Aug 18, 2009
Gen Y's have been described as lazy, incurious, narcissistic, and unable to solve complex problems. In my own practice, I have had very few inventors under 30. The patent attorneys I work with, under 30, generally fit the description. They are shockingly incurious and unable to problem solve.
What is your experience with young people? Can they invent?
Jul 1, 2009
The patent covers "anti-gravity" shoes and more about the shoes themselves can be found here:
http://blogs.discovery.com/news_tech/2009/06/michael-jackson-had-a-patent.html
The patent abstract is as follows:
A system for allowing a shoe wearer to lean forwardly beyond his center of gravity by virtue of wearing a specially designed pair of shoes which will engage with a hitch member movably projectable through a stage surface. The shoes have a specially designed heel slot which can be detachably engaged with the hitch member by simply sliding the shoe wearer's foot forward, thereby engaging with the hitch member.
Jun 24, 2009
Thomson Reuters has published a Market Report that looks at technology of granted and published patents and applications. The report also identifies owners of the patents and applications. The report identified three hot technologies: algae, wireless/cell phone, and lab on a chip nanotechnology.
Algae and biofuels made from algae showed an increase in patents from 3 in 2003 to 92 in 2008. No company or country dominates.
Wireless patents increased from 8705 to 25283 over 2003-2008. Samsung is the largest player in this technology area.
Lab on a chip patents increased from 4611 to9842 over 2003-2008. Japanese companies dominate this technology area and Seiko Epson is at the top of the list.
The report comes fromThomson Reuters Derwent World Patents Index.
Jun 22, 2009
This subject does not have much to do with invention but I just have to say it. I love the music, dancing and costumes of Bollywood movies, even for movies such as Umrao Jaan, where a young girl is sold by criminals to a brothal. I love that they are all at least four hours long. I love the romance of Kandukondain Kandukondain and Kuch naa Kaho, the handsome actors and beautiful actresses.
I always learn something about India, Islam and Hinduism watching these movies. They inadvertantly teach subtle aspects of cultures that an outsider cannot easily pick up when in the country or when studying it. Tonight, I started watching Jodhaa Akbar, a movie that is at least six hours long. It is great! It is the story of a Hindu princess who marries an Islamic emperor.
I guess that the only thing this subject has to do with invention is that watching a movie made by people from a very different culture for an audience of their peers causes viewers to see their own world differently. This offset is helpful in generating new ideas in other ares.
Jun 6, 2009
Newsweek on-line has a very good article this week on one quant's effort to overhaul the business of financial systems modeling. The article starts with this paragraph:
"Imagine an aeronautics engineer designing a state-of-the-art jumbo jet. In order for it to fly, the engineer has to rely on the same aerodynamics equation devised by physicists 150 years ago, which is based on Newton's second law of motion: force equals mass times acceleration. Problem is, the engineer can't reconcile his elegant design with the equation. The plane has too much mass and not enough force. But rather than tweak the design to fit the equation, imagine if the engineer does the opposite, and tweaks the equation to fit the design. The plane still looks awesome, and on paper, it flies. The engineer gets paid, the plane gets built, and soon thousands just like it are packed full of people and sent out onto runways. They fly for a while, but eventually, because of that fatal tweak, they all end up crashing."
The rest of the article can be found here:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/200015/page/1
Jun 2, 2009
http://www.chinawatch-clock.com/english/organizationintro/index.htm
Once a country outsources a type of manufacturing, it loses not only the current technology, which it may regard as generic, but all future technology advances in that area.
Inventors know that technological advancement is not linear. For instance, advances in membrane technology for chemical processes have aided in substantial improvements in fuel cell design. An old jewelry process, damascene, has been a significant application in the manufacture of semiconductors.
I wish we had a Watch-Clock Association, but we let that technology go decades ago.
