Posts Tagged: "ge"

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.

We have thoroughly destroyed the manufacturing capabilities of the United States and in the process decimated middle class America. The Supreme Court is forcing an anti-patent agenda on the courts, which makes it increasingly difficult climate for those in the biotechnology and software industries, two industries that employ large number of Americans and provide extremely high paying jobs. Companies are also simultaneously fleeing the U.S. for corporate tax purposes and/or refusing to repatriate trillions of dollars earned over seas else it would be taxed once again by the IRS. In short, we are shooting ourselves in the foot over and over again, then taking the time to thoughtfully reload and recommence shooting in said foot. There is no real reason for optimism given the political climate in DC and the reality that innovative advances that are now stalled in the patent system have historically carried us out of recessions and onward to prosperity; something that just won’t happen given the current manufacturing, patent and tax policies and laws.

General Electric has been awash in recently issued patents pertaining to medical technologies, and we discuss an intriguing collection of these inventions. One patent protects an improved anaesthesia delivery system that monitors oxygen levels in patients undergoing anaesthesia. Another protects a system for recognizing family relationships among patients for better tracking of medical histories. Finally, we look at a couple of patents protecting technologies for energy generation systems, including one protecting a method of monitoring communication networks in wind farms to quickly identify network issues which need to be fixed for accurate energy production reporting.

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.

Today, we check in with General Electric to see what technological systems it’s trying to protect through the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Many of the published USPTO documents we feature here discuss improvements to energy systems. These include two patent applications, one that would protect smart energy storage for in-home water heaters and another that would protect a system of monitoring damage to power cables. An issued patent discusses GE’s development of a self-healing electrical power grid. We also take a look at two other patent applications that showcase General Electric’s activities in other areas of consumer and industrial innovation. One application is filed to protect a detachable dishwasher door that makes it easier for technicians to provide maintenance. One final application we include discusses a system of trapping gaseous carbon dioxide exhaust from power plants in a solid state.