Posts Tagged: "famous inventors"

Unfortunately, the patentability requirements are frequently misunderstood. For many who are not well versed in patent law one of the reasons it can be confusing when considering patentability is due to the fact that the first of the patentability requirements asks whether the invention exhibits patentable subject matter, or is patent eligible. The question of patent eligibility leads the many anti-patent zealots and other patent newbies to erroneously conclude that if an invention is patent eligible then a patent issues. Nothing could be further from the truth. So what is required for an invention to be patented? The patentability requirements mandate that the subject matter of the claimed invention be: (1) patent eligible; (2) useful, (3) new; (4) non-obvious; and (5) described with the particularity required so that people of skill in the relevant technology field or science can understand what the invention is, make the invention and use the invention without engaging in what the law calls undue experimentation.

There is a great misunderstanding among many inventors and entrepreneurs regarding what many simply refer to as a provisional patent. The first thing that needs to be said is that there is no such thing as a provisional patent. Instead, what you file is called a provisional patent application… Now that the United States has become a first to file country and abandoned our historic first to invent ways it is critically important to file a patent application as soon as practically possible. Filing a provisional patent application that adequately describes the invention will establish priority and satisfies the need to act swiftly under first to file rules. A well prepared provisional patent application is your best friend in a first to file world.

Patents confer rights and when you have rights you have an asset that can be sold or licensed. But you will have an asset that can in some circumstances be sold or licensed even before you actually obtain a patent. Increasingly more and more companies are looking for outside ideas and inventors can and do strike deals before a patent is issued. It is true, however, that the further you are down the path toward a final solution being real the more valuable your invention will be. With this in mind, there may be instances where getting some patent protection quickly could be beneficial. This article discusses several strategies for more quickly obtaining a patent.

Perhaps the patent laws should not be so generous to allow inventors to protect that which they can describe on paper without any proof of a working prototype (which the law refers to as an actual reduction to practice), but that is the law and if you are going to file a patent application you might as well know it and seek the broadest protection possible. This being the case, the trick with drafting a patent application is to define anything that will work, no matter how crude, no matter how defective and regardless of whether you have tested or even have the ability to build and test the device yourself. You want to capture everything, on every level, from broad to specific and all versions of the invention in between. Thus, inventors need to look beyond what works best or is most desirable and consider what works at all. Anything you can articulate and convey can be yours for the taking, provided of course it is new and non-obvious.

A blockchain is a subtype of distributed ledger data structure, in which transactions are grouped into “blocks” that reference each other in cryptographic hashes. Technologies are developing that implement blockchains to solve all sorts of problems related to transactions: privacy, security, data integrity, double-spending, dynamic/smart contracting, payments, interoperability, etc. I started in this space over a year ago, when there was very little published literature on blockchain technologies, including published patent applications. Times have changed; now patent applications for blockchain technologies are readily available, with many patents granted. Blockchain technologies are a red-hot investment and development space right now and will be for at least the next couple of years. Many blockchain technology innovators begin with the same concerns. These concerns inspire the following five points of considerations for innovators in blockchain technologies who are interested in securing intellectual property rights.

A utility patent is one of three separate types of patents the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) can award inventors to protect their inventions. Generally speaking, a utility patent will have a term that begins on the date the patent issues and ends on the date that is twenty years from the date the application for the utility patent was filed in the United States. To obtain a utility patent a utility patent application must be filed at the U.S. Patent Office. Many inventors will choose to start the process toward obtaining a utility patent by filing a provisional patent application first and then within 12 months filing a non-provisional utility patent application.

Improvements in fuel economy and reduced emissions are largely the result of fuel additives and exhaust catalyst equipment working to clean up the chemicals emitted when fuel is burned. This Friday, April 7th, marks the 25th anniversary of the issue of a seminal patent in the field of automotive exhaust catalyst. The inventor, Indian-born American inventor Haren S. Gandhi, is an inductee this year into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Today, we’ll take the opportunity to revisit our Evolution of Technology series to look back at the development of technologies which have left us with cleaner breathing air than we would have had thanks to Americans’ heavy reliance on automobiles.

