We've written about innovative 3D Printing, and linked to some amazing presentations of the technology here and here, in connection with industrial design, but this is a stunning example of the application of the art and science of 3D printing in architectural design modelling.

Seriously, folks, 3D Printing seems to have really taken off, with the development of a drone that takes just a week to create. Watch the video of the first flight of a 3D printed airplane and read all about it at New Scientist.

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A 3-D printer from Z Corporation ranges in price between $15,000 and $60,000, but Joe Titlow, the vice president of product management, said the value outweighs the price for these companies. "This technology enables the ability to create physical models," said Titlow in an interview with ABC News. "It enables them to do something amazing and increase innovation; they can design a product, print it out and get instant feedback of their model." The Z Corporation printers don't just print models and sculptures, but fully operable wrenches, tools and even parts for a car.

According to Z Corporation, these printers have been sold to Motorola, Nike and Toyota.

Is this true? 

Michael Mock of Rapidform responds to some questions about the feasibility of printing a functional wrench from scan data from a Z Corp 3D scanner, as seen in the video embedded above, which has seen over 5.4 million views on YouTube.

Design prototyping technologies are the modern tools of inventors and other companies, like 3D Systems and Axis Prototypes also appear to be doing interesting work for innovative clients.

Who else is using amazing technologies to help inventors visualize and prototype their innovations? Let us know in the comments below.

In the span of a century, IBM has evolved from a small business that made scales, time clocks and tabulating machines to a globally integrated enterprise with more than 400,000 employees and a strong vision for the future. The stories that have emerged throughout our history are complex tales of big risks, lessons learned and discoveries that have transformed the way we work and live.

These 100 iconic moments—these Icons of Progress—demonstrate our faith in science, our pursuit of knowledge and our belief that together we can make the world work better.

The number of patents obtained in the United States and in many other countries around the world hardly begins to tell the story of innovation by IBM.

For every invention that is patented by IBM, there are probably thousands more inventions and innovations that are not patented but are protected intellectual property in defensive publications or technical disclosures. As well as leading in patents, IBM has been a leader in the effective use of defensive publishing for over half a century. IBM's Technical Disclosure Bulletin and all its technical disclosures since 1958 have been published as part of IP.com's Prior Art Database.

The  recent addition of IBM Redbooks to the IP.com Intellectual Property Library is an effective extension of the ongoing collaboration between IP.com and IBM to make their non-patent literature and technical disclosures easily accessible to patent examiners and inventors everywhere.

Congratulations, IBM, on a century of achievements that have changed the world.

IP.com research and analytics professionals are engineers and scientists with backgrounds in physics, optical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, materials science, chemistry, and life sciences. All our research professionals have many years of experience practicing in their respective industries as well as several years of experience performing intellectual property research.

Freedom to operate searches identify potential patent barriers to the commercialization of products or technologies.

IP.com conducted over 60 freedom to operate research projects on various aspects of the products being marketed by the contestants in order to provide the attorneys affiliated with the show the information necessary to perform due diligence analysis of the intellectual property associated with the contestants' inventions, products and services.

There's a similar show in Canada, Dragon's Den, on which we saw a Canadian inventor, Ben Gulak, pitch his invention, the Uno, a motorized cycle. Benjamin Gulak has filed a patent appliication with the USPTO for this motorized cycle.

"Why not take this invention to Toyota?" say the Dragons. Or, let's say, Honda.

Honda is a leading innovator of motorized cycles, personal mobility devices, robotic balance and agility. Just ask Asimo.

Yikes! We saw a cyclist riding the streets of Toronto, Canada, on a Yike Bike, the brainchild of Grant Ryan, an inventor from New Zealand, who has filed an international patent application for this.

Steve van Dulken, Information Expert with the British Library Research Service, recently wrote on The Patent Search Blog about the international patent application for the YikeBike®.

Earth Day Network is a driving force steering environmental awareness around the world. Founded by the organizers of the first April 22 Earth Day in 1970, Earth Day Network promotes environmental citizenship and year round progressive action worldwide. Through Earth Day Network, activists connect change in local, national, and global policies. Earth Day Network enjoys partnerships with 22,000 organizations in 192 countries that are all dedicated to diversifying and mobilizing the environmental movement. Earth Day is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities. More than a half billion people participate in Earth Day Network campaigns every year. This year's campaign is a billion acts of green.

Earth Day seems as good a day as any to note the contributions of leading corporations that have joined together in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to make their patents available for the common good.

Eco-Patent Commons, launched by IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes and Sony in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), was founded on the commitment that anyone who wants to bring environmental benefits to market can use these patents to protect the environment and enable collaboration between businesses that foster new innovations.

