Patents

What Is a Patent?

There are three types of patents:

The Importance of patents

How could plant patents be so important

• Check out the video on corporations to patent plant genes in the video folder!

Example

An illustration from Thomas Edison’s 1879 patent on an electric light, his first such device. Edison expanded on the ideas in this patent throughout his career, claiming hundreds of patents related to electric lighting.

What are intellectual property rights?

• Of all of the forms of intellectual-property protection, patents are the most complex and tightly regulated. Patents are basically copyrights for inventions, defined by U.S. patent law as "any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof." Unlike copyrights, patents protect the idea or design of the invention, rather than the tangible form of the invention itself. Consequently, patenting something is a much trickier procedure than copyrighting something.

Trademarks & Trade Secrets

• Ronald Wayne designed Apple's original logo in 1976 when the company was still operating out of a garage. It shows Isaac Newton sitting beneath a tree with an apple dangling precariously above his head.

• Rob Janoff used the same apple in his redesign a year later. "You can almost feel the '70s and '80s taking place when you take a look at that rainbow apple," says Bill Gardner, principal of Gardner Design.

• Former CEO Lord John Browne was the first oil executive to acknowledge the threat of global warming. The bursting green, yellow, and white Greek mythology-inspired "Helios" symbol that replaced BP's shield is meant to imply a shift toward alternative, environmentally-friendly sources of energy like solar and biofuels, and relentless advertising has made the company's initials synonymous with "beyond petroleum."

But a series of oil spills and accidents suggested that BP wasn't walking the walk, leading some to consider its wildly successful mark more a mask than its true face.

• "If the story doesn't hold up, the mark and the brand start to lose their luster," says Brendán Murphy,

In 1972, IBM ditched its original logo in favor of the symbol it has used ever since. In an attempt to update its antiquated look -- the old logo wrapped the words "International Business Machines" around an image of the globe -- IBM tried two different block-letter logos before legendary branding designer Paul Rand created the current version.

In this modern design, the lines that make up the letters represent "speed and dynamism," according to the company. "They owned the lines going through it before everyone started using lines," Gardner says. And because of its simplicity and originality, "you have a hard time desiring to mess with it."

The association with fattening products like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese -- and negative connotations stemming from its connection to tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris -- tainted both Kraft's corporate history and its logo. So it made sense that just under two years after Altria (formerly Philip Morris) spun off shares of Kraft to form a distinct company called Kraft Foods, the food giant would want to revamp its image.

But it wasn't necessarily a success: While the slimmer styling suggests healthier products, many analysts consider the new logo, by Nitro design agency, a disaster. Introduced in February, it's already been altered, with changes to both the location and shape of the ambiguous "flavor burst," which evokes both butterflies and flowers.

At first glance, Pepsi's 2008 redesign may not look like a significant transformation, but it didn't take long for it to become a hot topic. This February, after the logo hit products, "BREATHTAKING Design Strategy" -- a 27-page justification of the new logo attributed to the Arnell Group, the marketing agency that created it -- leaked over the Internet, raising lots of questions.

In this "crazy brand manifesto," as Belk calls it, Arnell explained the redesign and even likened the new symbol to the "Mona Lisa" and the Parthenon. While some, like Belk, appreciated the simplicity of the new logo, many analysts argued that -- in addition to the disastrous treatise -- Pepsi had abandoned valuable equity in transforming its famous "wave" into the "smile."

"By taking away the wave, they just stole the legs out from under Pepsi," Gardner says. "My sense is that in five years, they will go back to the wave."

Here's one Starbucks concoction many hoped had disappeared a long time ago. The brown logo featuring a nude siren had been the company's icon since 1971, when it was developed by Starbucks co-founder Terry Heckler.

In 1992, it was updated to the green logo used today, picturing a less exposed siren. But in May of last year, the brown logo -- with the breasts covered -- made a comeback for several months during a promotion. Even with the minor touch-up, the flashback was not met with much enthusiasm. The retro logo "goes from embarrassing to crude," says Belk, whose opinion was shared by many.

Called "Slutbucks" by consumers because of the siren's seductive stance with spread tailfins and naked torso, Starbucks re-shelved the controversial siren within months, and today its green logo is back.

Branding has always been an issue at Tropicana: In its original logo, the company featured small, plump "Tropic Ana," an ambiguously ethnic topless girl with a grass skirt and balancing a bowl of oranges atop her head.

