New patent reform bill would streamline appeal process

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Congress is once again preparing to try and fix the US patent system. The Patent Reform Act of 2007 was introduced simultaneously in the Senate and House today. Sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in the Senate and by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) and Rep. Lamar Smith (D-TX), the bill is an attempt to update current patent laws.

The new bill is very similar to bills introduced in 2005 and 2006 that failed to pass. It would change the US patent system from its current "first to invent" system to the "first to file" system used in almost every other country. It would also make some changes to how damage awards are calculated in infringement cases.

Another significant change would streamline the process for challenging patents. Currently, anyone wishing to challenge a patent has two options: a lawsuit in a federal district court, or asking the US Patent and Trademark Office to reexamine a patent.

Neither of those two options work very well. Litigation can be prohibitively expensive, and the USPTO's reexamination process is sluggish and unwieldy at best. According to a copy of the bill seen by Ars Technica, the Patent Reform Act would establish a new, post-grant patent review process for disputed patents. During the first year after a patent is issued, anyone can file a "petition for cancellation" that would initiate a review of a patent. After the 12-month period, a review would still be possible, but more difficult to initiate.

Once a review has begun, the presumption of a patent's validity would be put aside for the duration of the review. A "preponderance of evidence" standard would be used to determine whether or not the patent should be upheld, with both parties allowed to present evidence. Once the review process has been concluded, the decision could still be appealed in federal court.

"If we are to maintain our position at the forefront of the world's economy and continue to lead the globe in innovation and production, then we must have an efficient and streamlined patent system to allow for high quality patents that limits counterproductive litigation," said Sen. Leahy in a statement. "This bill is an important step towards achieving that goal."

"High patent quality is essential to continued innovation," added Rep. Berman. "Litigation abuses, especially ones committed by those which thrive on low quality patents, impede the promotion of the progress of science and the useful arts. This is why we must act quickly—to maintain the integrity of the patent system."

Switching from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system would be a huge change for the US, and that section of the bill will be the subject of vigorous debate as it moves through Congress. Critics of first-to-file systems say that they inherently favor large companies with the resources to file for patents in a timely manner, while the first-to-invent method theoretically enables the actual inventor to get credit for and receive a patent on his or her original work, regardless of when it was filed.

In contrast, the changes to the patent review process should go down much easier. Most observers agree that the patent process in the US has some serious problems, and as written, the Patent Reform Act of 2007 would do much to fix it.

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Marcus Lee migrated to Australia in 1988 from England, and within hours of arriving in the country had the idea of creating the "shinfin".

After 19 years of research, the Middle Cove resident and his shinfin will appear on ABC-TV's The New Inventors on April 25.

Mr Lee said the premise behind the invention was to develop a swimming flipper that strapped on above the ankle rather than over the foot.

"I was at the beach watching bodyboarders walking backwards, struggling through the water because they had these flippers stuck on their feet," Mr Lee said

"When swimming [with the shinfin], it takes the load off the foot, decreasing cramping and blisters, while taking stress and pressure off the ankle joint... You can walk around in them, climb ladders, or anything really."

After making about 50 prototypes, Mr Lee was awarded a research and development grant from the Federal Government, which paid for half the expenses. He also received a $25,000 grant from the Australian Technology Showcase.

"The New Inventors were able to contact me from there as the [Australian] Technology Showcase has a website listing who they have given grants to," he said.

The former Cambridge University engineering student has put his career as a mechanics and design engineer on hold to focus on selling the shinfin. "Through my website the business has been funding itself. I've sold a few thousand of them worldwide to the US, Canada, Europe and Asia as well as in Australia."

With sales picking up, Mr Lee said additional types of flippers, such as a smaller version for kids, had been put on the drawing board.

A former competitive swimmer, Mr Lee said he also hoped to market the fins as a swimming aid for the disabled.

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BladeTape inventor eyes big leagues after lucky NHL product placement

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Every Vancouver Canucks hockey fan had sweaty palms Tuesday night when, in the dying moments of the Vancouver-Dallas playoff game, Vancouver defenceman Willie Mitchell swept the puck from his team's goal line, preserving a Canucks win.

