Curious Technology Transfer Moment

I was chatting with several technology transfer gurus involved in some of the most advanced biomedical and biomedical engineering discoveries. The conversation moved to the difficulty of figuring out what is going on in the world of patents and inventions. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to plug Coronado IP and its transformational search capabilities, I delivered my elevator speech. The conversation took a curious turn. The technology transfer gurus told me that they never buy new search technology, that they don't believe in being early adopters and wait for the technology to be mature before investing. What????

To recap, some of the people who are steeped in inventions, patents, and bringing innovations to the marketplace don't believe in buying new technology. My head hurts.

Music and the Business Methods Conundrum

One of the important topics of debate in Business Methods patents circles is where these patents fit along the information technology continuum. At it's heart is the "What does it do?" vs. "What do you do with it?" nexus. This is what a semiconductor does, this is what a disk drive does, this is what memory does; this is what you do with it - use it to process on-line banking transactions, to create customer loyalty programs, to place sensors on fish and track them so anglers don't have to work so hard. "What does it do?" and "What do you do with it?" have become essential questions in the information age quest to define the boundaries of patentability.

The Gutenberg printing press with it movable metal type and Johannes Gutenberg's creation of oil-based colored and black inks brought books and the knowledge they contained to a far broader audience than before. Depending on your perspective, this may be the earliest entry in the information technology continuum. Gutenberg focused on the printed word.

Ottaviano Petrucci is believed to be one of the first to print music using the Gutenberg movable type process. He used the movable type in a multiple-impression process where one run was for the staves - the five parallel lines, another for the words or decorative elements, and the final for the notes. There is some dispute on whether Petrucci's approach was a double impression or multiple impression process. According to the Center for Intellectual Property & Information Law Petrucci received a twenty year patent for the double impression process. This was one of the earliest records of patents for inventions and improvement in music printing. You can read the translation of the patent grant here.

According to Joanna Kostylo and the University of Cambridge, three years lapsed between Petrucci's petition for a patent and publication of the first work under the patent "Harmonice Muscices Odecaton A." Start ups take note; the time to get a patent and get your product to market is never short.

Even the Renaissance had its patent issues. Petrucci's early activity in the printed music market drew competitors. Andrea Antico was granted a patent to print music using a woodcut method focused on printing keyboard music. Petrucci received a new exclusive right to print organ music. The two printers were competitors. According to Ms. Kostylo, the pope withdrew Petrucci's organ patent because he failed to produce music for keyboards under his patent. The two inventors battled it out in the market place for printed music.

This brings us back to business methods. Did Petrucci get a patent for a business method; using the Gutenburg movable type invention to create printed sheet music? Was sheet music one of the early example of the "What Does It Do" vs. "What Do You Do With It" nexus?

The links to the Petrucci patents above are great if you want to have a look at some very early patents.

Grim Outlook for USPTO

Today's Watch Dog Report in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel provides a grim outlook on the state of affairs at USPTO. The article, " Despite efforts to improve, US patent approvals move slower" highlights the impact of long pendencies, budget freezes, attrition and a host of other ills. John Schmid wrote, "...the US wastes at least $6.4 Billion each year in "forgone invention" - legitimate technology ht cannot get licenses and start-ups that cannot get funded because of US Patent Office problems."

The horror stories of patent applications languishing on the floors of examiners offices for years are distressing. When you consider the current political and economic chants about innovation, and research and development; reports that the Chinese want to file a million patent applications by 2015 with a good number of them landing here, an the accelerating pace of the creation of complex technical and scientific documents and no subject matter experts to review all this stuff; PTO seems to be in for a rough ride.

You can read the article at here. Thanks to Greg Aharonian of Internet Patent News Service for passing the report along.

A New Ideas to Market Nexus

Cleveland Clinic and MedStar announced a new collaboration to bring more medical inventions to market. Read the article in yesterday's Washington Post here.

The Post reports that this is one of the first partnerships where a health services system is partnering with the holder of life sciences patents to leverage the health systems clinical experts to commercialize patented inventions.

One of the interesting items in the article is the nexus between adoption of electronic health records and finding more opportunities to reach out to other experts to collaborate. "With improvements in electronic health records, more health systems will be turning to such collaborations to tap into the expertise of other organizations, officials said.'

Calling Alan Gilbert....here's an extension of the collaboration model.

This is good news for inventors, for clinicians, and for patients and an interesting twist on commercialization to cut the time to market for innovations.

Coronado IP and the Power of Concept Searching

“Noscitur a Sociis”

A word is known by the company it keeps.

Frosty the Article Holding Figurine

Holiday Greetings from Frosty the Article Holding Figurine.

We claim a method of communicating holiday greetings comprising a representational snowman like figure offered in combination with a social expression communication associated with an occasion, holiday, or event; delivered via a communication network wherein the communication network comprises a computer connected to a telecommunications device that facilitates exchange of greetings via the Internet through posts on a weblog, a weblog being a web-based journal that contains periodic posts usually in reverse chronological order.

Frosty the Article Holding Figurine with his preferred embodiment article, the jacket, casually thrown over his shoulder and the inscrutable yet determined look on the upper orbital section of the facial structure is no ordinary a snowman shaped object, he is a figurine of action. He strikes a dashing pose with his top hat-like structure affixed to the upper portion of the preferred embodiment snowman-like shape. The representational human visage let's us know this article holding figurine is no victim of the politically correct as represented by the corn-cob pipe like smoking apparatus clinched in dual elliptical indents designed to represent a notional mouth. In the preferred embodiment he is on the way to a festive holiday gathering to join his other patented figurine, ornamental, and decorative cohorts including the snowman shaped Christmas tree, in celebration of the holiday season.



In the preferred embodiment, all of us at Coronado Group wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a bright and shiny holiday season.

Dick Tracy, It's Time to Upgrade Your Watch

Freedom to Operate is never easy especially when the first thing you have to do is figure out how what you've invented fits in with everything that everyone else has invented and patented. Imagine if what you've invented is an upgrade to the iconic Dick Tracy watch.

Yesterday I read Nick Bilton's New York Times Bits blog post "An iPod Watch Project Explodes Online." Minimal, an industrial design firm based in Chicago, has a plan to incorporate the new iPod Nano into an elegantly designed watch housing. (There are many beautiful items that they designed on Minimal's website.) The project was supported by users at Kickstarter.com who donated $25 to the project in exchange they will receive the watch kit when it becomes available. They raised over $500,000. I wondered how the Freedom to Operate investigation is going.

We went down this path a while ago on the wristwatch front. The Dick Tracy watch investigation yielded a fine collection of wrist instruments with radios and clocks and video, oh my. Minimal's kit takes an existing product and enhances it with a new housing. Then presto, a new addition to the wrist instrument category.

In the comments Mr. Bilton's readers added a fine collection of new product features - leather and fabric bands, phone features, Bluetooth headphones - one doesn't want the iconic white ear buds connect by its white wire to your wrist - unless of course, there is a very long cord. One commenter added a list of questions - how long will the battery last? Will it have an alarm? (Think early Casio and the Timex Beep watch.) Others wanted phone features. Then there was the usability comments citing its value as a device for kids so they won't lose it and for runners.

So what exactly are the boundaries of this invention? Is this another case of convergence - a watch band and housing meet the iPod? Is this a new housing? Is it a new iPod accessory? How will LG with it's recently FCC approved and 2009 Consumer Electronics Show attention getting LG GD910 wrist instrument gizmo feel about this new entry into the market? And what about Steve Jobs?

Freedom to operate aside, I want one.