A E/M 2014: hard nuts to crack?

The 2014 Paper A E/M concerned nutcrackers. As in most (if not all) past papers, a main issue appeared to be covering two structually different embodiments in a single independent claim.

In this year's paper, the structural differences appear to lie in the manner in which the nutcracker is operated: either by rotating the two plates with respect to each other (embodiment 1) or by sliding them with respect to each other (embodiment 2). However, fortunately, the client's letter does give various hints on which elements are structurally identical, and of those that differ, how they are nevertheless functionally similar (thereby allowing a more functional claiming of the elements).

Below are our preliminary thoughts. Of course, if your solution differs from this, don't panic, since the solution below is just one out of (what we expect to be) a range of possible solutions. And, caveat emptor, we have no more knowledge of the solution than any of the candidates, so we may have cracked some different nuts than was expected, or even failed to crack any nuts as planned.

Comments/discussions are highly welcome. Please give a name (you do not need to register and you can use a pseudonym) so as to enable us to reply by name.

Nico, Roel


Independent claim
A nutcracker, comprising:

Paper A E/M available

Paper A E/M is now available on our website via this link.

Our comments will be posted in due course.