Discovery Channel Canada Investigates Odd Patents

Have you ever looked at a wacky patent and wondered if it really could work?

Discovery Channel Canada aims to find out in a new series premiering in August called "Patent Bending: Mad Ideas and Modern Science." The 11-episode series looks at patents from the past 100 years to find and build the "greatest, strangest or most fantastically odd ideas that never got off the page."

The inventions include:

Bicycle Lawnmower - Tues, Aug. 22 at 8:30 p.m.
Floating Tent - Tues., Aug. 29 at 8:30 p.m.
12-Gauge Golf Club - Tues., Sept. 5 at 8:30 p.m.
Helmet Bar - Tues., Sept. 12 at 8:30 p.m.
Chute ‘N Shoes - Tues., Sept. 19 at 8:30 p.m.
Human Carwash - Tues., Sept. 26 at 8:30 p.m.
The Mancatcher - Tues., Oct. 3 at 8:30 p.m.
Motorized Picnic Table - Tues., Oct. 10 at 8:30 p.m.
The Baby Show - Tues., Oct. 17 at 8:30 p.m.
The Better Mousetrap - Tues., Oct. 24 at 8:30 p.m.
Uphill Skis - Tues., Oct. 31 at 8:30 p.m.

Pitfalls of Ignoring Patent Literature

I'm always on the lookout for examples I can share with researchers, especially postdocs and grad students,
that illustrate the pitfalls of ignoring patent literature.

Here's a recent report about two polymer researchers at the Univ. of Mass. Amherst who took their
colleagues to task for ignoring older scientific research, especially patent literature, in an article published
in Langmuir. Their study used a water-repellent (hydrophobic) silicone patented in 1945 to prove that
hydrophobicity was well-known in the 1940s but apparently forgotten by today's researchers.
Here's the citation:

Lichao, G. and McCarthy T. "Artificial lotus leaf" prepared using a 1945
patent and a commercial textile." Langmuir, 2006, 22, 5998-6000

Patent Lens Adds RSS Feeds

Patent Lens, a free international patent database maintained by CAMBIA, a non-profit research institute located in Caberra, Australia, now has RSS capability. Once saved in an RSS news reader such as Bloglines, searches conducted in Patent Lens will be periodically checked for new patents and will alert you of new "hits".

Patent Lens contains 4.3 million US patent documents, 268,000 EP patents, 538,000 PCT applications and 10,000 Australian patents.

International Patent Information Conference and Exposition Announced

The dates for the 4th annual IPI-ConfEx have been announced. The meeting will take place March 4-8, 2007 in Sorrento, Italy. IPI-ConfEx is organized by a board of counselers representing various patent information professional associations worldwide. The conference is an opportunity for professionals in the field of patent information to meet and discuss patent searching, patent information management and the latest developments in patent information products.

CIPO News: IPC Implementation, New Payment History on CD-ROM

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office recently announced the availability of patent file payment histories on CD-ROM. Copies of the CD, which contains approximately 4 million payment history records from 445,000 patent documents through Dec. 31, 2005, may be obtained from the CIPO's Client Service Centre.

CIPO also announced the successful implementation of IPC-2006. CIPO began loading IPC symbols of Canadian patent documents from the European Patent Office's Master Classification Database (MCD) on Jan. 7, 2006.

Source: CIPO News Updates, July 10, 2006.

Invention Week @ Discovery Channel Canada

Discovery Channel Canada's Daily Planet, a news program about science and technology, recently celebrated "Invention Week."

Featured inventions included colored bubbles, aka "Zubbles", (US2006/0004110A1) and other cool ideas from the U.S. and Canada. Aspiring inventors will find a few useful tips in the brief "Inventor's Guide: From Blueprint to Patent."

EPO Patent Information Conference, Nov. 6-7 2006

The program for the 2006 EPO Patent Information Conference, scheduled for Nov. 6-7 in Cyprus, is now online. The conference will feature technical sessions, specialized training course and an exhibition of patent information products.

Patent Searching, Old School

Photo: Patent searching circa 1960. Searchers (junior patent attorneys most likely) flip through stacks of paper patents in metal troughs located in the Patent Search Room.

The IP Mall, an online resource center for intellectual property information provided by the Pierce Law Center in Concord, NH, has digitized a fascinating collection of Patent Office Research and Development Reports from the 1950s and 1960s. The reports describe the Patent Office's early attempts at "mechanizing" or automating patent searching using coding schemes and early "punched card" computers.

Photo source: How to Obtain Information from United States Patents, Washington, DC: U.S. Patent Office, 1964.

New USPC Classification Order: Class 439 - Electrical Connectors

The USPTO has published Classification Order 1,855, dated May 2, 2006. The order affects subclasses in Class 439, Electrical Connectors; it abolishes subclasses 620-622 and establishes 620.01-620.34.

PTO Document Disclosure Program

The latest issue of ipFrontline has an interesting article called "The PTO's Document Disclosure Program: Boon or Boondoggle," by former patent examiner Thomas G. Field.

The USPTO is currently seeking public comment on a proposal to eliminate the program. See the Federal Register April 6, 2006, vol. 71, p. 17399. This is the third time since 1998 that the agency has proposed eliminating the 27-year old program.