And while its more recent logo -- an orange with a straw -- wasn't criticized for being racially offensive, the company's attempts to make it over earlier this year still met with serious opposition.

Tropicana spent a reported $35 million on what consumers and analysts called an unoriginal and bland redesign, replacing its signature straw-in-orange with a glass of orange juice. While the company appeared to be aiming for a more modern style, it prompted an uproar from consumers, who found it generic.

In 2003, as UPS moved into the digital age -- from packaging and shipping. The company outgrew its 42-year-old iconic logo. Celebrated in the design community for its connection to legendary designer Rand, the original logo and its old-fashioned bow gestured to the company's roots in neighborhood package delivery. "It had a humor and a humanity to it," Murphy says.

But, the new logo represents a strategic decision to emphasize UPS's expanded business operations, and analysts also praised the company's FutureBrand designers for nodding to UPS's heritage by preserving the shield, keeping it lighthearted, and leveraging the color brown. "You would never think [brown] would be an asset, but in their case, it is."

Licensing

What are Copyrights?

Patent Protection

What Can Be Patented

Then… (2004) Now… (2009)

Example• The vast majority of inventions are

actually improvements on existing technology, not new items. The camcorder is essentially a combination of a video camera and a tape recorder.

• It is a unique idea to combine them into one unit. It was so innovative, in fact, that when Jerome Lemelson first submitted the idea to the patent office in 1977, it was rejected as an absurd notion. When the invention was eventually patented, it launched a flood of portable video machines. If you search for the term "camcorder" in the U.S. Patent Office's database, you will find more than a thousand separate patents. A modern camcorder is a combination of hundreds of patented inventions.

An illustration from U.S. patent # 5,375,430, a 'gravity-powered shoe air-conditioner.' Like many inventions, this device does not introduce any new concepts, but instead combines two existing concepts in an original way. The shoes, patented in 1994 by Israel Siegel, are powered by the walking motion of the user. Each time you take a step, your heel works to activate the air-conditioner compressor and expander.

Adaptations on Patents

Let’s Reflect

Patents affect society in a number of a ways:

Click here to see how these two companies

are doing today!!!

IBM

AAPL

A Dust Cover for a DOG ???? Really Guys?

Illustration for U.S. patent # 3,150,641, a dust cover for a dog. In addition to keeping dust off the dog, the 1964 invention is designed to keep flea-treatment products on the dog's skin while the chemicals are working. The patent explains that the dust cover could also be used to dry the dog after a bath. You blast a hair dryer into the provided port, and the hot air circulates all around the dog's body.

Who owns the patent if you created something for work?

• Take a look at the cool whip commercial in the video’s folder!

Maintaining a Patent

How do you know if someone has already thought of your invention?

• Searching by Patent Number: This is the easiest way to find out about an invention!

• Searching by Inventor's Name: This sometimes requires a little detective work, but you can do it!

Independent Inventor Resources

• http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en• A section of the USPTO’s Web site http://www.uspto.gov.

(www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/iip) is devoted to independent inventors (site is entitled “Independent Inventor Resources”) and offers a broad range of material covering most aspects of the patent and trademark process.

• Mail Stop 24Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark OfficeP.O. Box 1450Alexandria, VA 22313-1450

• E-mail: independentinventor@uspto.gov • For additional information on the patent process, telephone the

Inventors Assistance Center at: • Telephone 1-800- PTO-9199

Don’t be a Daniel Drawbaugh!The lack of witnessed notebooks describing the device, the man known as

the inventor of the telephone would have been a talented mechanic by the name of Daniel Drawbaugh. Similar disputes have raged over who invented the automobile, the electric light, and the laser, and in all of them, records- or lack

thereof- played a deciding role.The telephone case is a classic example. Even though Drawbaugh was

able to produce hundreds of witnesses to testify that he had talked over a crude telephone long before Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent application in 1875, he had not a scrap of paper dating and describing the invention. The Supreme Court rejected his claims in 1888, by the narrow margin of four votes to three.

As the sad case of Daniel Drawbaugh indicates, U.S. patent practice places a premium on witnessed records when two or more parties claimed the

same invention. The date the idea occurred and the date it was put into practice are vital.

Equally important in the eyes of the Patent Office is the “diligence” shown by contending inventors. They must prove that they regularly pursued work on

the invention, documenting their efforts on a day by day basis.

What are the 4 materials needed before submitting a patent?

What are the 4 materials needed before submitting a patent?

What are the 4 materials needed before submitting a patent?