Steve van Dulken's Patent blog

The Electronic Supermarket Trolley

My April contribution to the Ideas21 website has already appeared, The Electronic Supermarket Trolley.

This is one of a series of stories I have written about important or just interesting patented inventions. Ideas21 acts to encourage innovators with talks and networking in London and Manchester, as well as with its growing website.

Below is the main drawing from the invention, where a "smart" supermarket trolley/ cart holds a dialogue with the goods housed there.

 

Reusing greywater to flush toilets

Today's free Metro newspaper had an item about a "bizarre green gadget", where a washing machine is mounted above a toilet. The water used by the washing machine gets used again when the toilet is flushed.

I'm not sure why the story, which shows a picture of the invention, calls the concept bizarre. Maybe it isn't really worth the effort, but reusing water sounds a good idea to me.

I suspect that the invention is actually Hungarian Pal Ökrös’ Electronic Greywater Reusing Washing Machine patent specification. It has an interesting main picture, given below.

More fruitful, perhaps, in saving water would be to use recycled water from washbasins in public toilets. My father told me some thirty years ago after a business trip to Japan that he saw there the idea of water used in washbasins then being used in the cisterns to flush the toilets.

 

The Spark.IP™ data-mining tool

I have just come across a data-mining tool for use in patent analysis, Spark.IP™.

In theory it is a place where people can advertise their willingness to license or sell their patents.

Much more interesting, I suggest, is the fact that this beta version, which at present is free, also offers the ability to mine patent data in US grants or published applications to create “patent landscape” information. The idea in such software is to make a visual display of interesting information about the patents, using data in them or relationships between them. I was aware that there exist companies which provide this sort of analysis for a price, but this is the first free one I’ve seen.

You could search for example for the term “wind turbine”. Numerous "cluster maps" appear, each for slightly differing wordings (and hence technologies). Within each, different wordings, shown by hexagons, are connected by lines. Larger hexagons indicate more activity, and darker colours indicate better matches.

This is what the help keys say, and I am not too sure what they mean. Apparently they rely on citations, where the search reports (as given on the front page of US patent grants) cite earlier patents as having some similarity. Presumably the bigger hexagons represent areas where there are lots of citations to the smaller ones, not the reverse. I had assumed that keywords were being used to link them, so that A has similar wording to B which has similar wording to C and so on.

“Assignees” (the owners of patents) can also be searched, where for example Google reveals cluster maps showing, not surprisingly, that their major work is in document information management and then in managing networked information. In this case I found it much clearer, if only intuitively, comprehending the data. In both cases further analysis is possible, such as the major companies involved for keywords, or a bar graph showing the numbers in each year. Titles of relevant patents can also be seen. It is possible to combine fields, so that for example an inventor in a company can be searched for.

It is not clear to me what exactly the maps are showing, and this (for me at least) limits the usefulness of the tool. I’d like to see the site offer a worked example where the precise implications of the links and the colours and size of the icons are explained in detail.

The Sensurround technology

The other day I was watching the 1976 film Midway on TV when, in the closing credits, I saw SENSURROUND™ PATENT PENDING.

Fans of this site will know that that sort of thing is a challenge I can't resist, and it did not take long to track down the relevant patent, Special effects generation and control system for motion pictures. Here is its main illustration.

I was only vaguely aware of the technology. Special equipment was built into the perimeter of the cinema to convey high intensity, very low frequency random noise so that the audience would feel sensations such as earthquakes. In the case of Midway, explosions, I imagine.

The system was first used in, appropriately enough, Earthquake (1974). It was one of the top films of the year, but there was a problem which the applicant, MCA Systems, had not anticipated. Multiplexes were becoming popular, and the frequent juxtaposition of showing Earthquake next to The Godfather, Part II meant that those who wanted to watch mafiosi quietly snarling at each other were troubled by low rumblings from next door. Not surprisingly they complained in large numbers.

There was also structural damage in some cinemas. A test screening at Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood cracked the ceiling, so a safety net was installed -- very reassuring for the audiences, no doubt. In Germany films made with the process could only be shown in single screen cinemas. In Chicago, the head of the city's Building and Safety Department demanded that the system be turned down or removed to avoid structural damage.

