Steve van Dulken's Patent blog

New competition for inventors

A press release has just been sent out by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys warning of the dangers in giving away details of your invention.

The Ideal Home Show is celebrating 100 years and so for its annual exhibition it is hosting a competition called InnovationNation. The ten most promising inventions that are sent in will be "showcased" at the Show in March, at London's Earl's Court. Only UK residents may apply. Adam Hart-Davis, who has hosted many science-related programmes on television, will be involved.

The press release is in fact Hart-Davis' own plea that the entrants do not lose their rights. Sending in details of an invention that hasn't yet been applied for as a patent is, to put it mildly, inadvisable. This is called "disclosure" unless done in confidence, such as the recepients filling in a non-disclosure form. This hardly applies to all those watching the show. Steps are being taken to ensure that the inventors' rights will not be lost.

In my experience private inventors are divided fairly evenly between those who refuse to give even a clue to how the invention works and those who are only too eager to disclose all they know. Rather like the chap who used his mobile to read out his credit card details to someone while travelling on a train to Newport the other week.

Sometimes the advantage of the invention can be explained without giving away how it works. A new type of writing instrument that saved 30% of the current cost of ballpoint pens yet was as compact and  convenient would be of interest to manufacturers and venture capitalists, for example. Concepts for doing business on the Internet are, sadly, usually neither able to be explained in this way, nor patentable in the UK.

Blended wing aircraft

A friend passed on to me something that I'd somehow missed -- Boeing's work on a "blended wing aircraft", where the cargo or passengers are sited within a massive, triangular wing.

Apparently in 2006 there was a hoax going about on the Web stating that this was going to be the new 797 model for passenger use, but the company states that there is no possibility of using it for that purpose for at least 20 years. A prototype first flew in July 2007 at Edwards Air Force Base, codenamed the X-48B.

There's a lot of information about the concept in the patents. The Variable Size Blended Wing Body Aircraft is a good start. Here is the main drawing.

This was applied for in 2001, but as long ago as 1977 the company applied for a patent for a Midcabin Door for Blended Wing Aircraft. Evidently the company wants to use it for military use. A problem with it as a passenger aircraft would be that only those in the front seats would get an, admittedly fantastic, view. It reminds me of the Thunderbirds aircraft.

The Dyson Blade™

I was in the Victoria & Albert the other day and when I went to dry my hands after visiting the toilet I noticed a new (to me) wall-mounted air dryer, called the Dyson Blade.

A rush of cold air emerging from a thin slit slammed into my hands, which were placed within a groove shaped to fit the hands. It dries hands in ten seconds, much less than the normal time of the ones that lumber into action and slowly get warm. It is the speed of the air that does it, evidently, squeezed through a slot no wider than an eyelash. A fellow blogger has a picture of it on their site. Certainly cool in every way. James Dyson started as an industrial designer, and it shows.

Of course, when I got home I tracked down the patent specification, Drying Apparatus. It was only published in February 2007 so it's quite new. It is being marketed in the USA as the Dyson AirBlade™.

Damp hands are much more liable to contamination than dry hands, and the Dyson web site claims that it uses 80% less energy than other hand driers.

Industrial archaeology and patents

Last weekend I helped a neighbour clear out her understairs cupboard before she moved house. She was about to throw out what she knew to be stair carpet clamps when I stopped her.

I always look at old pieces of equipment to see if there is a patent number on them. The only wording or numbering on them was:

Pat. No. 420204

Reg. No. 793737

The "Reg." number is for the registered design. It dates from the mid 1930s and the design would be in the National Archives.

The patent is available on the Web, as are most British patents back to 1895. GB 420204 is by Wilfred Anderson of Southfields, London, and it was "accepted" for publication in 1934. There are seven pages of description and drawings about how to use the clamps.

The database also shows that Anderson applied for another carpet clamp in collaboration with Hunter & Hyland, a firm based at Holborn. In 1940 and 1942 he applied for another two patents with the company, this time for curtain clamps.

Dull stuff, you might think. Not for the person researching the history of such clamps. The patents help date the invention and give the name and address of the applicants. They also describe how it works -- invaluable if you can't figure it out, or if part of it has been damaged. I'm sure many a museum has many such pieces, even if they don't know how to interpret the data. 

Sadly, my neighbour didn't share my enthusiasm about the rescue of this little fragment of industrial archaeology. I only wanted one, but she handed over the whole bag, enough clearly for her staircase. I am now the proud owner of a dozen or so 70-year old carpet clamps, one of which will join the library's informal collection of artefacts.

Design Council's study on industrial design

The Design Council has issued a (free), 144 page report called Eleven Lessons: Managing Design in Eleven Global Corporations.

It's about how industrial design makes a better product, and states that for every £100 spent on design there is a £225 increase in turnover. I'm pretty sure that's an understatement -- people are attracted to well-designed products, not ugly ones. Look at the iPod® which has become so iconic that its advertisements have no words, just black and white drawings showing someone using the product and the famous apple with a bite taken out of it. That's brand recognition.

BSkyB, Virgin Atlantic and British Telecom are the British companies featured.

Consultation on copyright exceptions

The UK Intellectual Property Office has launched a consultation on proposed changes to copyright exceptions.

It proposes changes to the way copyright works in the UK and asks for comments by the 8 April. It may sound a bit dry, but it is very important that careful responses are made by interested organisations and people.

Thunderbirds are Go !

A few days ago there was a Gerry Anderson evening on BBC4 -- those puppets as featured in 1960s programmes like Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Compulsive viewing for those like me who enjoy watching characters moving about on strings.

Apparently the puppets were controlled by tungsten wires. Not only were these less visible than the usual puppet strings, they could convey electronic pulses to control the mouth solenoid -- "lip-sync". I must admit that I had never, while watching, given any thought to the matching of words to lip movements, which suggests that whatever they were doing was successful.

Curious as ever to know if a patent was involved, I played around on Google and found the Telegoons site which suggested that Ron Field had developed an electronic lip-synch method with a patent applied for in 1961, GB 965916. His GB 965917 was for an amplifier for controlling facial expressions.

The Telegoons site has a lot on the technology, and it seems that Anderson used for his "Supermarionation" a somewhat different technique -- apparently kept secret until late into the 1970s. Gerry Anderson Marketing Limited only applied for a patent for Animated Figures using a magnetic coil to control lip movements in 1977, which suggests it was a completely new method. Or perhaps they were patenting years after it was first used, which isn't what is supposed to be done. More research, I suggest, is needed in this intriguing area. A good starting point is the EC/ECLA class A63H3/28 in Esp@cenet®, for producing sounds in dolls.