Since the launch of the Eco-Patent Commons in January 2008, one hundred eco-friendly patents have been pledged by eleven companies representing a variety of industries worldwide: Bosch, Dow, DuPont, Fuji-Xerox, IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes, Ricoh, Sony, Taisei and Xerox.

We hope more companies join in the Eco-Patent Commons and that this important initiative expands beyond patents to include technical disclosures of innovations that would be helpful to the environment and the future of planet earth, making every day "earth day."

For over 40 years, Earth Day—April 22—has inspired and mobilized individuals and organizations worldwide to demonstrate their commitment to environmental protection and sustainability. What can we do?

As indicated in our original post about the Eco-Patent Commons, IP.com would really like to contribute to this very worthwhile initiative by providing the publishing platform to broaden the scope of the project to include innovations and inventions useful to the environmental movement well beyond those patents that have been contributed by the project's founding companies, some of which are already using the IP.com Prior Art Database. We've got technologies available that could very quickly take this green initiative to a whole new level of global participation.

Together, let's save our planet; we're really not going to discover another earth.

Among the topics Tom will be addressing are:

• Patents defined. (What a patent is and is not; different types; rights and protections of a patent; ways to get around a patent.)
• Assessing the need for a patent. (When/under what circumstances should an individual inventor be going out and be spending money on a patent?)
• Alternatives to patenting. (Covering defensive publishing, trade secrets, use of Non-Disclosure Agreements, or NDA, in advance of patent application, and use of search to determine validity.)
• International filing. (How to protect in other countries. And... Manufacturing in China and what that means with respect to an inventor's patent rights.)

Please help spread the word on your blogs and Twitter. And don't forget to tune in at 8pm EST on Thursday, April 14.

How to tune in? Just go to http://www.gotinvention.com and click on the "Live" tab.

IP.com

The world’s most innovative corporations entrust IP.com with defensive publication through our acclaimed Prior Art Database — an industry-recognized go-to source for patent examiners and searchers worldwide.

Go beyond just searching — discover an interconnected world of intellectual property at IP.com.

Our weblog, Securing Innovation, designed as a resource for the intellectual property community, includes links to other interesting blogs and useful IP Resources.

• Patentability Search
• Freedom to Operate Search
• Patent Validity Search
• State of the Art Search
• Intellectual Property Search
• Prior Art Database
• Pipers
• IP.com Global Patent Search
• IP Search Service
• Basic IP
• Boliven Patents
• Patents.Alltop.com
• Innovation.Alltop.com
• PatentSurf
• Patent Buddy
• Patents.com
• Patent Law Center
• Trademark Law Center
• Copyright Law Center
• IP Justice
• Relatip.com
• PriorSmart Patent Search
• The Library of Congress Blog
• Chilling Effects Clearinghouse
• WikiPatents
• IP Newsflash
• IPIC
• Patent Law Center
• Public Patent Foundation
• Intellectual Property Watch
• IP Law 360
• CIPO
• European Patent Office
• IPO.org
• Patent Information Users Group
• Software Patent Institute (SPI)
• SparkIP
• InvenioIP
• Google Patent Search
• WIPO
• Intellectual Asset Management
• InnovAccess
• IP Law & Business
• Managing Intellectual Property
• PatentFIZZ
• Peer to Patent
• Patent Debate
• IP Menu
• USPTO

Do you know of another intellectual property resource that should be considered for inclusion in this list of helpful IP Resources? Help us out here. Please let us know in the comments below, and we'll add more to our blog's sidebar. While we're updating our blog sidebars, are there additional Intellectual Property Blogs that we should include in our blogrolls? Something new? We're always looking for new IP Blogs, Tech Blogs and Business Blogs that would be of interest to our readers.

What preceded the grant of this patent to Alexander Graham Bell over his competitor Elisha Gray is the stuff of intellectual property legend, the classic "race to the patent office" as it is often characterized in the telling.

It's interesting, today, while Congress considers a bill named the "America Invents Act" an act to amend the Patent Act, in which one of the fundamental changes proposed it a move to a first-to-file system, similar to many other jurisdictions, versus the current US patent system based on first-to-invent priority.

The legal significance of this proposed change in the Patent Reform Act of 2011 is being discussed this week on leading patent blogs, like Patently-O, here and here. It's interesting, today, as a backgrounder to the story of the Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray patent application controversy, the details of which are summarized in Wikipedia.

Alexander Graham Bell was a tutor for the deaf while pursuing his own research into a method of telegraphy that could transmit multiple messages over a single wire simultaneously, a so-called "harmonic telegraph". Bell formed a partnership with two of his students' parents, including prominent Boston lawyer Gardiner Hubbard, to help fund his research in exchange for shares of any future profits.

