Originally Posted by rednichols

Patents can be a crude club against competitors because the inventors, and the attorneys, rarely known enough about the prior art and therefore what is 'novel' to write them well. Baker's is an example of the inventor and his attorney not knowing how to draft a patent that protected what Roy actually created.

Patents include the claims, the specification, and the drawings; the latter two illuminate the claims and it is the claims that are controlling. In Roy's case his first (independent) claim is limited to a reversible holster, and all the others to a three-slot holster.

That third slot was not, and is not, the selling point of his design. Some makers thought they needed to avoid stitching around the slots, which is where these came from, using a tunnel:

Attachment 287026

Attachment 287027

I recall that Safariland did it that way, too, in the Seventies. I've no pics.