May 25, 2009
A good video from Intel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqLPHrCQr2I&NR=1
Ajay Bhatt's patents and patent applications include the following:
1. US5909556 A G06F 19990601 Intel Corporation
M & A for exchanging date, status and commands over an hierarchical serial bus assembly using communication packets
2. US5881252 A G06F 19990309 Intel Corporation|Microsoft Corporation
Method and apparatus for automatically configuring circuit cards in a computer system
3. US5768542 A G06F 19980616 Intel Corporation
Method and apparatus for automatically configuring circuit cards in a computer system
4. US5742847 A G06F 19980421 Intel Corporation
M & A for dynamically generating and maintaining frame based polling schedules for polling isochronous and asynchronous functions that guaranty latencies and bandwidths to the isochronous functions
5. US5708849 A G06F 19980113 Intel Corporation
Implementing scatter/gather operations in a direct memory access device on a personal computer
6. US5694555 A G06F 19971202 Intel Corporation
Method and apparatus for exchanging data, status, and commands over an hierarchical serial bus assembly using communication packets
7. US5655127 A G06F 19970805 Intel Corporation
Method and apparatus for control of power consumption in a computer system
8. US5623610 A G06F 19970422 Intel Corporation
System for assigning geographical addresses in a hierarchical serial bus by enabling upstream port and selectively enabling disabled ports at power on/reset
9. US5615404 A G06F 19970325 Intel Corporation
System having independently addressable bus interfaces coupled to serially connected multi-ported signal distributors generating and maintaining frame based polling schedule favoring isochronous peripherals
10. US20080215822 A1 G06F 20080904
PCI Express Enhancements and Extensions
11. US20080196034 A1 G06F 20080814
PCI EXPRESS ENHANCEMENTS AND EXTENSIONS
12. US20080195791 A1 G06F 20080814
PCI EXPRESS ENHANCEMENTS AND EXTENSIONS
13. US20080195780 A1 G06F 20080814
PCI EXPRESS ENHANCEMENTS AND EXTENSIONS
14. US20080109565 A1 G06F 20080508
PCI express enhancements and extensions
15. US20070150762 A1 G06F 20070628
Using asymmetric lanes dynamically in a multi-lane serial link
16. US20070147426 A1 H04J 20070628
PCI-Express® transaction layer packet compression
17. US20070115831 A1 H04L 20070524
Method and apparatus for meeting compliance for debugging and testing a multi-speed, point-to-point link
18. US20070008898 A1 H04L 20070111 Intel Corporation
Point-to-point link negotiation method and apparatus
19. US20060168581 A1 G06F 20060727
Software deployment system
20. EP789872 B1 G06F 20060712 Intel Corporation
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SERIALLY INTERFACING ISOCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS PERIPHERALS
21. EP789879 B1 G06F 20040102 INTEL CORPORATION
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DYNAMICALLY GENERATING AND MAINTAINING FRAME BASED POLLING SCHEDULES FOR POLLING ISOCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS FUNCTIONS THAT GUARANTEE LATENCIES AND BANDWIDTHS TO THE ISOCHRONOUS FUNCTIONS
22. EP666525 B1 G06F 20010912 INTEL CORPORATION
Method and apparatus for control of power consumption in a computer system
23. EP789879 A4 G06F 20020502 INTEL CORP
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DYNAMICALLY GENERATING AND MAINTAINING FRAME BASED POLLING SCHEDULES FOR POLLING ISOCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS FUNCTIONS THAT GUARANTEE LATENCIES AND BANDWIDTHS TO THE ISOCHRONOUS FUNCTIONS
24. EP789872 A4 G06F 19991027 INTEL CORP
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SERIALLY INTERFACING ISOCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS PERIPHERALS
25. EP789867 A4 G06F 19991027 INTEL CORP
M & A FOR DYNAMICALLY DETERMINING AND MANAGING CONNECTION TOPOLOGY OF A HIERARCHICAL SERIAL BUS ASSEMBLY
26. EP789879 A1 G06F 19970820 INTEL CORPORATION
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DYNAMICALLY GENERATING AND MAINTAINING FRAME BASED POLLING SCHEDULES FOR POLLING ISOCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS FUNCTIONS THAT GUARANTEE LATENCIES AND BANDWIDTHS TO THE ISOCHRONOUS FUNCTIONS
27. EP789872 A1 G06F 19970820 INTEL CORPORATION
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SERIALLY INTERFACING ISOCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS PERIPHERALS
28. EP789867 A1 G06F 19970820 Intel Corporation
M & A FOR DYNAMICALLY DETERMINING AND MANAGING CONNECTION TOPOLOGY OF A HIERARCHICAL SERIAL BUS ASSEMBLY
29. EP666525 A2 G06F 19950809 INTEL CORPORATION
Method and apparatus for control of power consumption in a computer system