Elisha Gray was a prominent inventor in Highland Park, Illinois. His Western Electric company was a major supplier to telegraph monopoly Western Union. Bell was in competition with Elisha Gray to be the first to invent a practical harmonic telegraph.

In the summer of 1874, Gray developed a harmonic telegraph device using vibrating reeds that could transmit musical tones, but not intelligible speech. In December 1874 he demonstrated it to the public at Highland Park First Presbyterian Church. On February 11, 1876, Gray included a diagram for a telephone in his notebook. On February 14, Gray's lawyer filed a patent caveat with a similar diagram. The same day, Bell's lawyer filed (hand-delivered to the U.S. Patent Office) a patent application on the harmonic telegraph, including its use for transmitting vocal sounds. On February 19, the patent office suspended Bell's application for three months to give Gray time to submit a full patent application with claims, after which the patent office would begin interference proceedings to determine whether Bell or Gray were first to invent the claimed subject matter of the telephone.

At the time, the USPTO required the submission of a working patent model for the patent application to be accepted, with the acceptance process often taking years, and with interference proceedings often involved public hearings—although the U.S. Congress had abolished the requirement for patent models in 1870.[1] However, Bell's lawyers argued strenuously for an exception to be made in their case, likely on the basis of the Congressional amendment to the patent law.

On February 24, 1876, Bell traveled to Washington DC. Nothing was entered in his lab notebook until his return to Boston on March 7. Bell's patent was issued on March 7. On March 8, Bell recorded an experiment in his lab notebook, with a diagram similar to that of Gray's patent caveat (see right). Bell finally got his telephone model to work on March 10, when Bell and his assistant Thomas A. Watson both recorded the famous "Watson, come here" story in their notebooks.

How differently might the controversy have played out between Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray if, back in the day, they'd had today's intellectual property technology, like the Creative Registry and the Prior Art Database, to establish authoritatively, who was the first to invent?

I'll be speaking about  best practices in IIP (Innovation and Intellectual Property) strategies and tactics, including: capturing and managing innovation; hiring a prior art search firm: when do you hire and how to you get the their best quality; defensive publishing strategies; working with non-US patent offices; and succeeding in the ever-changing world of Intellectual Property.

Admission is free and open to the public, so it's a great opportunity for innovative and creative people in Silicon Valley to stop by and get together and share ideas and best practices. We look forward to hearing what you think about how the latest developments in intellectual property affecting your work.

The Intellectual Property Society is a donor supported membership organization working to increase public awareness of, and participation in, the evolution of intellectual property rights and emerging technologies. They have a special mission to provide outreach from the intellectual property professions to artists, writers, entrepreneurs, technologists, and investors.

Is it the President’s or the Presidents’ day? "As innocuous as President’s Day seems, it actually has quite a sordid history," as told today on the West Law Insider, the original date for the holiday being February 22, George Washington's birthday, before it was later fixed as a Monday to create a holiday weekend.

The date for observance was set as the third Monday in February, which always falls between February 15 and 21, never on Washington’s actual birthday. This positioned the day of observance between Lincoln’s birthday (February 12) and Washington’s birthday.

What started out as a President's Day (Washington's) it has become over the years, Presidents Day.

It's interesting from an historic perspective, coincidentally in Black History Month, to think about the impact of Washington, Lincoln, and Obama -- slave owner, emancipator, and the first Black President.

Last week, President Obama met with some of the most innovative business leaders in the country, over what was billed as a tech dinner. Interesting how far we've come from the time of the first Patent Act in 1790, when African-Americans couldn't own intellectual property, but were property.

The contributions of African-Americans to innovation is not a story often told. It seems this might be as good a day as any to share this part of American history.

Visit the Black Inventor Online Museum ™ a look at the great and often unrecognized leaders in the field of invention and innovation.

For more than 300 years, black inventors have served as pioneers in the field of science and have made enormous impacts on society. As African Americans sought freedom and equality, many among them, scientists, educators and even slaves, developed the tools and processes that helped to shape the modern agricultural, industrial and technological landscape. While some are famous, many remain unknown, but their contributions have assured that their stories are not only about black history, but about world history.

 One more interesting bit of patent history, for Presidents Day, according to Wikipedia, the only President of the United States to hold a patent was Abraham Lincoln for a "device to buoy vessels over shoals"; it consisted of a set of retractable floats mounted on the sides of riverboats. Buoyah!

Anyway, because our readers seem to insist on equal time for Nikola Tesla, the forgotten wizard, we'd like to share this YouTube video.

