BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to a shoe with EL light strips attached thereto.

Some shoes and, particularly, sports shoes use light emitting diodes (LEDs) as light sources for purposes of decoration or signal. LEDs only provide "dots" of light. Moreover, LEDs are fragile. Therefore, this invention is intended to provide 5 a shoe with a useful and strong light source attached thereto.

Lighted shoes are shown, for example, in US Patent Nos. 3,893,247 and 3,948,505. The earlier patent discloses an illuminated shoe with no special effects while the latter patent discloses a shoe with a flashing incandescent light. In US Patent No. 4,158,922, a flashing disco shoe with a three position manual switch

10 system and a tilt-switch for providing additional special effects, while French patent publication 2,227,714, discloses a shoe having an illuminated heel utilizing an incandescent bulb and mercury switch. Finally, European patent publication EP- 121 -026-A discloses a soft soled safety sport shoe illuminated by an LED powered by a battery situated in a cavity in the sole of the shoe and US Patent No.

15 4,848,009 discloses footwear illuminated by an LED powered by a battery and switched by a motion switch.

The principal disadvantages of the incandescent bulb are power consumption ^•* (> 10Oma) and fragility. The power consumption and fragility problems are solved by using LEDs in place of incandescent bulbs, but LEDs have the obvious ' 20 disadvantages of a narrow viewing angle (<45°), limited color possibilities (red, yellow, and green), lack of brightness (only red LEDs provide adequate brightness at a reasonable cost), height above the mounting surface (15mm), and lack of flexibility. Because of these disadvantages, the only place on a shoe where it has

been possible to mount and LED is in the heel. Heel mounting is necessary to protect the solder points, and also because LEDs are by themselves not particularly attractive and cannot be silk-screened or otherwise cut to enhance the design of the shoe even when not lighted. Furthermore, while an LED design can be added to a flexible circuit board to somewhat simplify mounting, such an arrangement is still more costly than the usual way of adding design elements to shoes, namely direct stitching.

In order to solve these problems, the present invention uses electro¬ luminescent (EL) light strips. While the advantages of EL light strips in shoe design are immedimately apparent from the following description, however, it is clear from the lack of any teachings in the prior art concerning the use of EL strips in shoe or footwear design that these advantages were not previously appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art since the only disclosures of EL strips are in contexts other than shoes or footwear, e.g., belts, bags, and the like, despite the fact that the economic impact of improved shoe designs far exceeds the impact of improved belts or bags. The reason for this failure to appreciate the possibility of utilizing EL light strips in footwear is probably that not all of the advantages of EL light strips, described in detail below, were fully appreciated by the ordinary artisan.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is accordingly a principal objective of the invention to provide a lighting arrangement for footwear having a lower cost and simplified assembly in comparison with previous footwear lighting arrangements.

It is a further objective of the invention to provide a lighting arrangment for footwear in which the lighting elements are multi-colored and include silk-screened designs and varied shapes extending over large portions of the footwear.

It is a still further objective of the invention to provide a lighting arrangement for footwear capable of providing bright colors other than red (bright red lighting having the especially serious disadvantage of having the potential to confuse motorists).

It is another objective of the invention to provide a lighting arrangement for footwear that can be place flush against the surface of the footwear, along a portion of a contour of the footwear, or in the heel, while achieving good visibility, and which can also be stitched directly onto the upper portion of the footwear while extending only 1 mm above the surface of thereof, without changing the footwear configuration and thereby affecting comfort as well as attractiveness.

It is yet another objective of the invention to provide a lighting arrangement for footwear having greater durability than conventional incandescent bulbs and LED based lighting arrangements.

Finally, it is also an objective of the invention to provide a lighting arrangement for a shoe which includes an integrated circuit lighting control, with all electric circuitry, including a power pack, DC-AC converter, and function interface provided inside a heel portion of the shoe.

These objectives of the invention are achieved as follows: In a first aspect, the shoe includes a housing attached thereto, a circuit received in the housing and at least one EL light strip attached to the shoe and electrically connected with the circuit. The circuit includes a power supply, a DC/AC converter electrically connected with the power supply, a transformer electrically connected with the DC/AC converter, a function interface electrically connected with the transformer and a switch electrically connected between the transformer and the EL light strip.

In a second aspect, the shoe includes a hollow heel defining at least one aperture, a power supply received in the hollow heel, a housing attached thereto, a DC/AC converter received in the housing and electrically connected with the power supply, a transformer received in the housing and electrically connected with the DC/AC converter, a function interface received in the hollow heel and electrically connected with the transformer, a switch received in the housing and electrically connected with the transformer and at least one EL light strip received in the aperture and electrically connected with the transformer, a switch received

in the housing and electrically connected with the transformer and at least one EL light strip received in the aperture and electrically connected with the switch.