30. WO2007002942 A1 G06F 20070104 INTEL CORPORATION
POINT-TO-POINT LINK NEGOTIATION METHOD AND APPARATUS
31. WO1996013769 A1 G06F 19960509 INTEL CORPORATION
M & A FOR DYNAMICALLY DETERMINING AND MANAGING CONNECTION TOPOLOGY OF A HIERARCHICAL SERIAL BUS ASSEMBLY
32. WO1996013771 A1 G06F 19960509 INTEL CORPORATION
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SERIALLY INTERFACING ISOCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS PERIPHERALS
33. WO1996013777 A1 G06F 19960509 INTEL CORPORATION
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DYNAMICALLY GENERATING AND MAINTAINING FRAME BASED POLLING SCHEDULES FOR POLLING ISOCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS FUNCTIONS THAT GUARANTEE LATENCIES AND BANDWIDTHS TO THE ISOCHRONOUS FUNCTIONS
34. WO1996013776 A1 G06F 19960509 INTEL CORPORATION
M & A FOR EXCHANGING DATA, STATUS, AND COMMANDS OVER A HIERARCHICAL SERIAL BUS ASSEMBLY USING COMMUNICATION PACKETS
35. DE19581234 B4 G06F 20080320 Intel Corp.
Bussteuereinrichtung und Verfahren fuer eine hierarchische serielle Busanordnung unter Verwendung von Kommunikationspaketen
36. DE69535108 T2 G06F 20070215 Intel Corp.
VERFAHREN UND APPARAT ZUM HERSTELLEN EINER SERIELLEN SCHNITTSTELLE FUER ISOCHRONE UND ASYNCHRONE PERIPHERIEGERAETE
37. DE69532383 T2 G06F 20041223 Intel Corporation
VERFAHREN UND VORRICHTUNG ZUR DYNAMISCHEN ERZEUGUNG UND ERHALTUNG VON RAHMENBASIERTEN ABFRAGEPROGRAMMEN FUER DAS ABFRAGEN VON ISOCHRONEN UND ASYNCHRONEN FUNKTIONEN, DIE WARTEZEITEN UND BANDBREITEN FUER DIE ISOCHRONEN FUNKTIONEN GARANTIEREN
38. DE69522595 T2 G06F 20020711 Intel Corporation
Verfahren und Vorrichtung zur Stromverbrauchssteuerung in einem Rechnersystem
39. DE112006001643 T5 G06F 20080508 Intel Corporation
Verfahren und Vorrichtung zum Aushandeln von Punkt-zu-Punkt-Verbindungen
40. DE19581234 T1 G06F 19971002 Intel Corp.
Verfahren und Einrichtung zum Austauschen von Daten, Statussignalen und Kommandos ueber eine hierarchische serielle Busanordnung unter Verwendung von Kommunikationspaketen
41. DE19581234 T0 G06F 19971002 INTEL CORP
Verfahren und Einrichtung zum Austauschen von Daten, Statussignalen und Kommandos ueber eine hierarchische serielle Busanordnung unter Verwendung von Kommunikationspaketen
42. GB2439891 A G06F 20080109 Intel Corporation
Point to point link negotitation method and apparatus
43. GB2308533 A G06F 19970625 Intel Corporation (US-DELAWARE)
M & A for exchanging data, status, and commands over a hierarchical
May 25, 2009
It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption. If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected. (1) In recent years, the Air Force has struggled to successfully build GPS satellites within cost and schedule goals; it encountered significant technical problems that still threaten its delivery schedule; and it struggled with a different contractor. As a result, the current IIF satellite program has overrun its original cost estimate by about $870 million and the launch of its first satellite has been delayed to November 2009—almost 3 years late. (2) Further, while the Air Force is structuring the new GPS IIIA program to prevent mistakes made on the IIF program, the Air Force is aiming to deploy the next generation of GPS satellites 3 years faster than the IIF satellites. GAO’s analysis found that this schedule is optimistic, given the program’s late start, past trends in space acquisitions, and challenges facing the new contractor. Of particular concern is leadership for GPS acquisition, as GAO and other studies have found the lack of a single point of authority for space programs and frequent turnover in program managers have hampered requirements setting, funding stability, and resource allocation. (3) If the Air Force does not meet its schedule goals for development of GPS IIIA satellites, there will be an increased likelihood that in 2010, as old satellites begin to fail, the overall GPS constellation will fall below the number of satellites required to provide the level of GPS service that the U.S. government commits to. Such a gap in capability could have wide-ranging impacts on all GPS users, though there are measures the Air Force and others can take to plan for and minimize these impacts.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-670T
May 23, 2009
The Financial Times had a very interesting article this week about a global drop in electricity demand of about 3.5%. The drop of demand in China is estimated to be 2%. The drop in Russia is estimated to be 10%. This drop is, of course, a measure of how devastating the economic collapse has been on manufacturing, especially.
