Rick Matos, the head of Innovar, L.L.C. is an inventor as well. Every now and then, he makes the time to invent a few things of his own. While he has a wide range of interests, he primarily focuses in the game, toy, puzzle and consumer products arenas. Since he is a patent agent, you can be certain that anything he spends his personal time on is patentable.
Below are brief descriptions of just some of the inventions he has patented over the past few years. The list does not include any of his inventions for other companies. Prototypes of the inventions have been made. Some of the inventions are already available in large quantities. Others are still in the prototype stage as potential licensees are being identified. The patents for some inventions are still pending, so keep an eye out for them!
Lenticular puzzles and folding paper puzzles are fun to play with. Now, take their features, throw in a twist of logic and mix them all together. That's how you make a folding lenticular puzzle. The puzzle in U.S. 6,523,826 is a synergistic cross-over of the folding puzzle and lenticular lens (decoding lens) technologies. The key advantage of this puzzles is that it can have more than twice as many solutions as a regular folding paper puzzle, such as the one described in the patent below. The difficulty level of this puzzle can be tailored as desired for a particular market segment. The product is suitable for the toy, puzzle, periodical, book, POP and In-Pack promotional products, and other industries.	Do you enjoy playing with jigsaw puzzles, the harder the better? It may be hard to imagine that there are any significant inventions left in the fields of jigsaw puzzles and lenticular lenses, but the lenticular puzzle covered by U.S. 6,565,089 are the newest and next best thing in jigsaw puzzles. They include the best features of lenticular lenses and jigsaw (or other multi-piece) puzzles. Unlike other lenticular puzzles and jigsaw puzzles that have only one puzzle-solving arrangement, these puzzles have two or more different solutions. In other words, the pieces of other puzzles are not rearranged even though you may have two or more different lenticular images. In this puzzle however, the puzzles can be rearranged and each puzzle-solving arrangement will form its own lenticular image. As with the other puzzles described on this page, the difficulty level can be tailored to any market segment.
Folding picture puzzles have been known for some time, but only the fold-through picture puzzle of U.S. 5,735,520 allows a player to continually fold the puzzle in one direction and come up with four to sixteen or more different solutions. It is an alternative to the folding lenticular puzzle. It can include one or more sheets and you can make even make fold-through booklets and cubes! The difficulty level of this puzzle can also be tailored. This printed product is useful for the toy, puzzle, POP and In-pack promotional products, CD jewel case insert, periodical, book and printing industries.	Have you ever wished your CD player, esp. your portable CD player, would do more than just play music? The CD and DVD players covered by U.S. 6,549,503 may be just what you are looking for. Unlike expensive DVD players that require an LCD screen, the players covered by this patent reveal images on the surface of a CD while it is being played. Now you can see still or moving images on the CD and you can even reveal secret hidden images or messages on the CD while you hear the music. How's it done? In the blink of an eye and the flicker of a light.
PUZZ-3D, LEGO and K'NEX puzzles are the most popular in the construction toy arena, but there's always the next new thing. The LINK-LINK (HYPERLINK, POLYNK, LOGO-LINK, ...) is the NEXT BEST THING. As described in U.S. 6,179,681 is made of interlocking flexible or rigid sheet-type puzzle pieces, which can be in any shape. The edible version called K'NEATS (K'NITOS) is a blast. Play with your candy BEFORE you eat it. You can make any 2D or 3D shape merely by linking the flat pieces together. The pieces can even be made lenticular to make rearrangeable and interlocking lenticular puzzles. Since the product can be printed on, it is suitable for toy, puzzle, eductional, POP and In-pack promotional product, collectible card, yearbook, photobooth and other industries.	Lenticular products are a blast. And even though two of the patents above cover many different lenticular puzzles, U.S. 6,435,502 covers a whole range of different lenticular puzzles as well. You know how hard it is to hold things steady and line them up when you view something through a magnifying glass. Now do that with hundreds or thousands of magnifying lens (that is what the lines on a lenticular lens are) at the same time. In this puzzle, sections of lenticular lenses are slid over a picture made from sections of lenticular images. Each lens has its own corresponding image section that it can decode. The object of the puzzle is to correctly align each lens with its respective image section so that you can see what the coded image is. Now do that repeatedly and you have a lenticular slide puzzle. These puzzles are suitable for all ages and the difficulty level can also be tailored. The puzzles come in all different types of sizes, styles and formats.