John Z. DeLorean's Patents

[BladeBronson]

I know that John had a lot of automotive patents, but I haven't found a list anywhere. Has anyone compiled such a reference?

[Timebender]

Go to http://patents.google.com and search on John Zachary DeLorean. I found this one, which is very interesting and not automotive related at all. Or search on J DeLorean

https://patents.google.com/patent/US3778953A/en?q=john+zachary+delorean

And there's all of these (https://patents.google.com/?inventor=J+Delorean) too..


Here's the one for our doors:
Mounting for a vehicle door

Abstract

A door is mounted to hinge about a horizontal axis between a closed position and an open position. A torsion bar is mounted in pretensioned manner to bias the door from the closed position to the open position and to hold the door in the open position in a tensioned manner. The vehicle body is made of molded reinforced plastic while the hinges and mounting plates are metal.
Classifications

E05F1/1238 Mechanisms in the shape of hinges or pivots, operated by springs with a torsion bar specially adapted for vehicles


and his engine he designed..

Swash plate engine

Abstract

The swash plate engine is provided with an Aspin type rotary valve system with a variable compression capability. The engine may be of four-piston type or six-piston type. The size of the combustion chambers can be changed from time to time to vary the compression ratio.
The engine may also be coupled with an accumulator to store the energy of braking for subsequent acceleration of the engine.
Classifications

F02B75/04 Engines with variable distances between pistons at top dead-centre positions and cylinder heads

[BladeBronson]

The search results are pretty terrible. Not all the matches are for John DeLorean and there doesn't seem to be any unique identifiers for inventors, which would make searching easier. I've read anecdotally that John had "hundreds" of automobile patents, but the patent search, even with its false positives, doesn't yield that many.

[Timebender]

Most of the ones I looked at with his name also had DeLorean motor corp on them as well. Anything that's auto related are his, like the engine and doors, and even the building patent, as you can see it was filed in Michigan, and he was an engineer. Also look at the dates of the patents as that will help pinpoint his as well.

[Rich]

There are perhaps >50 US Patents with JZD listed as an inventor. They include the ones from the Studebaker-Packard and GM days. Factoid: his US Patent grant dates span a range from 1956 to 1993.

There are several ways to search. These links take you to at least the ones with his name/s as an inventor (in some of them he is a co-inventor). One list is for his last name spelled De Lorean (42 US patents). The other one is for his last name spelled DeLorean (11 US patents):

LINK: "De Lorean + John + Z" = 42 US Patents (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&f=S&l=50&d=PALL&RS=IN%2F%22De+Lorean%22+AND+IN%2FZ&Refine=Refine+Search&Query=IN%2F%22De+Lorean%22+AND+IN%2FZ+AND+IN%2FJoh n)

LINK: "DeLorean + John + Z" = 11 US Patents (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&f=S&l=50&d=PALL&RS=%28IN%2F%22DeLorean%22+AND+IN%2FZ%29&Refine=Refine+Search&Query=IN%2F%22DeLorean%22+AND+IN%2FZ+AND+IN%2FJohn )

No guarantee of full accuracy - there could be a few more missing and a few that are not his in these lists.

I used his first name and middle initial as secondary filters. You may need to view any of the patent-number image links on those lists with a browser other than Firefox.

The pre-1976 USPTO database, which is where most of his patents live, is a bit clumsy. The patent number links on those lists take you to a page for each patent where you can go to "Images" From there go to the "Front Page" to see the basics of each patent.