This data is further evidence that we can't and won't go back to the world that we have known. I am hopeful that we can move on to a place that is a lot more suitable for the 21st century than the place we have been. It is going to require a major shift in how we live our lives, though...less acquisition, more conservation, less stuff. I think it will mean that people will spend more time each day on obtaining and maintanining the basics.
May 16, 2009
A process engineer should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly.
May 10, 2009
I enjoyed the latest Star Trek movie as pure entertainment and escapism, with a lot of "eye candy." It was fun to see "Harold" of "Harold and Kumar" as the new "Sulu," and "Fieldmarshall Eomer" of "Lord of the Rings" as "Bones."The movie successfully moved the franchise on to a new set of actors. However, it is no longer science fiction but flipped into the fantasy genre. This is a real shame.
Scotty, from the original Star Trek television show, was one archetype I drew upon when I was an engineer. Scotty displayed the optimism every project and start-up engineer must have in the face of what seem to be overwhelming odds. He was a guy who could solve any problem, eventually, under horrendous pressure. This is what engineers do. The character in the new movie did a good job but the environment around him was not good science or engineering but pure fantasy. all of it. The new Scotty is a cartoon character.
The last real science fiction movie that I saw was The Matrix...and that may not have been science fiction at all. It was science fiction in the sense that machines are using us as energy but perhaps not science fiction that we are living mental lives in a backdrop of a real world that no longer exists.
May 3, 2009
The prospect of artificial intelligence conquering humankind was the stuff of science fiction throughout the 20th century.
In 1920 Czech playwright Karel Capek published a play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in which the character Professor Rossum manufactures artificial men to do all the menial chores, called robota in the Czech language. Rossum's plan backfires and armies of robots are purchased by warring nations. Eventually the robots themselves revolt and attempt to take over all of humankind.
Colossus: The Forbin Project was a 1969 movie that took Capek's theme and adapted it to the Cold War.
Frank Herbert wrote an epic series of books in the 1970's, Dune, having a premise that robots very nearly destroyed all carbon-based life in the universe.
All of these fictitious works involved scientists or engineers creating AI and applying it in situations where the AI "got away from them."
Reality turned out to be a lot stranger. It was not scientists or engineers that unleashed the robots, it was a bunch of bankers. The bankers actually wanted the AI to take over and just make money for them. From the start, they had no idea what the AI was or was not doing. Their greed blinded them to concepts like quality control, limits, and the impact of perturbations to a system. The faulty AI took the whole system down and utterly failed at taking it over.
Apr 24, 2009
These early days of the 21st Century and the best of times for invention and the worst of times. Never before in history has the average person on the street had access to so much information. This information can be the source of inspiration, new idea generation by metaphor, identification of the missing link to invention, and seeds for the unconsciounce to grow into new ideas.
On the downside, our lives are really noisy...e-mail, voice mail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. are very intrusive and time consuming. For me, inventing requires turnng it all off on a regular basis. I love weekends when I have no obligations to talk to anybody! I cherish the very few days when I can be an observer and not an actor. It is during these few times that I can think about and study things that really matter to me--things that are real!
I think a lot of the activities at work that are supposed to generate new ideas are a waste of time. The poor people who go to these meetings have minds which are necessarily elsewhere. More often than not, they are sneaking peaks of their e-mail and phone messages. In the politically charged atmospheres of many companies in the US, people have to be careful about what they say at work. Work is, at best, a place to execute ideas, not formulate them.
