Posts Tagged: "James Wynne"

Patent Subject Matter Eligibility 101

The patents discussed below are all landmark inventions and were conceived by inventors inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF). Would these ground-breaking inventions, that helped set the course of humanity, be patentable today? … The point is that at first blush it’s not readily clear whether these patents would be found subject matter eligible, demonstrating that the uncertainty created by the Supreme Court with respect to patent subject matter eligibility has few bounds – even impacting the most celebrated inventions of our most honored inventors… If we cannot determine with reasonable certainty how all of these inventions would fare if judged under recent Supreme Court case law, then no one can truly teach Patent Subject Matter Eligibility 101.

Manny Schecter

May 8, 2018

How Thanksgiving Leftovers Lead to the Invention of LASIK

Sitting at the dinner table with his family on Thanksgiving in 1981, Srinivasan looked at his turkey dinner and a brilliant thought occurred to him: a leftover bone with cartilage would provide the perfect test subject. The cartilage and other tissues attached to the turkey bone could approximate the physical structure of human tissue, and the smoothness and rigidity of the cartilage would make it easier to read the results of the experiment. On November 27, 1981, the team operated an argon fluoride (ArF) excimer laser to create a clean etching on the turkey’s cartilage that could be viewed when placed under an optical microscope. Further tests on the cartilage helped the team understand how many laser pulses were required to make a cut, the amount of energy delivered via the laser beam and the impacts of the laser on adjacent tissues.

Gene Quinn & Steve Brachmann

November 26, 2014