the top or tongue portion of the skate 8. It will be appreciated that for most skates, this shape will have an arcuate cross section with the downwardly curved arc across the plates between the first and second sides 20 and 22 and 28 and 30, respectively. It will also be appreciated that the first and second plates 12 and 14 may have a lengthwise curvature to correspond to the curvature of the tongue portion of the skate which for many skates will be upwardly curved along the length of the first and second 12 and 14 plates.
The guard may be formed from such a material that is provided in sheet form. In forming this guard, the material may be cut to the outline of the part that it is to form and thereafter heated and formed around a pattern. Optionally, the first and second plates 12 and 14 may be molded or otherwise formed by any other conventional means such as, thermoforming, casting or machining The first and second plates may then be connected together to form a basic guard for a particular footwear size. Thereafter, the guard may optionally be further customized by heating and pressing around a particular skate or shoe to fit more closely thereto. It will be appreciated that if the first and second plates 12 and 14 are formed of a thermoplastic material, they may be further heated and molded to suit the individual size and shape required by the user.
With reference to
With reference to
In operation, a user may locate their foot within the skate having the apparatus 10 of the present disclosure applied thereto. It will be appreciated that while the user is placing their foot into the skate, the second plate 14 may be biasedly moved forward to permit the user's foot to pass therethrough. Thereafter the elastic 32 will bias the second plate 14 in a direction 40 so as to lie against the laces 6 of the skate 8.
In an alternative embodiment of the present invention, the apparatus 10 may be permanently secured to the skate 8 as illustrated in
In a further embodiment the apparatus 10 may include a third tongue guard portion or plate 60 as illustrated in
While specific embodiments of the invention have been described and illustrated, such embodiments should be considered illustrative of the invention only and not as limiting the invention as construed in accordance with the accompanying claims.
Claims
1. An apparatus for protecting a foot of a user, the user wearing an article of footwear having laces, the apparatus comprising:
- a first tongue guard portion engageable with a first portion of said laces so as to lie adjacent thereto; and
- a second tongue guard portion pivotally supported from said first tongue guard portion so as to lie adjacent to a second portion of said laces.
2. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said second tongue guard portion is biased against said article of footwear.
3. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said first and second tongue guard portions have shapes corresponding to the shape of the first and second portions of said laces.
4. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein each of said first and second tongue guard portions comprise a rigid exterior shell and an interior cushioning layer disposed thereunder.
5. The apparatus of claim 4 wherein said shells of said first and second tongue guard portions are molded.
6. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said first tongue guard portion is locatable between said tongue and laces of said article of footwear.
7. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said second tongue guard portion is biased against an exterior of said laces of said article of footwear.
8. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said second tongue guard portion is locatable between said tongue and laces of said article of footwear.
9. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said first and second plates are connected by a flexible connector.
10. The apparatus of claim 9 where said flexible connector is resilient.
11. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein said flexible connector comprises an elasticized fabric.
12. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said first tongue portion is affixed to said article of footwear.
13. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said first tongue portion is connectable to said article of footwear by a connector.
14. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein said connector comprises at least one bore extending through said first tongue guard portion at a first end thereof so as to pass said laces therethrough, said second tongue guard portion being supported from an opposed second end of said first tongue guard portion.
15. The apparatus of claim 14 wherein said connector comprises a flexible member extending between said article of footwear and a first end of said first tongue guard portion.
16. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising a third tongue guard portion pivotally supported from said second tongue plate so as to lie adjacent to a third portion of the laces.
17. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said first tongue guard portion is locatable over said laces and further includes side skirts extending to opposite sides of said article of footwear so as to enclose said article of footwear therein.
18. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said first portion of said laces is disposed closer to a toe of the article of footwear than said second portion of said laces.
19. An article of footwear having laces and a first tongue guard portion located to lie adjacent to a first portion of said laces and a second tongue plate pivotally supported from said first tongue guard portion so as to lie adjacent to a second portion of said laces.
20. A method for protecting a foot of a user comprising securing a first tongue plate to an article of footwear having laces adjacent a first portion of said laces so as to lie adjacent to the first portion of the laces and biasing a second tongue plate pivotally supported by the first tongue plate so as to lie adjacent to a second portion of the laces.
Type: Application
Filed: Nov 18, 2010
Publication Date: Oct 11, 2012
Inventors: Bruce Roland Booth (Armstrong), Larry Gerald Jensen (Vernon)
Application Number: 13/518,604
International Classification: A43B 23/26 (20060101);