Industrial IP

Collaborative robots (cobots) are designed to be easy to program and re-program, easily move between one facility location and another, and have a low upfront cost.  They are designed to work with, not replace humans.  At last week’s Coffee with Cobots, commercialization and partnership expert David McFeeters-Krone, in partnership with Oregon and Washington’s Manufacturers Extension Partnership programs and Bill Smart of Oregon State discussed the application of cobots to help expand the workforce and service the unmet needs created by the expected 2 million unfilled manufacturing job vacancies expected over the next ten years.  In under a minute, it was possible to program the cobots available at the meeting to execute simple tasks.  Oregon State has a charter to help local industry and is available to partner with local industries to establish a proof of concept for the use of these robots.  Do you have dangerous, dirty, dull or hard tasks at your facility? C...

We recently had the opportunity to attend the Autonomous Mobility Summit, a meeting of field experts and stakeholders hosted by Technology Association of Oregon (TAO) . The conference included representation everywhere from vehicle manufacturers to public utilities to policy stakeholders. Though seemingly eclectic, this group shared the common goal of positioning Oregon to be a leader for next-generation mobility solutions. Conferences such as these are beneficial not only for uniting entities in a mission bigger than themselves but also to figure out what their niche is in the landscape as a whole. For example, from a business standpoint, technological redundancies can be avoided and companies can get a better sense of where technology is moving. Moreover, by interfacing with others in this way, companies have the ability to anticipate where they will fit into that technological landscape in the future and coordinate their IP appropriately. In this way, companies not only get ...

I recently had the privilege of attending an educational workshop as part of the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) Angel Food Conference and Education Series 2019 . The workshop centered on the topic of scaling up businesses in the food and beverage sector. Being a food science graduate and getting to work in food and beverage related patents, I was excited to learn about challenges for food and beverage businesses as they begin to grow. Discussion ranged from production to distribution to financing. No matter the topic, however, one of the central themes was finding partners that are the right fit for the various growth stages of your business. These partners come in many forms, such as mentors, employees, co-packers, distributors, and financial institutions. And these partners can further include intellectual property (IP) counsel. Finding IP counsel that understands your business and how to serve your business as it grows is an invaluable asset. The right IP partners can hel...

My Thanksgivings growing up were potluck-style, my family bringing traditional Persian foods, my aunt’s family bringing traditional Filipino foods, and everyone doing their best imitation on traditional Thanksgiving dishes. I’ve found that using a similar mindset can greatly improve patent drafting and prosecution. Unlike a more traditional patent law firm model where applications in a specific field are drafted by an individual who only works in that field, I’ve been exposed to different approaches with patent technology specialists having diverse backgrounds working with experienced attorneys who practice in a wide range of technologies.  Why can this be advantageous? Patent drafting inevitably requires some amount of learning. Inventions are, by definition, new and anyone other than the inventors is not an expert. Traditional firms might think it is beneficial to assign these inventions only to attorneys and/or agents considered experts in a particular field that seems ...

Have you ever read an article about a new patent, or seen a patent number on a product, and thought to yourself, “You can patent that??”  After nearly eight years in the intellectual property field, I’ve read some patent applications that were real doozies, but rarely do the really “out-of-the-box” ideas make it all the way to being a granted patent.  Consider, for example, napkin folding.  Is napkin folding an area of intellectual property that is hotly sought after?  It turns out, yes it is, as highlighted by three inter partes reviews (IPRs) that were recently entered by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).  In February, the PTAB entered three IPR decisions relating to three patents owned by Essity Hygiene and Health AB and all directed to folded napkins ( 8,597,761 , 8,273,443, and 9,320,372 ).  Did you just ask yourself, “Someone got not one, not two, but three patents to folded napkins?”  Because I did.  But all  joking asi...

Primarily, a patent is used to legally block a competitor from replicating an invention.  Patents have other uncommon uses as I’ve described before.  One example was the Scrub Daddy, who used patents to help secure an investment on Shark Tank and become what is now a $40-million-dollar company, which you can read about here . U.S. Patent No. 9,265,983, Exercise apparatus for assisting in strength exercises , or better known via its commercial name, The Sling Shot, is a resistance band that stretches across the user’s chest as the user is about to do a pressing motion.  The Sling Shot is designed to mitigate a load on the user’s shoulders as the user’s moves out of the fully eccentric position while maintaining proper form.  The Sling Shot is simple in design - the arm cuffs are elastic and the middle connecting portion is relatively inelastic, thereby preventing elbows from flaring out and providing a modicum of assistance in concentric direction.  Its prim...

MasterCraft and Malibu Boats may have finally settled their long-running feud over wake-surfing patents, but there is still a lot of interesting information to be had in looking into the patent cases related to the action. The first aspect to note in the feud is that Malibu Boats did not have just a single patent at issue, but rather Malibu Boats was working on a portfolio. As sophisticated IP players know, the real goods are a well developed patent portfolio as it significantly increases one’s leverage against a competitor. Today we review one aspect of Malibu’s strategy in the case to drive settlement - the idea of a pending application. One might think a pending application is useless as it cannot be asserted in litigation (since the patent has not yet issued). But of course the value in a pending application is not whether it can be asserted immediately, but rather that it has the ability to change and can be asserted at some unknown point in the future. One of Malibu’s pe...