USPTO's Disclosure Document Program brochure.

WIPO Patent Search Results Available by RSS

According to a recent WIPO press release, search results in PatentScope, WIPO's database of PCT international patent applications, can now be retrieved using RSS, aka "Really Simple Syndication".

PatentScope contains approximately 1.1 million published PCT applications from 1978 to the present and is updated every Thursday when new applications are published.

PatentScope RSS searches will automatically retrieve the latest published applications and feed them into your RSS reader, web page or database. This service will make it much easier to monitor international patent applications without the hassle of conducting repetitive searches every week.

Canadian Patents, 1869-1894

Made in Canada: Patents of Invention and the Story of Canadian Innovation

The Library and Archives of Canada and Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) have launched a new online exhibition and database of patents granted to Canadian citizens and residents from 1869-1894. Some patents are jointly held by Canadians and U.S. residents. Foreign inventors not residing in Canada were permitted to apply for patents in the early 1870s.

The database contains ~14,000 patents that are indexed by patent number, patent holder name, filing year, city, province/state and title keyword. Scanned images of full-text documents are also included. The Canadian Patent Office issued approximately 44,000 patents during the 25 years covered by the database. Patents from 1895-1919 will be added in the future.

MIT-Lemelson Prizes Announced

The MIT-Lemelson Program has awarded its annual $500K prize to James L. Fergason, an early innovator in the field of liquid crystal displays, and a $100K lifetime achievement award to Dr. Sidney Pestka for his "seminal work on interferons."

Mr. Fergason has more than 100 U.S. patents. Dr. Pestka's most recent patents include:

6,800,747 Nucleic acids encoding phosphorylated fusion proteins
6,747,131 Phosphorylated fusion proteins
6,610,830 Microbial production of mature human leukocyte interferons
6,514,753 Expression vectors for producing modified proteins
6,482,613 Microbial production of mature human leukocyte interferons
6,300,474 Modified interferons
6,299,870 Mutant human interferons
6,287,853 Accessory factory function for interferon gamma and its receptor
6,225,455 Constructs for producing phosphorylated fusion proteins
6,150,503 Phosphorylated fusion proteins
6,001,589 Method of identifying proteins modified by disease states related thereto

Liquid Crystal Display Pioneer Honored
Washington Post, May 3, 2006

MIT-Lemelson Press Release

U.S. Patent Counts, Jan. 1-Apr. 30, 2006

U.S. patent grants in March and April hovered around 4,000 patents per week except for a slight dip the week of March 12. A record-breaking (at least in recent years) 4,365 patents issued on April 25, surpassing published applications by 13. This was the first week in many, many months when the number of issued patents exceeded the number of published applications.

New USPC Class Order: Class 174

The USPTO has published Classification Order 1,852, dated April 4, 2006. The order affects subclasses in Class 174 - Electricity: Conductors and Insulators.

New Tips for Searching Japanese, Chinese Patent Databases

The EPO has posted new "tips and tricks" for searching Japanese and Chinese patent databases on its FAQ - Far East web site. The site contains information and answers to questions about industrial property information in Japan, China and Korea.

WIPO Magazine (April 2006)

WIPO Magazine has a new look. The April 2006 edition is now available on the WIPO website at: http://www.wipo.int/freepublications/en/?sub_col=mag. Articles include:

* The Return of the Lion - the battle over rights to the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" between Disney and the children of the original Zulu composer.
* Avian flu drugs and patents
* Using photographs of copyrighted works (IP for business)

Academic IP News

The New York Times reported on April 10 on a new study that found that university scientists who received grants from the National Cancer Institute received a large number of patents and started companies in "surprisingly high numbers."

The study was conducted by economists at Indiana University and the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Germany with the support of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The report is available at www.kauffman.org.

In related news, Research Money magazine reported that revenue from intellectual property created by Canadian universities and hospitals had declined 7.7 percent in 2004. However, the number of invention disclosures increased 19 percent to 1,353, while patented inventions increased 23 percent to 647. These are preliminary statistics compiled by StatsCan from a survey that went to 88 universities and 47 hospitals. The final tally will be published in a working paper later this year.

Univ. of California Receives Most Patents in 2005

Researchers at the University of California received 390 patents in 2005, according to the annual list published Thursday by the USPTO. This is the 12th consecutive year that UC has ranked number 1 among U.S. universities receiving patents. UC has received more than 5,500 U.S. patents since Jan. 1, 1976 and is the designated assignee on more than 1,400 pending applications published since March 2001.

For more information about university patenting and technology transfer, see the Association of Univeristy Technology Managers (AUTM) web site. AUTM regularly publishes reports and surveys on academic patenting and licensing.

Satisfaction with Govt Web Sites Dips

According to the latest report of the American Customer Satisfaction Index e-gov survey, "Customer satisfaction with federal Web sites dipped slightly last quarter for the first time in a year, although users are generally more satisfied with the information the government has online." (Reported in Government Computer News, March 21, 2006.)

Apparently, the USPTO is no longer participating in the ACSI e-gov survey, as it doesn't appear among the Q1 scores. It was first included two years ago in the March 2004 ACSI report. ACSI scores are archived at http://www.theacsi.org/government.htm.