While all the world took leave of their senses, following news of the Balloon Boy on mainstream media, around the blogosphere and across the twitterverse, Dennis Crouch at Patently-O kept his head about him, blogging and tweeting prior art.
Featuring articles by leaders in the intellectual property community for publication on Securing Innovation... (Archives)
by Stephen Albainy-Jenei, originally posted on Patent Baristas
Outpacing the Competition: Patent-Based Business Strategy, by Robert L. Cantrell (Wiley, John & Sons, Inc., 343pp), is a book written for business-people and attorneys who are charged with developing business opportunities using practical patent strategies.
Patents on their own are just pieces of paper (with a fancy seal). What really matters, is how you make use of patent rights. Here, the author has provided a practical guide to the use of patents as effective business tools. This book is not an introduction to patent law but is a thorough discussion of key approaches to make intellectual property serve a company’s business plan and goals.
In Outpacing the Competition, Robert Cantrell sets out that a patent strategy is composed of decision cycles that include:
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Links to Prior Art (Archives)
A UAV is a remotely piloted or self-piloted aircraft that can carry cameras, sensors, communications equipment, or other payloads, is capable of controlled, sustained, level flight, and is usually powered by an engine. A self-piloted UAV may fly autonomously based on pre-programmed flight plans. UAVs are becoming increasingly used for various missions where manned flight vehicles are not appropriate or not feasible. These missions may include military situations, such as surveillance, reconnaissance, target acquisition, data acquisition, communications relay, decoy, harassment, or supply flights. UAVs are also used for a growing number of civilian missions where a human observer would be at risk, such as firefighting, natural disaster reconnaissance, police observation of civil disturbances or crime scenes, and scientific research. An example of the latter would be observation of weather formations or of a volcano. As miniaturization technology has improved, it is now possible to manufacture very small UAVs (sometimes referred to as micro-aerial vehicles, or MAVs).
A fuel cell system comprises a fuel cell, a reactant gas pipe for supplying a reactant gas to the fuel cell, and an injector for controlling the state of the gas on the upstream side in the reactant gas pipe and supplying the reactant gas to the downstream side by driving a valve element with an electromagnetic drive force at a predetermined drive cycle to separate the valve element from a valve seat. The injector is provided integrally in the fuel cell, and hence the vibration and noise of the injector can be absorbed and suppressed by the fuel cell as a heavy article. -- US Application Publication (Source: USPTO) Publication No. US 2010/0209797 A1 published on 19-Aug-2010
A system for deploying a cover over an oil spill, to collect the spilled oil, uses a plurality of gas propelled rockets are attached to lines arranged around the periphery of the cover. Outward projection of the rockets spreads the cover, the weight of the expended rockets then pulling the edges of the cover below the water surface to trap the covered oil.
A weather-based financial index is based at least in part on weather. The index may take into account any of a variety of weather factors, such as temperature, precipitation, humidity, number of sunny or overcast days in a period of time, number of freeze days in a period of time, etc. Weather factor value(s) are combined with one or more financial components to provide the weather-based financial index. The index may be traded on an exchange, such as the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).
A method and apparatus for testing a blowout preventer (BOP) wherein a pressurization unit applies fluid to an isolated portion of the throughbore of the BOP.
This idea is to enable the silent operating engines/vehicles to broadcast signal over a specific frequency within a short distance where a receiver can detect the signal and produce appropriate alert signals.
The Self-Sustaining Electric Engine Enhancement (SSEEE) specification modifies the process by which electric car engines consume and replenish electric power and dramatically extends the distance a car can travel before the need for pit stops to recharge the energy source, i.e., batteries, fuel cells, etc.
The present invention relates to an oil spill identification system and oil spill identification sensors to be used in connection with this system. The system is used primarily on fixed offshore structures, but may also be used on fixed onshore constructions.
http://ip.com/patent/US7009550
A shark-repelling surfboard or flotation board made of polymer foam with coating. The surfboard or the flotation board has a locator device for locating large aquatic animals, and an alarm device for alerting a rider of large aquatic animals, such as sharks, located by the locator device.
http://ip.com/patent/US7731554
Links on a variety of IP issues (Archives)
Technological innovation is responsible for three-fourths of our nation’s post-World War II economic growth rate, Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office David Kappos told attendees at a Center for American Progress.
