Steve van Dulken's Patent blog

A world of cracking ideas

The Science Museum, in collaboration with the UK Intellectual Property Office, has launched A world of cracking ideas, an inventions exhibition aimed at children.

The exhibition is themed around the Wallace and Gromit characters. Wallace is always inventing devices for dropping him from bed into his trousers, automatically making the breakfast, and so on. Typical, I suspect, of the coverage is last Saturday's Telegraph article, which is joky and includes the line "thinking up potty ideas is a national pastime."

Not so potty is the amount of money that has presumably been made by the mismatched pair of Wallace and Gromit themselves. The master who is less intelligent than his silent dog (who constantly saves the day) -- and he doesn't realise it. Despite everything, Gromit is loyal in truly dog-like fashion.

Besides the actual television and movie productions, licensing out rights to use the characters must be lucrative. I had a look to see what intellectual property rights had been registered by Aardman Animations Limited. I didn't find any patents or designs, but trade mark rights have been registered to protect merchandising of products.

Most of these are words such as Creature Comforts and Shaun the Sheep (also Timmy Time and Chop Socky Chooks, which were new to me). Chicken Run was registered by DreamWorks Animation LLC, which is a reminder that relying on a company name doesn't always work. Similarly, a separate company, Wallace & Gromit Limited, has registered the trade mark Wallace & Gromit and also the following, purely visual, British trade mark 2367443 showing Gromit:

 

 

British trade mark 2367441 shows Wallace in similar mode. Both were filed in 2004 and both cover 12 classes of products or services (as registrations are made for specified goods or services in specified classes), such as beverages, snacks, motorcyclist clothing (!) and the obvious entertainment services. The British database can be searched for free on the Web.

No trade marks showed the two as companions, to my surprise. And what if someone tried to use Gromit showing different expressions, or for other areas of business ? One for the lawyers to sort out.

"Flash of genius" film

The other day I noticed an advertisement on TV for a new film, Flash of genius. I thought there was a fleeting glimpse of patent drawings.

It's about Robert Kearns, who in 1964 filed for a patent for the first (at least, successful) Windshield wiper system with intermittent operation -- windshield of course being what the British call a windscreen. It involved a cheap timer. Previously, the wiper moved all the time. He tried to interest the Big Three car makers and they said no, yet began to install them in their cars from 1969.

So he sued.

Wikipedia has an article about his life with more on the litigation. He ended up living opposite the Detroit courthouse.

I've already posted about earlier films/ movies which are about real inventors.

New DNA technique using mixed samples

There has been a lot of publicity recently for the UK Forensic Science Service and its new technique for using mixed samples of DNA and extracting distinct DNA profiles for individuals. An example is the Daily Telegraph story.

The technique is called DNA Boost, and four successful trails in police forces suggest that many "cold cases" can be reopened with old samples tested using the new technique.

The patent application describing the technique is the Improvements in and relating to analysis of mixed source DNA profiles. That was published in October 2007.

The Invisible Edge

I have just finished a new book, The invisible edge: taking your strategy to the next level using intellectual property. The authors are Mark Blaxill and Ralph Eckhardt, who are managing partners of 3LP Advisors, an "investment advisory firm focused on intellectual property".

It is packed with (almost entirely American) case studies of how companies used their intellectual property -- mainly patents in the case studies -- to make themselves successful. Or how, sometimes, they failed to realise the value of their property.

Many of the case studies were new to me. They include the story behind 3G technology, where manufacturers have to pay Qualcomm lots of money because of a vital patent; Xerox's success with the patent for the Xerox 914 model, the first viable photocopier, launched in 1959, and Gillette and Schick's fight over razor technology.

I had not realised that after Sony lost the Betamax/ VHS video format war, they concentrated on being a "shark". They would build leads in new technologies, get patents for them, and on the strength of that ask for license fees to use the technology. Japan itself gained hugely from anti-trust actions in the United States in the 1960s which forced American companies to license their technology cheaply. Japanese companies bought in the technology for low fees which enabled the opening up of the American market, an effect that was not understood at the time. I found particularly striking a page with charts showing the rise since 1960 of licensing out, rather than licensing in, technology for Japan and for Korea, as those countries developed their own technological leads.

The book claims that 80-90% of the value of many companies lies in their intellectual property, but that they often don't realise it. Economists, too, have traditionally not taken it into account as it does not rest easily in their models.

My only minor quibbles are that more on Europe would have been interesting (but then the raw material is more available for American studies), and I thought the value of a good trade mark was not emphasised enough. Not every company competes in a field where patents or copyright are vital.

An excellent read for anyone who suspects that their company is losing out in the battle for profits.  

