Steve van Dulken's Patent blog

Rotatable buildings

I have been hearing about a rotatable building which, despite the financial crisis, will be erected in Dubai at a cost of $700 million.

David Fisher, an architect who is based in Milan, Italy, has applied for a patent for his Rotatable building structure. It will be built in a factory which means a floor can be installed in 6 days. There will be 80 floors and it will be 420 metres high. The lower floors will be offices, then a luxury hotel, and then apartments at the top.

There have been rotating buildings before, such as observation towers, but in this building each floor can revolve independently. It was inspired by a remark made by an apartment owner, who said that he had the best view in his building. Fisher thought that was unfair.

A mixture of wind pressure on horizontal wind turbines, and solar panels, will provide the energy needed to revolve the floors at the wish of the owner -- perhaps to take in the views at sunset, or to avoid the midday sun. Excess power would go into the local electricity grid.

The patent document makes interesting reading. For example, each apartment would have two sets of plumbing etc. connections with the central core. This would mean that one set of flexible connections would stretch, and then temporarily disconnect while the other set was functioning. Here is the main drawing.

 

If solar panels are needed then Dubai sounds like a good place to start (but Moscow also wants one). Apparently all that is holding up the project is sorting out rights in the land, and completion is projected in 2010. Lighting will be used to create interesting effects.

The rippling effects as shown on Fisher's Dynamic Architecture web site will only be possible if all the tenants agree to move their floors according to a preset plan. Perhaps their contracts will say that on certain days they have to let the floors move as management wishes. In fact, unless the entire floor is owned by a single tenant furious disputes would erupt. In which case the preset plan sounds best. Perhaps every third evening your dining room would face the best view, for example, before the building set off turning with a light show for those down in the streets.

President Obama and his BlackBerry®

The BBC site has a story called Obama allowed to keep BlackBerry which says that after a "compromise", America's new president can continue to use the device.

President Obama is the first tech-savvy President, and the article quotes him as saying that if officials wanted him to give it up they would have to "pry it out of my hands". They worried that terrorists might use it to identify his location. 

The BlackBerry® comes from Canadian company Research in Motion, and the patents were applied for in 1998. The American patent has the long but informative title System and method for pushing information from a host system to a mobile data communication device having a shared electronic address. Here is the main drawing.

 

Many others seem to find them essential, although I have never used one. It isn't just a mobile/ cell phone as it does so much more, and Wikipedia calling it a wireless handheld device is much closer to the mark. The company itself when applying for British registered designs called it a handheld communication device.

Apparently is was first to be called LeapFrog, as it would surpass the opposition, and then perhaps Strawberry as the tiny buttons looked like the seeds on the fruit. Straw sounded too slow, so Blackberry was used instead.

Quite rightly, the company wants to protect the look of the device. Numerous designs have been registered to protect the looks of the various versions, and here is just one, from the European Community designs.

Robot legs

I have a regular patents column on the Ideas21 web site, and (a little late, sorry) the November story is about Honda's robot legs concept.

Upwords®

It is said that in recessions people stay in a lot and play board games. One game that I recommend is called Upwords®.

This is the main drawing of Elliot Rudell's Game board and playing pieces. You get points for altering words by building upwards (get the pun), to a limit of 5 pieces. So FOOT might change to COOT by putting a C on top of the F. Each tile contained within an altered word gets you a point. 

Unlike Scrabble®, the players continue until nobody can play, rather than when a player has used all their letters. To my mind that, and the ability to build up, makes it more creative. 

Rudell applied for his patent in 1982 and it was published in 1988. The US trade mark was applied for in 1983, citing first use in that year, and is shown as owned by Milton Bradley. It is registered as "Apparatus for Playing a Parlor-Type Three-Dimensional Strategy Board Game". I see that the British trade mark database shows it being filed for there in 1984 -- and owned by Hasbro. Hasbro in fact has taken over Milton Bradley (and also Parker Brothers).

Rudell has scores of patents for toys. They are listed on the web site for Rudell Design. The company is a prolific provider of concepts which are taken on by toy companies, much like Marvin Glass, who gave us the Mousetrap® game and many others. Toys and games by both companies are sold under the trade marks of others and so are not readily identifiable as their work.  

The IEEE Spectrum Patents Scorecard

There have been quite a few attempts to measure patent strength or productivity for countries or companies. One I hadn't seen before is the 2008 IEEE Spectrum Patents Scorecard.

It takes American patents granted in 2007 and ranks the top 20 companies within 17 technology areas for their "overall patent power", using formulae explained at the bottom of the table. It's always interesting to see new ideas in measuring patents.

Rather confusingly, the page opens with the table for the aerospace category and you have to click on other sectors to see their own top twenty. Having a lot of patents isn't crucial to get a good score (have a look at the pharmaceuticals sector, where a small British company is second). 

The site has an interesting article, Patent prowess, discussing some highlights from the data, which was analysed by 1790Analytics.

Cutting the power cord

Publicity has been building for the 2009 International CES, the world's biggest trade show for consumer electronics. It takes place at Las Vegas, 8-11 January.

This includes a new product called PowerBeam™, which will be "showcased there". PowerBeam Corporation's website has the motto "Cutting the power cord". Apparently they can send electricity wirelessly to equipment -- a concept called wi-tricity.

The company website talks of the technology being patented, but I could not find any patents in their name. I suspect that we are actually talking about a published application, Wireless power beaming to common electronic devices. It was published in January 2007. Here is the main drawing.

 

I deduced that it was theirs as the inventor, David Silliman Graham, also presumably appears, as David S. Graham, on two international patent applications by the company on other topics. It is not required to give a company name on published American applications, though some do. Many companies take advantage of this to hide their own work on an invention.

It sounds too good to be true. The concept is that electricity is converted into an "optical beam" (heat) which crosses an open space to a nearby piece of equipment where an adapted solar cell converts it back into electricity. If it works correctly as promised, indeed no more power cables, or recharging. I don't claim to know enough on the topic to be able to comment.

I haven't seen anything about how expensive it might be. The company says it has taken health concerns into account. There is a discussion of the invention on the VentureBeat website.