You see, we're big fans of Tesla, and not just the roadster and the new sedan that bears his name. But if you're more interested in Tesla electric cars and the patents associated with Tesla Motors' Electric Car Technology you'll find all their patents and patent applications here in IP.com's Intellectual Property Library.

Everyone happy now?

Join your colleagues for a unique experience which will alter what you have come to expect in a conference. INTERACTION: That's what this conference is all about. On day one, tackle today's challenges and opportunities with High-Tech leaders who are driving their companies' intellectual property businesses.

Click here to learn why the Winter Meeting is the most important High-Tech event you'll attend in 2011!

Engage in interactive panel conversations on the following topics:

• Hot Topics From the Top: Business and IP Leaders Speak About What's Important to Them

• Cloud Computing: Protection, Licensing, and Interoperability on the Cutting Edge

• Nanotechnology IP: Implications of the Very Small

• IP on the Move: Opportunities and Challenges in the Mobile Device Arena

• Digital Content: How it's Being Created, Exploited, Licensed, and Protected Online

• Changes in Semiconductor Licensing: Hot Topics for an Evolving IP Landscape

• High-Tech Companies in China: Deconstructing the IP Landscape

On day two, participate in the "Un-Conference" and use Open Space Technology to Create Your Agenda. Collaborate with your colleagues in a completely new way. Following a facilitated introduction, meeting participants will identify their own topics for discussion and move freely to join concurrent small group conversations. No microphones, no presentations, and no speeches - YOU set the agenda and decide which questions you'd like to address. Participants will record issues, insights and commentary in their sessions. A professional documentation facilitator will guide participants to create a full record of the day's discussion – culminating in the event's Book of Proceedings which each participant will receive after the conference.

The Winter Meeting will feature industry leaders in the high-tech IP space, including speakers from companies such as:

• CMEA Capital
• COIN (Center of Innovation for Nanobiotechnology)
• Dell
• Garmin
• Inrix
• Intel
• Jampol Artist Management (JAM)
• Lawrence Livermore National Lab
• Lockheed Martin
• Microsoft
• Netsuite
• Nielsen
• Nokia
• Novellus
• Oracle
• Reseach In Motion
• Rockwell Collins
• RPX Corp.
• SalesForce.com
• Schlumberger Limited
• Silicon Solar Solutions
• SST (Silicon Storage Technology)
• Tessera
• Venrock Venture Capital
• VeriSilicon, Inc.
• Visa
• Xilinx
   

Patent Attorney Vincent LoTempio looks closely at the details of this remarkable achievement by IBM.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted an all-time high 219,614 United States utility patents in 2010 – up 31 percent over 2009. All but one of the companies in the Top 50 are up from 2009, most shattering records and many posting double-digit percentage gains.

IBM continues to hold down the #1 patent rankings position, which it has done for 18 consecutive years, with a record 5,896 patents, up 20 percent from 4,914 in 2009. IBM is the first company to Break 5,000-Patent Mark in a Single Year.

The number of patents obtained in the United States and in many other countries around the world hardly begins to tell the story of innovation by IBM. 

For every invention that is patented by IBM, there are probably thousands more inventions and innovations that are not patented but are protected intellectual property in defensive publications or technical disclosures. As well as leading in patents, IBM has been a leader in the effective use of defensive publishing for over half a century. IBM's Technical Disclosure Bulletin and all its technical disclosures since 1958 have been published as part of IP.com's Prior Art Database.

The  recent addition of IBM Redbooks to the IP.com Intellectual Property Library is an effective extension of the ongoing collaboration between IP.com and IBM to make their non-patent literature and technical disclosures easily accessible to patent examiners and inventors everywhere.

Congratulations, IBM, on a century of achievements that have changed the world.

Even as a young boy, Ben Franklin was an inventor, so it's appropriate that his birthday was chosen to celebrate Kid Inventors' Day.

Ben Franklin, who invented a pair of swim fins for his hands when he was only 12 years old, would be very impressed with America's young inventors, today.