Richard Findlay had reason to be more grateful than your average fan. In multiple replays from the camera tucked inside the net on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, viewers saw repeated closeups of the product Findlay invented and Mitchell uses on his stick: BladeTape. Mitchell's dramatic product placement came just two nights after HNIC broadcasters Ron MacLean and Kelly Hrudey gave a between-periods demonstration of BladeTape for the CBC viewing audience.

"The phone is so busy I can't get out of the office," says Findlay, a landscape architect and recreational league hockey player, from his Kitsilano home office. Right on cue, the phone rang in the background.

BladeTape consists of two cross-hatched rubberized plastic strips that a player applies to either side of a hockey stick blade.

It is applied like a bumper sticker -- you peel away the paper backing and lay it over the blade, preferably at room temperature. Unlike conventional hockey tape, BladeTape does not cover the bottom of the stick, which lengthens the life of the product (on average, 15 games) and leads to less buildup of snow and ice.

It provides shock absorption, less drag on the ice and a better grip on the puck, the latter a problem with the new one-piece sticks made of composite-materials.

It retails for $9.99 a pair and can be found at Canadian Tire outlets, among other stores.

Findlay first came up with the idea a decade ago, and experimented with wrapping a bicycle inner tube, condom style, over his stick. The one-piece composite sticks weren't prominent then, so Findlay shelved the idea for nine years.

Then, in a rec-league game last spring, Findlay made a perfect breakaway pass to a teammate, but the puck bounced off his one-piece stick. Findlay went home, pulled out his old files and, with the encouragement of his wife, pursued the idea of making a product that would make these sticks less lively. Several prototypes later, he had BladeTape, but when he went to his patent agent he found out a Pennsylvania man had patented the same thing.

He contacted the American, a millionaire thermoplastics engineer who made surgical implants, who offered to sell him the patent and the business. By the end of July, Findlay had flown all the equipment north, and set up a manufacturing shop at the White Rock garage of Ted Ferguson, one of three business partners in the venture.

One of those partners is Anaheim Ducks general manager Brian Burke, whom Findlay bumped into in Vancouver. After a second meeting, Burke took a 10-per-cent interest in BladeTape, and worked on getting the National Hockey League to endorse the product.

In BladeTape's corporate structure, Findlay, 44, owns 68 per cent, production manager Ferguson and Toronto resident Scott McBride, an old high school friend of Findlay's, each have 11 per cent, and Burke has 10 per cent.

As a marketing ploy, Findlay went to local ice rinks and handed the product out to kids. Later, when he approached stores, he found out the kids had asked them to stock the product.

In its first six months of business, BladeTape has done more than $100,000 in sales. The plug on Hockey Night in Canada will surely cause that figure to rise.

In the NHL, Mitchell and Detroit Red Wings defenceman Danny Markov use BladeTape. Canucks forward Matt Cooke used it for about 15 games before changing his stick.

"With the pros, their hands are so good they don't need this product," says Findlay, who obviously hadn't seen many Philadelphia Flyers games. "They don't get the snow and ice buildup, because they get a [Zamboni] flood every 20 minutes.

"But for the recreational player, it gives you the feeling of hands without having good hands."

Findlay, who wants to devote his time to his landscaping business, harbours hope that one of the three big sporting goods companies -- Nike, Reebok or Easton -- will come to his aid.

"I'll ride out the storm, and see if next year at this time we've made some serious inroads," says Findlay.

- - -

www.vancouversun.com/digital.

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Austin inventor tells mosquito bites to buzz off

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It was one "skeeter" bite too many for Austin lawyer Blair Dancy. Dancy's two young boys had walked in from backyard play covered in mosquito welts from the garden and patio areas. The sight of his bump-covered, itching boys was the last straw and the mother of invention.

"I remember having relatively bad mosquitoes in Houston growing up, but never anything like this problem," says Dancy, a 38-year-old University of Texas and law school alumnus.

A natural problem solver, he invented a new trap designed to stop the skin-penetrating tyrants before they take their maiden voyages.

Dancy used a vast network of contacts and Austin resources to develop and manufacture the Mosquito Swallow. His wife, Allison Dancy, an artist and senior marketing manager for Vignette Corp., also pooled her network of contacts to bring the new invention to market. The innovative, environmentally friendly contraption is designed to trap difficult-to-catch container breeders before they become adults.

