Posts Tagged: "General Electric"

Boston, MA-based global digital industrial firm General Electric filed a complaint for patent infringement against Dutch wind turbine company Vestas Wind Systems A/S. GE filed the lawsuit in response to alleged infringement conducted by Vestas in the field of power grid technology. The suit is filed in the Central District of California. GE is asserting one patent in the case: U.S. Patent No. 7629705, titled Method and Apparatus for Operating Electrical Machines. Issued in December 2009, it discloses a method for operating an electrical machine by coupling an electrical machine to an electric power system, and configuring the machine so that it remains electrically connected to the power system during and after any instances in which the operating voltage of the power system is outside of a predetermined range for an undetermined period of time.

Today, we’re picking the best inventions for which corporations from the Companies We Follow series have actually earned patent rights from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Alternative energies, drones, robots, seawater desalination and the Internet of Things all make an appearance in today’s profile of the best inventions from the past year.

Many of the technologies we discuss in more detail below pertain to railway and other vehicular technologies. A few patent applications discuss improvements to electrical utility systems, including one technique for monitoring plant activity near electrical grid components to identify exactly when to clear vegetation away from power lines. The strong patent portfolio enjoyed by General Electric enjoyed a number of important additions in recent weeks. Some of the most intriguing that we saw today involve medical innovations, including systems for the synchronization of imaging data collected during a procedure to better guide a medical professional during a procedures. We’re also sharing a patent protecting a useful technology for locating defects in an underground cable to ensure consistent delivery of electrical utilities. Gas turbines and another innovation regarding railway tech is also explored more deeply in today’s column.

Today’s featured patent application would protect a novel system of addressing power outages when a utility network doesn’t receive notification of the event directly from customers. This system allows a utility network to scan social media posts for relevant information about outages, and then turn those posts into instructions for maintenance crews. We also discuss a few inventions related to wind turbines, including a new method for measuring lightning strike damage on wind turbine blades, and a couple of patent applications filed to protect medical monitoring technologies. Medical and healthcare innovations were a main focus during our recent search of General Electric’s recently issued patents. We were greatly interested in a couple of inventions allowing for upgrades to various medical systems and procedures, including fetal heart rate monitors and virtual colonoscopy techniques. Another GE patent protects a system of authorizing ownership of an electric vehicle during charging to prevent auto theft. We also wanted to share a final patent we noticed that discusses means of treating sour water and removing contaminants like cyanide which could be useful for communities lacking effective water treatment.

The featured application today discusses a novel GE system of flight management that has the potential to create great savings in costs incurred by airlines on a flight-by-flight basis. This system can respond dynamically mid-flight to changes in weather conditions and other parameters that affect fuel usage and other costs. Additional patent applications we discovered involve improvements to dosimeters and other chemical sensors as well as a newly designed dishwasher heating element that can improve user safety. General Electric has also been the happy recipient of a number of issued patents that protect a series of interesting inventions related to electronic appliances. Two of these discuss methods of using energy more cheaply by drawing it off a grid at non-peak hours, both within the appliance and through a control module that interfaces between appliances and a smart home electrical system. Finally, we focus on a couple of patents that describe improvements to diagnostic and communication systems for locomotives.

We noticed a great deal of patent applications and issued patents pertaining to medical technologies. Today, we feature one application that discusses an improved system for detecting the location of surgical instruments during a medical procedure. This improvement over image-guided surgery, which relies on video feeds from surgical instruments, informs medical professionals of the exact location of an instrument within a patient. We also look at an application for an improved pulse oximeter that provides a higher degree of portability over current devices, which are largely tethered to hospital settings. We also look at applications discussing systems of predicting cloud movement and an eco-friendly dishwasher that cuts down on current water and energy usage by half. A number of medical patents have also been issued recently to General Electric from the USPTO. Of the ones we noticed, we feature a trio of patents that protect more accurate systems of completing a medical transaction through billing software, improved predictive models for identifying risks of age-related disease and a more accurate pulse oximeter for the finger. Other patents give GE the right to protect smart home energy usage systems and improved analysis of natural gas streams to determine levels of moisture.