Apr 19, 2009
It appears that Americans are finally realizing that their lives are not going back to the way things were even six months ago. It is quite possible that six months from now, we will look back to today and realize that things are not coming back to today. Before Wall Street collapsed due to endemic corruption, greed, and ignorance of how basic process control works, I believed that peak oil was the single problem that would impact how we lived day-to-day. I still believe peak oil is the most significant long term issue.
To get some sense of how invention must change in a world of oil scarcity, take a look at the USPTO patent database. Randomly select twenty patents. It is likely that one assumption implicit in each of those twenty patents is a cheap, reliable, unending source of energy. The auto industry is the most notorious example but there are plenty of others.
Inventors are going to have to "turn on the dime" from bigger is better, to less is more. A lot of the stuff we have taken for granted today will be too expensive to own and use in the near future. The tremendous challenge for inventors is to aid in the creation of a new world that is adaptable to expensive energy and that is good for human cultures.
Apr 14, 2009
About a month ago, Thomas Friedman wrote a column on why we can no longer afford to commercialize things like salad shooters. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html?em
Mr. Friedman called our time an "Inflection Point." I don't know about that but we are certainly in the midst of a Reset. I think that Friedman will ultimately be right about the salad shooter. It requires an expenditure of energy and materials that is probably not justified by its function. What stays and what goes will probably be determined by the marketplace in a world of depleting energy and scarce resources.
What will happen to invention in a world where fuel costs $20+/gallon, and food costs may require mortgaging a child? Common sense says that invention should then be concentrated in areas that decrease carbon-based fuel and that increase food production.
However, it is not that simple. If it were, we would be using electricity generated by fusion power. Invention comes from systematic inquiry (light bulb) as well as dreams (the benzene ring), and metaphor (airplane), among other things. It is quite likely that useful commercialization may require going through some interim inventions, like the salad shooter.
If we no longer have the wealth to buy these little gadgets, will that have any impact on the ability of people to invent useful stuff? Perhaps we can get inspiration where humans have always looked, the natural world around us. I am confident that invention will continue as long as people are trained to ask questions and seek the answers to them. If people lose that ability, all bets are off.
Apr 12, 2009
Yesterday, Frank Rich had a very good article in the NYT on the relationship between Lawrence Summers and Wall Street. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/opinion/12rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all
In the article, Mr. Rich noted:
"In the bubble decade, making money as an end in itself boomed as a calling among students at elite universities like Harvard, siphoning off gifted undergraduates who might otherwise have been scientists, teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, artists or inventors. The Harvard Crimson reported that in the class of 2007, 58 percent of the men and 43 percent of the women entering the work force took jobs in the finance and consulting industries. The figures were similar everywhere, from Duke to the University of Pennsylvania. Dan Rather, on his HDNet television program in December, reported that at Penn this was even true of “over half the students who graduated with engineering degrees — not a field commonly associated with Wall Street.”"
Apr 11, 2009
Several years ago, one of the television networks televised a show which was a take-off of American Idol for inventors. I watched one episode and it made me cringe. I saw no invention or creativity...just a bunch of people with dilusional expectations about the value of the kitch they presented.
In 2008, foreign companies obtained more US patents than US companies. Of 157,774 patents issuing, Japanese companies earned 23% of patents and held five of the top 10 slots and 14 of the top 35. The rest of the top five countries are Germany, South Korea and Taiwan, who combined for 15% of new patents.
In technological areas critical to the future of the US, like solar technology, the innovation is coming from China and Europe, not the US.
There are a lot of reasons for this, including US companies that have outsourced all of their R&D to countries like China and India, and greed than permeated every aspect of the US culture. The question now is, can we get the innovation spirit back or is it gone forever?
Apr 9, 2009
Some of us are driven to try stuff, to study and to analyze, to try and think the original thought. We don't have a lot of control over the curiosity. It does not really matter if the object of this curiosity is a virus for one decade, power-plant design and construction in another decade, and software in yet another decade. We can't help ourselves.
For us, invention might be a way of channeling insanity.