Dancy said neighbors seemed comfortable blaming nearby Shoal Creek for the multitudes of mosquitoes. After clearing intrusive, non-indigenous bamboo in his backyard, Dancy discovered something that amazed him.

"I got down to the creek, there were no mosquitoes. None. That's when I started to think: If they are not originating down in the creek, where we all thought they were coming from, then where are they breeding in such abundance?"

Climbing up the creek's banks to the house, Dancy re-entered the thick, haze of vicious mosquitoes. Pondering what attracted droves of cantankerous mosquitoes to his home, the commercial litigation attorney with Van Osselaer, Cronin & Buchanan LLP started his research.

Thumbing through countless books at the library, Dancy was introduced to the Asian tiger mosquito. He learned that there were more than 2,500 mosquito species, more than 160 of which are in the United States. The research he found was primarily done because of the mosquitoes' role in the transmission of diseases: malaria, yellow fever, West Nile virus, dengue fever and encephalitis.

Dancy noted that the Asian tiger mosquito is more aggressive than the indigenous Texas mosquitoes. He learned that the Asian tigers were believed to have been stowaways in water-filled tires that were shipped into the Port of Houston in the mid-1980s. And since then, they have been found east of the Rockies.

Dancy figured out that these mosquitoes with bad attitudes were the same variety as the ones in his backyard.

"I didn't have a positive identification in my own yard, so I got a book with detailed sketches, my boys' magnifying glass from their little science set and I caught a mosquito."

"One of the key traits is a single white racing stripe down the middle right between the head and the back section," Dancy explains.

Dancy and his wife did not wish to "nuke" their scenic backyard with pesticides, extinguishing the fireflies, butterflies and beneficial, unintrusive insects. He also didn't want to use greenhouse-gas traps that are sold in home improvement stores, which his neighbors had found unhelpful with the mosquito problem. He wanted another option.

"The thing that struck me about the Asian tTiger was where it bred," Dancy says. "There are mosquitoes that breed in creeks, rice fields, swamps and all sorts of different places. This one particular kind needs small containers that are usually dark with stagnant water and debris in them."

Dancy studied other mosquito-control inventions, but he wanted to find a simpler approach.

"I was thinking, you know, they are really over-engineering this thing," he says.

Most mainstream solutions on the market only address adult mosquitoes, he says. So, he focused on reducing the number of eggs, larvae and pupae.

Dancy learned that there was no single solution to the mosquito problem, even with chemicals.

The Sardinian Project was a massive effort funded by post-World War II relief money and administered by the Rockefeller Foundation to rid malaria-carrying mosquitoes from the island of Sardinia. In the 1930s, more than 70,000 Sardinians suffered from malaria. Tons of the insecticide DDT were dropped on Sardinia in an effort to wipe out the mosquito population on the island. While the Sardinia Project successfully ended the island's battle against malaria, mosquitoes still persisted.

Concentrating on the breeding sites, Dancy found a way to reproduce the optimum environment for mosquitoes to lay eggs. He located countless products, bins, corn cob holders, hoses and funnels from home organizing stores, resulting in humorous observations by his wife and kids. He studied the behavior of the mosquito larvae using clear containers that he set on his kitchen counter for months.

"I'd watch and study them while we all ate breakfast. I'd bang on the side, see how they swam and I'd test how they reacted to light."

Dancy sketched some concepts for his new trap based on his concept of preventing mosquito larvae from maturing. After a few years and many trips back to the drawing board to fine-tune his invention, he drafted a final prototype and had the new trap manufactured in Austin.

Dancy's trap is designed to be an ideal breeding spot for the Asian tiger and other container- or tree-hole-breeders. When the eggs hatch, the larvae and pupae will not escape. The trap itself is small, unobtrusive and easy to manage.

The trap requires a little water each week and the addition of a few dead leaves occasionally, and homeowners must be cognizant of other breeding areas around the home. Dancy's trap has a patent pending and sells for $34.95 online at MosquitoSwallow.com. It will be released in some Austin-area garden centers in the coming months. The Web site also offers helpful information for homeowners to minimize the mosquito swarms this summer.