Together with the cost of installing the equipment, and the $500 weekly fee to Universal for using the system, it simply wasn't worth the hassle, and not surprisingly Sensurround was only used in five films. The concept simply hadn't been thought through enough.

Innovation Nation white paper

The British government published yesterday its Innovation Nation white paper. The power of Government spending must be harnessed to create demand for new innovative products and services, says the press release.

There is a lot of interesting data and comments in it. I checked for mentions of patents, and found the statement "The UK exhibits low levels of R&D and patenting, although this may be partly due to industrial structures" (page 19). In my opinion, a low level of technical skills and a short-term approach to investment with a desire for a quick return are relevant factors.

There was also the statement "Measures of patent applications per head of population for the UK are lower than for major competitors" (page 32). This is true, and we are falling behind. I have compiled figures based on the number of patent applications by residents made through the international PCT route, which is used by nearly all big companies and many medium sized ones to request protection (the so-called "world patent", which it isn't).

Instead of measuring the actual numbers, I measured the rise or fall in national "market share" using the route. Major countries were measured on the basis of how they have performed since 1991. A score below 100 means that their share has fallen, while a rise means that they are improving. A fall would be expected as countries like Korea and China have been making many applications in recent years.

The results ? The only major country to improve was Japan, with a score in 2006 of 230. Their share has more than doubled. Next come Germany, with 94; France, 82; the USA, with 79; and then the UK with just 34. This means that the British share is just over a third of what it had been 15 years ago. This is masked by the fact that the actual numbers have risen, for the UK from 2257 to 5064, which is now a 3.4% share.

In 1991 the UK had more than twice as many applications as the French. In 2003 they overtook us. But we are still ahead of the Italians -- for the moment. Britain is sixth in actual numbers, as Korea has also overtaken the UK. Their number of filings in 2006 rose 26% over 2005, while China rose by an extraordinary 56% (but from a low base). And all this only reflects a desire to patent, not actual allowed patents.

Although much British activity in intellectual property is in fields that are not normally patentable in Europe (copyright and music, for example), it is sobering to see cold figures of this sort.

Spanish historical patents

My colleague Phillip Eagle has told me that the Spanish Patent Office has placed a lot of old material on the Web.

They are grouped together on an Historical Archive page. Their gazette from 1886 to 1965 is there, with each issue as a separate PDF. This rather hinders searching, but at least each issue can be browsed through. The trade marks with their logos and so on feature a lot as well as data about patents and designs. No drawings are given for patents or for the designs. As far as I can recall this is the first time that a country has placed such a large file of its industrial property gazette on the Web.

There are also three databases with brief data (again no drawings) on patents. They cover "Privileges", 1826-78; Patents, 1878-1929; and Patents, 1930-66. In the last I was delighted to find that Enrique van Dulken had applied in 1931 for Spanish patent 122614 for a mechanical method of slicing or peeling oranges. This makes sense, as my Malaga cousin, an immigrant to Spain as his brother was to England from The Netherlands, were big in fruit.

The Eco-Patent Commons database

In January several companies joined together in creating a database of patents that they are making available for anyone to use for free.

IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes and Sony have joined together, but other companies can contribute as well. Suggested topics are inventions for energy conservation or efficiency, pollution prevention (source reduction, waste reduction), use of environmentally preferable materials or substances, materials reduction, and increased recycling ability. The site is under the stewardship of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Oddly, when I tried searching for "wind power" I got among my 31 hits many quite irrelevant patents. When I tried searching for classes that were shown among those results I got zero hits. I suspect there is some development work to do. The results pages link to copies of American patents.

British patent numbers

This posting explains about British patent numbers, both old and new.

At present there are two kinds of numbers. The first “application number” is allocated when a patent is applied for, and is in the format 0517653 where 05 indicates the year of filing, 2005, and 17653 indicates a number from a consecutive sequence for that year. At the end there may be a check digit preceded by a fullstop but this can be ignored. Zeroes are added if necessary so that there are five digits within the numerical sequence. "GB" should be cited as preceding the entire number as many countries now use the same or a fairly similar numeration. Such lettering is called country codes.