According to the present invention, therefore, a lighting arrangement for a shoe is provided which can be put inside of a transparent heel or simply attached to the side of the shoe's surface. The above-mentioned circuitry, including the DC-

AC converter, transformer, and function interface can conveniently be placed in the hollow heel and connected by wires to the EL light strip. Aside from being located within the transparent heel but outside the other components or attached to the side of the shoe, the EL light strip can be arranged to follow the contour of the heel and therefore be visible over a wide viewing angle.

Because of the flexibility and wide color choice of the EL strip as used herein

(colors can include green, blue, pink, purple, yellow, and any combination thereof to form all of the colors of the rainbow and more. Red can also be used, although red may be undesirable due to the potential to cause motorists confusion since red is often reserved for police use.

When the EL strip of the preferred embodiment of the invention is surface mounted on the shoe, it may advantageously be silk-screen printed with transparent and/or non-transparent ink to achieve an even more attractive appearance than is obtained by the EL strips by themselves. In addition, the EL strip can be covered in part or entirely by a soft transparent sleeve for easy assembly to the shoe by

Velcro, double-sided tape, stitching glue, and so forth during assembly of the shoes.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a side view of a first embodiment of a shoe with a plurality of EL light strips attached thereto in accordance with this invention; FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a circuit according to this invention;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of the circuit as shown in FIG. 2; FIG. 4 is a perspective view of a plurality of elements for embodying the circuit shown in FIGS. 2 and 3 used in the first embodiment as shown in FIG. 1 ; FIG. 5 is a bottom view of a second embodiment of the shoe with a plurality of EL light strips attached thereto in accordance with this invention; and

FIG. 6 is a side view of the second embodiment shown in FIG. 5.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

FIG. 1 shows a sports shoe with a plurality of EL light strips 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D,

2E, 2F and 2G attached thereto. The EL light strips are identical in function to the EL light strip taught in U.S. Patent Application 08/156,004 via this inventor, therefore, details thereof will not be given. The EL light strips are attached to the sports shoe by sewing, gluing or any appropriate means.

Referring to FIGS. 1 -4, the EL light strips 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E, 2F and 2G are electrically connected with a circuit 4 including a direct current (DC) power supply 6 electrically connected with a DC/AC converter 8. The DC/AC converter 8 is electrically connected with a transformer 10 further electrically connected with a function interface 12. The EL strips 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E, 3F and 2G are electrically connected in parallel with the function interface 12 through a switch 14.

The DC power supply 6 is used to provide electricity for the EL light strips 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E, 2F and 2G. In the preferred embodiment, the DC power supply 6 is a dry battery which can be easily attached to the shoe because the dry battery can be small in size and light in weight.

A direct current in transmitted from the DC power supply 6 to the DC/AC converter 8 by means of which the direct current is converted into an alternating current of a desired frequency.

The alternating current is transmitted from the DC/AC converter 8 to the transformer 10 for increasing the voltage of the alternating current.

The alternating current is transmitted from the transformer 10 to the function interface 12 after the voltage thereof is increased. The function interface 12 provides a plurality of types of lighting of the EL light strips, e.g., steady, flash, sequential or random.

The EL light strips can be turned on and off by means of operating the switch 1 . In the embodiment as shown in FIG. 4, the switch 1 is a push-button switch. However, the switch 1 can be vibration-sensitive switch, a photosensitive switch, a tilt-sensitive switch, a motion-sensitive switch or a heat sensitive switch.

The dry battery 6, the DC/AC converter 8, the transformer 10, the function interface 12 and the switch 14 are received in a housing 16 consisting of a hollow base 15 and an elastic semi-spherical cover 17. A user can easily push the switch 14 by pressing the elastic semi-spherical cover 17. A pattern is formed or printed on the external surface of the elastic semi-spherical cover 17 so that the elastic semi-spherical cover 17 looks like a ball.

Referring to FIGS. 5 and 6, the function interface 12 is electrically connected with the switch 14 by means of a wire 18. The switch 14 is electrically connected with an EL light strip 2H by means of a wire 20. Only the switch 14 is contained in the housing 16. The dry battery 6, the DC/AC converter 8 (not shown), the transformer 10 (not shown), the function interface 12 and the EL light strips 2H are contained in a hollow heel of a sports shoe. An aperture 24 is defined in each side of the hollow sports shoe heel 22. Each of the apertures 24 is covered by means of a transparent plastic strip 26. Thus, light which is emitted by means of the EL light strip 2H is visible from the exterior of the hollow sports shoe heel 22.