Consultation on fees by UK IPO

The UK Intellectual Property Office is consulting about fees for obtaining trade marks and, to some extent, patents, and other matters. For example a reduced fee if applicants file electronically and eanbling trade mark applicants to ask for help by telephone while filling in the application form.

More details are given in the consultation which also explains about how to respond. Anyone can comment, with the deadline being the 1 June.

Storm in a teapot

There has been quite a lot of publicity over a German company, Seelig & Hille, trying to get a little tea shop in London to change its trade mark on the grounds that it would confuse customers, even though  the German company does not trade in the UK.

The Daily Telegraph article is typical of the coverage. I may have missed it, but none of the articles seem that you apply for specific goods or services within specific classes of the Nice Classification, not for everything. Here is the German trade mark, registered through the Community system.

   

Class 30, drinks, is covered. Now for the offending trade mark application, made through the UK system:

It's true that they are both for the appearance of a teapot, but the UK application details show that besides Class 30 they asked for Class 43, catering services.

Jemma Swallow, the proprietor of The Tea Box, could have dropped Class 30 and kept to Class 43 to avoid conflict. I don't know if this was put forward as an argument, but in the end the Germans backed down, and it did not go to a court case. The Tea Box faced the possibility of huge legal bills, but had kept their nerve.

It occurred to me that others must have used the logo of a teapot for selling tea or for catering services. The official UK database, which indexes the wording and images of both British and Community trade marks, can be searched by the Vienna Classification for the "image" of a teapot. Class 11.03.14 is for teapots, coffee pots and kettles and has 141 hits, with lots of teapots (admittedly, many are by the same Seelig & Hille). I wonder if they were put forward as evidence of previously registered marks.

Reverse osmosis

My February Patent of the Month story for the Ideas21 site has gone up, Reverse osmosis.

It is about an invention that will help those with a source of polluted water in the Third World, as displayed on Dragons' Den. Here is its main drawing.

Bricks from ash, not straw

My January Patent of the Month story for the Ideas21 site has gone up, Bricks from ash, not straw, which is about using fly ash, a waste product of coal-fired power stations, to make building bricks.

I've always liked the idea of using the waste of one industry to make a useful product for another industry.

Boliven Patents Top 25

A (free) statistical report measuring the top 25 in a number of fields at the US Patent & Trademark Office in 2008 has been published as Boliven Patents Top 25.

It is laudable that the company has put the report on the Web for free. My only criticisms is that giving the nationality of the companies or inventors would have added interest, as would analysing by country itself.

Of the top 25 applicants granted utility patents, IBM was number 1 with an industrious 4,088 but only 9 were American. Ten were from Japan and a further two were Korean. None were British (just three were from Europe).

I found a table showing the top 25 examiners fascinating. Ian Simmons had 1,502. If Ian works 300 days a year, that's 5 a day -- truly a Stakhanovite perfomance. Among the inventors, Australian Kia Silverbrook had 577 patents (mostly for inkjet printers and the like).

The tables should be used with care, as "patents" are interpreted to include design patents and plant patents as well as utility patents.

The patents of Le Corbusier

I visited at the weekend the Le Corbusier exhibition at the Barbican in London. I've always liked architecture, and it was great fun to look at the models, drawings and so on. It's on until the 24 May.

There was no mention of his having patented his ideas, and I had a look and found that under his real name of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret he had applied for eight French patents between 1919 and 1960. Except for the first, he was given under his real name but also as dit Le Corbusier.

Looking around on the Internet suggests that he patented his idea of the Maison dom-ino, using slabs and columns in his familar concrete style (this I think is his first patent) and also the modulor proportions idea where interiors are proportioned to the dimensions of the average person.

Here is a list of his patents with the French titles in order of the year of application. Two had "additions", additional material, which meant further publications. 

FR496013, 1919, Procédé de construction de murs par coffrage, plus addition FR21671

FR619254, 1926, Châssis de fenêtre à coulissement horizontal

FR672824, 1929, Siège

FR825279, 1937, Installation sanitaire

FR996664, 1945, Perfectionnements apportés aux ensembles à usage humain constitués par la juxtaposition d'éléments

FR1012589, 1949, Perfectionnements apportés aux immeubles à éléments préfabriqués, notamment aux habitations à logements multiples de ce genre, plus addition FR60067

FR1029744, 1950, Perfectionnements apportés aux habitations, notamment à celles constituées à l'aide d'éléments préfabriqués

FR1259041, 1960, Procédé d'édification d'immeubles à l'aide d'éléments préfabriqués et immeubles obtenus par ce procédé