This month’s issue of the American Bar Association’s Landslide magazine includes a thought-provoking article about this topic. In the article, R. Mark Halligan points out that patents have limited lifespans, are costly to enforce, and are subject to ever-shifting legal standards of patentability. The article asks: can trade secret protection be a better choice for many inventions?
Kent Displays is expanding global distribution and developing new product features for the Boogie Board Paperless LCD Writing Tablet based on heavy demand. Kent Displays subsidiary Improv Electronics launched the Boogie Board tablet in the United States in January 2010. It is the first paperless writing tablet to utilize a pressure-sensitive, Reflex™ LCD from Kent Displays for its writing surface.
Keith Bergelt, CEO of the Open Invention Network (OIN), in a guest post on CNBC "Trendspotting in 2010 and Beyond: The Future of IP in a Linux-Enabled World" listed 10 trends in IP for 2010, including this prognosis for the rise of defensive publishing. "Reduced emphasis on patents as the sole means of codifying intellectual capital and emergence of defensive publications as an efficacious and cost effective IP rights tool. Operating companies and open source begin to converge around the notion that only truly significant inventions should be patented with supporting ideas and incremental advances more properly made the subject of defensive publications."
The Library of Congress and other preservation-minded organizations ponder how we preserve what we're creating. In an article in Salon, Dan Gillmor reports that this week in Washington, DC, the Library of Congress is gathering its "Digital Preservation Partners" for a three-day session -- one of a number of such meetings the library has been holding under a broad initiative called the "National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program."
Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet, compiled by Think IP Strategy.
Joe Mullin on The Prior Art blog writes, "It’s not a stretch to say that many members of the patent bar were relieved when the U.S. Supreme Court finally issued its decision in Bilski v. Kappos late last month. Considering that plenty of those lawyers—and the clients they represent—feared an opinion that would severely restrict what kind of technology is worthy of patent protection. As it turns out, those fears were misplaced. Click on the headline above to read the article.
The 100-year-old organization--it celebrated its centenary on Feb 8 of this year--has teamed up with the Lemelson-MIT Program, founded by the father of modern invention in America, Jerome H. Lemelson, to provide a new merit badge: that of invention.
Facing enemy gunshots, which would you choose: the old stand-by Kevlar vest, or a new “liquid” suit? Ongoing research at BAE Systems suggests you might be wise to pick the latter. Recent tests, BAE researchers suggest, hint that a combination of liquid and Kevlar layers might stop bullets more quickly and keep them from going as deep. Click on the link above to read all about it at Discover magazine's Discoblog.
On 06/28/10, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Bilski v. Kappos, a case about what subject matter (including software and business method patents) is eligible for patent protection under US law. Unfortunately, the Supremes blew it. Here's why, according to patent attorney Erik J. Heels. Click on the link above to read this great blog post.
Here are some examples of interesting company names and the backstories behind them. Click on the blue headline link above to find out more about these company names: Google, Hotmail, Volkswagen, Yahoo, Asus, Cisco, Canon, Coca-Cola, FranklinCovey, IKEA, Lego, Reebok, Sharp, Skype, Six Apart, Verizon.
Last month, at the the World Innovation Forum, Stone argued that Twitter is "not a social network," though many people view it as one. "That's been a myth since the beginning," he explained. "We're much more like an information network or a source of news." With 24 billion search queries a month, perhaps Twitter and Stone are onto something.
"Say what you will about the importance of computers, fax machines, printers and cell phones to do business but one of the most valuable tools is particularly low-tech: the whiteboard," writes Mark Evans in the Globe and Mail, Report on Business.
While oil companies have spent billions of dollars to drill deeper and farther out to sea, relatively little money and research have gone into finding new, improved ways to respond to oil spills in deepsea conditions like those in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts say the massive Gulf spill has exposed a failure by the industry and the federal government to commit adequate resources to oil cleanup and response technology.
Seventy days hasn't been enough for BP to find a way to stop the oil spewing into the Gulf, but in today's world, it's plenty of time to create a game based on the disaster. Super Boise, an independent game development company, has just released "Crisis in the Gulf" for the Xbox 360.
