Kodiak baby-gear company wins eighth design patent, this time for a bottle warmer

A Kodiak company that makes baby gear won a federal patent Tuesday for the look of its portable bottle warmer, its eighth U.S. design patent, all for baby products.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the patent to Smily Mia LLC. Kodiak resident Yelong Huang is listed as the inventor, and the rights belong to the company. The patent protects the warmer's look for 15 years.

A design patent covers how a product looks, not how it works. This one covers "the ornamental design for a portable bottle warmer as shown and described" across nine sheets of drawings. Anything drawn in broken lines isn't protected.

To decide whether the design was new, the patent examiner compared it with earlier ones, including 13 U.S. design patents, one Korean design registration, two Chinese ones and four portable bottle warmers sold on Amazon. The company applied Sept. 19, 2025, and won approval about 13 months later.

Patent records list seven earlier design patents issued to Smily Mia with Huang as inventor: five teethers and teething toys, a white noise machine and, in May, a milk warmer with a different design.

Smily Mia's website sells teethers shaped like penguins, narwhals, dinosaurs, ice cream cones and flip-flops, along with a rainbow cloud white noise machine and two portable bottle warmers. One of the warmers is advertised as wireless and rechargeable, with four heat settings and a built-in sterilizer.

Alaskans with their own inventions have help available. The patent office says Alaska inventors are served by the California Inventors Assistance Program, which connects qualifying inventors with volunteer patent attorneys and other patent professionals. Its Silicon Valley Regional Office also covers Alaska.