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A Tribute to the Inventor of Happy Feet
 If feet could talk, millions would thank this 95-year-old lady. Yes, happy feet. Perhaps even your feet! Florence Zacks Melton of Columbus, Ohio and Boca Raton, Florida died February 8, 2007. She invented the world’s first foam-soled, soft washable slippers. Today, we know them by the tradenames -- Dearfoams®, Snug Treds®, and EZFeet®.
Haven’t we all limped into the house, taken off our shoes and nursed our tired, sore feet
back to health? Ahh…slippers, comfortable slippers. What a privilege.
Back in 1947, Ms. Melton saw a need and used an innovative material (foam rubber) to solve a problem. It didn’t take her a college degree to do it either—in fact she dropped out of high school a few months before graduation to work and help her Russian immigrant family pay the rent. Although foam rubber was invented by Goodyear tire company, she invented a way of making it work for the kind of ‘tires’ humans could wear.
But that’s not where the story ends. There were more creations. Ms. Melton went on to create chair pads, adjustable car-seat covers and neck pillows. During her lifetime she received 19 patents for her inventions and numerous national and international honors came her way including several honorary doctorates.
And she used her inventions in 1947 to co-found, with her husband Aaron Zacks and a business partner, her own company that today is a large publicly-traded company known as R.G. Barry Group, with annual sales of more than $100 million, and which still operates in a suburb of her middle America hometown, Columbus, Ohio. So if you want an iPod®, it’s a Silicon Valley company that invented it; but, if you want to walk in comfort while you listen to your iPod, well then a company in Columbus could be your answer.
Florence Zacks Melton had a passion for improving the quality of life and the quality of the mind. At age 70, she developed the Florence Melton Adult Mini School to further Jewish education. There are now more than 25,000 graduates and active learners at sites in six countries. At age 91 she expanded her ideas to serve teenagers in their Jewish learning. She was truly a creative, special lady and an inventor with a lifetime of achievement. We thank her too.
Her original patents have expired, but her products carry another kind of legal intellectual property protection designated by that ® symbol after the trademark Dearfoams. This symbol alerts all of us that the name Dearfoams is a trademark belonging to someone, and that it has been registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Consumers use trademarks to easily recognizing products that have known quality. Trademarks are protected against those who might attempt to confuse the consumer by offering an inferior product under the same or similar trademark. A registered trademark, another kind of intellectual property protection, can be renewed every 20 years and does not expire as patents do. So, today, anyone can make a competing product using any of her expired patents, but they can’t sell them using the trademarks.
She was able to bring her inventions to the marketplace by forming her own company and actually making the products themselves. Sometimes inventors can use licensing to grant rights to a manufacturer to make and sell the product in return for cash payments (license fees and royalties). This is known as licensing out. Other times, companies can seek out the inventions of others; when companies do this, it is known as licensing in. The R.G. Barry Group also makes and sells products based on licensing in. It licensed in certain trademark rights to Liz Claiborne®. In another kind of license, they formed a joint venture with a technology inventor, Battelle Memorial Institute, to use in R.G. Barry products and license out to others a thermal storage technology. One example of a product that R.G. Barry made was a “hot seat” to keep another part of one’s body comfortable at a cold November football game, such as Ohio State vs. Michigan.
Article by Carol Razgaitis
Useful Links:
Dearfoams
R.G. Barry Group History
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