Applications can be refiled within 12 months to make amendments in which case a fresh number is given. Either it is an amendment to the original and keeps the original application number as well, or else the applicant is submitting fresh material and is starting from scratch. In this case, 0517653 was amended by 0602169 but kept the original number.

The second, published number is allocated when publication occurs. Details of the invention are confidential before then. Publication is approximately 18 months from the original British number (or 18 months from a foreign “priority” number). In this case, it became GB2436596A.

2436596 is from a numerical sequence that began in 1978 while the A indicates that it is an application. It is only an attempt at this stage to get protection, with the scope given in the document. The claims set this out and is based on the description and any drawings.

If allowed protection by the UK Intellectual Property Office, it is published, perhaps in amended form, as GB2436596B. The number stays the same but the A changes to B to indicate that it is a granted patent.

In practice the codes can alter with numbers to reflect amended grants (C for example) but this covers the vast majority. With each publication the earlier numbers and dates will be cited on the front page.

This applies to 1978 onwards. Before then there was a single publication stage without As or Bs. The practice of using annual application numbers followed by a published number (which were in a 100,000 onwards sequence that went to over 1,600,000) has occurred since 1916.

Before 1916 there was only a single number, allocated at application. These numbers were in annual sequences from October 1852 to 1915 and were normally quoted as the application number alone, such a 2600. Often a citation to such a patent omits the year, which makes finding the number very awkward. Hence the British Library cites them as e.g. 2600/1887 to indicate the year sequence. In some cases nothing was published with a particular number, especially between 1884 and 1915. This was because if the short “provisional” application was not followed up with the longer “complete” application then nothing was published.

A little data is then available in the Official Journal (Patents), held at the British Library and sometimes elsewhere, in numerical order. Espacenet has PDFs of most British patents from about 1895 onwards. The patents to 1915 are cited in the format GB190507239, again with zeroes if necessary to make 5 digits after the year.

Before October 1852 (which was when the Irish, Scottish and English offices combined) there is a single sequence of numbers for English numbers, 1 to 14,359. These numbers were allocated when the old patents from 1617 were printed for the first time in the 1850s. Again the British Library allocates the year as well as the number to help identify it. The Irish and Scottish patents have not been printed (the Irish patents were destroyed in a fire in 1921) or numbered. The National Archives has a leaflet about these pre 1852 patents.

All this is of course a simplistic explanation. 

UK translations of European Patent Convention patents

The European Patent Convention is a treaty, administered in Munich by the European Patent Office, which grants patents valid for numerous European countries. Fees to keep them in force are paid individually to member states and litigation can occur there as well, so in that sense a patent grant is really a bundle of patents for those states.

The descriptions in the patents are published in one of three languages: English, German and French, although the claims in the grants (B stage) have to be in all three languages. This causes problems for those cannot read those languages, and if there is not an English language equivalent (normally an American document). 

To overcome this, some countries had legislation requiring that a translation into a language acceptable to them be filed. The UK for example required that a granted patent in French or German had to be translated and copies were kept both at the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) and at the British Library, where they are kept in a reserve area at St Pancras in numerical order, and are available for copying.

This will change as a result of the implementation on the 1 May 2008 of what is nicknamed the London Agreement. It alters Article 65 of the European Patent Convention. The argument was that it cost industry a great deal of money to pay for the translations and that they were rarely looked at.

The situation is a little complicated, but basically it means that in the UK there will no longer be a requirement for the deposit of translations for patents granted on or after the 1 February 2008. The UK IPO has a Guidance Note no.1 giving more details.

Consultation on trade marks

The UK Intellectual Property Office has launched a consultation on the modernisation and consolidation of the trade mark rules.

It involves revising the Trade Marks Rules 2000 to avoid "duplication, inconsistency and possible confusion"; bring the UK into line with best practice, and enabling ratification of the Singapore Treaty on Trade Mark Law; making the tribunal system "more flexible, efficient and proportionate"; and introducing business changes to increase the speed and efficiency of processes and reduce costs.

Comments are requested by the 26 May.