The 2010 inductees into the National Gallery for America's Young Inventors are:

Katherine Bomkamp

The Pain Free Socket: Incorporating Thermal Biofeedback into Prosthetics to Eliminate Phantom Pain in Amputees

Waldorf, MD
Freshman - West Virginia University

See photo and invention details here

See comic strip of inventor here

See her patent application here

Audrey Leasure

An Electroless Intermetallic Coating to Reduce Infrared Emissivity and Temperature Oscillation in Metal Alloy Saw Blades

Windermere, FL
Grade 12, Lake Highland Prep School

See photo and invention details here

See comic strip of inventor here

Anirudh Mohan

Synthesis and Characterization of Biomarker-Harvesting Hydrogel Nanoparticles

Clifton, VA
Freshman - Duke University

See photo and invention details here

See comic strip of inventor here

Gavin G. Ovsak

The CHAD (Circuit Head Accessibility Device)

Hopkins, MN
Grade 12, Eden Prairie High School

See photo and invention details here

See comic strip of inventor here

Gennifer Rubin

An Electroless Intermetallic Coating to Reduce Infrared Emissivity and Temperature Oscillation in Metal Alloy Saw Blades

Windermere, FL
Grade 12, Lake Highland Prep School

See photo and invention details here

See comic strip of inventor here

The National Gallery for America's Young Inventors ™ is the only nationally recognized hall of fame for student inventors, established in 1993 and given permission by the adult National Inventors Hall of Fame Board in Washington, D.C. to archive and enshrine great student inventions and inventors K-12. One of the sponsors of the National Gallery for America's Young Inventors is the Edison Innovation Foundation.

If these young inventors inspire your children to be inventive, they might be interested in the Google Science Fair recently announced.

Google is looking for the brightest, best young scientists from around the world to submit interesting, creative projects that are relevant to the world today.

"We want kids to make a difference in the world," says Cristin Frodella, a senior product marketing manager in education at Google, in an interview with Fast Company. "They can be agents of change."

One element of that transformation that is familiar to readers in the intellectual property community is the recent changes to ALM's IP Law & Business magazine, which is now incorporated as IP Insider in their Corporate Counsel publication, available in print and digital editions. But there's a lot more happening at ALM under Bill Pollak's leadership.

ALM, an integrated media company, is a leading provider of specialized business news, research and information, focused primarily on the legal and commercial real estate sectors. According to his biography online, Pollak has served as ALM’s President, CEO and a member of the board of directors since the company’s formation in 1998. He also currently serves as Vice-Chair of American Business Media, the industry trade association that represents the B-to-B media industry. Prior to joining ALM, Pollak held senior executive positions at The New York Times.

With his background in mainstream media, it might be surprising to some that as a CEO he blogs, and in a most engaging, personal voice, on Bill's Blog.

A recent blog post by Bill Pollak resonated with me, as a CEO of a technology company that is also transforming to meet new challenges and greater opportunities in the years ahead. One point, in particular, the final point Bill makes in this blog post, is something I'd like to share.

8. ALM's Transition from Technology-Constrained to Content-Constrained. For years we have viewed technology as a major constraint on our growth, and that belief has driven the investments we have made in web technology and basic digital publishing infrastructure. With those investments now on line, and further important investments scheduled for the coming year, we are rapidly approaching the point where a lack of up-to-date technology will no longer be our problem. Instead, as those who sat in budget meetings may have heard me say, the new constraint will be content. We're going to need to create, curate, license and otherwise gain access to the content we'll need for our rapidly growing family of websites and data products. Some of that content may be "news" in the traditional sense, but I suspect only a small part. More will be substantive, must-have information that our audience values either on its own or when integrated with other content that makes it more valuable. Content is the new constraint, since without it we cannot launch all the new products we have in our plans for the next several years. And that's a very big transformation for this company.

Insightful stuff. You can see why we read Bill's Blog and follow him on Twitter @wpollak for his thoughts and observations on a very rapidly changing business.

Well-established intellectual property blogs like Patently-O, Patent Baristas, Patent Docs, Chicago IP Litigation Blog and IP Kat are perennial favorites, and deservedly so. But this past year has seen the rise of a few newer blogs, from established professionals in the field of intellectual property, that are worth special mention in 2010.

Gene Quinn has transformed his long established website, IP Watchdog, into one of the leading intellectual property blogs with a focus on patents.

Vincent LoTempio has, in his first year blogging, created an intellectual property law blog that speaks personally to inventors as well as patent professionals.

Duncan Campbell has grown his company, Think IP Strategy, into an international organization of patent strategists and ip professionals with a great blog, IP Think Tank, that provides a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in intellectual property with a global perspective.

David Kappos, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, is communicating with inventors and intellectual property professionals with his Director's Forum blog and engaging the public with the USPTO website, blog, and other social media.

Building on the success of the weekly Director’s Forum blog, we expanded our use of social media channels in 2010. By using popular social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter we are able to share information with a much wider audience. Our website will always be the news source of record for the USPTO, but Facebook and Twitter allow us to engage and interact with the public in new ways and to reach a broader audience.

Looks like 2011 will be a good year for inventors and those in the intellectual property community that share information on the internet. We at IP.com wish you all the very best for a happy and prosperous new year.