One of the foundational elements of all electronic devices today is the transistor, a semiconductor device including three terminals which is capable of amplifying an electric current or voltage which is applied to one of the terminals and output through another terminal. It’s no understatement to say that modern electronic devices couldn’t function without a component that can process electrical signals in the manner accomplished by a transistor. Yesterday’s transistors have largely been replaced by today’s integrated circuits, which are capable of much more complex processing of electrical signals, but the discovery of the transistor was a huge turning point in the electronics industry of the mid-20th century… April 4th marks the 67th anniversary of the issue date for one of two patents for which this trio of innovators has been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

As a general rule the ordinary plain meaning of the term as would be understood by someone of skill in the relevant technology area or science will be used. That may or may not be bad, and it may or may not be what you intended… When I teach this topic the example I tend to use relates to “standard room temperature.” If you have invented a process that needs to be carried out at 68 degrees F you might say that the process can or should be carried out at standard room temperature, for example. In the U.S. standard room temperature is generally referred to as 20 degrees C, which is 68 degrees F. But in some parts of the world what qualifies as standard room temperature is a bit warmer, sometimes up to 25 degrees C. So this illustration is particularly useful for several reasons. When you say standard room temperature did you even know that it has an accepted meaning in the scientific community? Were you aware that the meaning could vary depending upon whether the person reading the disclosure is in the United States or some other part of the world? This is where defining what you mean could be particularly important.

A recent market research report from consulting firm MarketsandMarkets predicts that the global market for all forms of non-volatile memory, including flash, embedded and many other forms of memory, will increase by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.96 between 2016 and 2022, when the entire sector is expected to be worth $81.51 billion USD. This Wednesday, March 22nd, gives us an opportunity to chronicle an important anniversary in the development of one seminal form of non-volatile memory. Some 23 years ago, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a patent for a flash electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) technology invented by Eli Harari, a 2017 inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and a co-founder of the American flash storage developer SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK).

There can be little doubt that today the claims of the ‘703 patent would be considered to cover a patent ineligible abstract idea. In other words, had the United States Supreme Court decided Alice v. CLS Bank prior to the issuance of the ‘703 patent, Leighton and Lewin would never have received the ‘703 patent and they would not be eligible for induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame… Obviously, a test that would render claims to a Hall of Fame patent invalid is a broken test.

In simple terms: a patent is a grant of rights by the government, for a limited time, that can be used to stop others from making, using, or selling your invention… Knowing your reason for seeking a patent can help you decide whether it is worth the time, money, and effort to seek a patent. It can also help you and your attorney pick the right strategy in the beginning of the process, as well as make appropriate decisions along the way. Let’s consider the merits of each of these common reasons for seeking a patent. As we take a closer look, some of them are more compelling than others.

Inventors know very well what they have invented and what they plan to do with their invention. But the typical inventor has a terrible sense of what their invention could be… All too often inventors and entrepreneurs spend too much time with their heads down, plow forward, and focusing only on the day to day operations associated with inventing. This is, after all, what inventors do and the inventor’s mindset. There is a problem to be solved and solved it must be! The problem this creates, however, is that is prevents inventors from looking at the bigger picture as they are inventing, which can lead to a catastrophe if the tunnel vision gets too severe… It is also critical for inventors and entrepreneurs to have a strategy to succeed, which seems simple enough, but is typically anything but simple for the creative types that are so good at inventing. The goal is not to create an invention that is cool, the goal is not to get a patent, the goal is almost universally to make money. The cool invention and patent are a means to the end, not the end in and of themselves.

65 years ago today, American chemical researcher Allene Jeanes was issued a patent for a polysaccharide innovation which had major implications for the U.S. military, helping to save the lives of soldiers injured on the front lines of the Korean War… If this were the only contribution made by Jeanes to the body of chemical science and engineering knowledge, that might well have been enough to inclusion in the National Inventors Hall of Fame. However, Jeanes is also the pioneer behind another chemical innovation involving polysaccharides, discovering an emulsifier and food stabilizer — Xanthan Gum — which is found in the ingredient list of a great deal of processed foods available in grocery stores today.

American inventor and businessman Thomas E. Murray is the pioneer behind many of the foundational elements of the modern day electrical grid, from the design of power plants that produced electricity and distributed it efficiently to insulated electrical cable to electric fuse boxes… Murray is also the great grandfather of Hilary Geary Ross — the wife of soon to be Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Perhaps a tenuous (or maybe fortuitous) connection to the man who will soon be in charge of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (an agency of the Commerce Department), but when we started reading about the significant contributions made byMurray we decided we had to profile this giant of American innovation.