Patents and Designs

Frank Hornby and Meccano Ltd registered many patents and designs in order to protect their products. This was an effort to prevent other manufacturers imitating Meccano, Hornby Trains, Dinky Toys and other products. The majority of these patents/designs were registered in the UK, France and America although there are a number from other countries. Many of the these patent and design numbers were stamped on the parts to show that they were protected designs.

For details of latest updates see the bottom of the page.

Patents

This website lists all those patents throughout the world which I have so far managed to discover. Pdf copies of the actual patents can be downloaded for almost all of them. For convenience I have split them into four groups:-
Meccano
Hornby Railways
Dinky Toys
Other Products

If you are aware of any other patents which I have missed (particularly overseas ones), I would be grateful if you could give me the details together with a copy of the patent if at all possible.

Registered Designs

This website lists all the registered designs throughout the world which I have so far managed to discover relating to the Meccano system. Unfortunately, for the pre-war designs, the original documentation is held in the National Archives at Kew and so far I have not been able to visit there. If anyone would like to do search the Archives for me, this would be much appreciated. Where available, documents and/or images can be downloaded from this site. For convenience I have split them into three groups:-
Pre-war designs
Post-war Metal Meccano designs
Post-war Plastic Meccano designs
Post-war Other designs

If you are aware of any more information on registered designs, I would be grateful if you could give me the details together with a copy of the design if at all possible.