"You have to take steps to get rid of breeding sites around your home. That's when this trap will make a difference. It's a part of a holistic approach, not a silver bullet," Dancy says.

In Dancy's product testing, one trap caught 100 mosquitoes and larvae in one week.There's no formula for how many traps are needed for each home, because mosquitoes look for areas where air flow is stagnant, and the number of high-concentration areas vary from one yard to the next.

"Where you notice the mosquitoes most is where you'll need to place a trap," Dancy says.

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Chino Hills, Ca -- Apr 23, 2007 -- /prbuzz/ -- Have you designed a new product and are now stuck wondering about the next big step? Jasmine Thompson, owner of The Sack Rack, wondered this too; but on March 26th she presented her idea to QVC executives in Los Angeles, California, along with thousands of other inventors. If The Sack Rack is chosen as one of the top ten finalists, Jasmine will head to Chicago to present her product to the Oprah Winfrey Show, who is in search of the next big idea. If Oprah’s studio audience decides that The Sack Rack is the next big idea, Jasmine will have the opportunity to sell her product on QVC. Not bad for this busy mother of three, whose children include a three month old baby and a three and a five year old.

Why did Jasmine take this route for getting her product out into the hands of the public? “We wanted to try QVC since the channel is known for selling unique items, and a large demographic of the QVC audience are moms.”

The Sack Rack is a plastic, lightweight device, small enough to fit into a purse but strong enough to carry up to 50 pounds of groceries. The design of The Sack Rack keeps the grocery bags closed even when the bags are set on the ground, making it a perfect item for mass transit or for use in the back of the car: No more chasing after runaway fruit. The Sack Rack also frees up the second hand, allowing the user to hold on to keys, stair railings, or a child’s hand.

Originally designed by a friend of the Thompson family, The Sack Rack remained dormant due to lack of funds until Jasmine and her husband Bill came along. Jasmine’s family believed so much in The Sack Rack that they used the money that they had in their bank account and invested. Their first step was to hire a patent attorney; a patent is pending at this time. The time has now come to begin marketing the product, and Jasmine feels the QVC pitch was the perfect platform on which to start.

Winners of this portion of the contest will be notified on April 27th, and if Jasmine is one of those chosen, the first thing that she plans to do is to contact her husband’s brother so that he can plan a family reunion in Chicago.

You can check out The Sack Rack on the web at www.thesackrack.com. Special discounts apply for multiple purchases, and The Sack Rack is also available for both wholesale and fundraising opportunities.

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Chino Hills, Ca -- Apr 23, 2007 -- /prbuzz/ -- Have you designed a new product and are now stuck wondering about the next big step? Jasmine Thompson, owner of The Sack Rack, wondered this too; but on March 26th she presented her idea to QVC executives in Los Angeles, California, along with thousands of other inventors. If The Sack Rack is chosen as one of the top ten finalists, Jasmine will head to Chicago to present her product to the Oprah Winfrey Show, who is in search of the next big idea. If Oprah’s studio audience decides that The Sack Rack is the next big idea, Jasmine will have the opportunity to sell her product on QVC. Not bad for this busy mother of three, whose children include a three month old baby and a three and a five year old.

Why did Jasmine take this route for getting her product out into the hands of the public? “We wanted to try QVC since the channel is known for selling unique items, and a large demographic of the QVC audience are moms.”

The Sack Rack is a plastic, lightweight device, small enough to fit into a purse but strong enough to carry up to 50 pounds of groceries. The design of The Sack Rack keeps the grocery bags closed even when the bags are set on the ground, making it a perfect item for mass transit or for use in the back of the car: No more chasing after runaway fruit. The Sack Rack also frees up the second hand, allowing the user to hold on to keys, stair railings, or a child’s hand.

Originally designed by a friend of the Thompson family, The Sack Rack remained dormant due to lack of funds until Jasmine and her husband Bill came along. Jasmine’s family believed so much in The Sack Rack that they used the money that they had in their bank account and invested. Their first step was to hire a patent attorney; a patent is pending at this time. The time has now come to begin marketing the product, and Jasmine feels the QVC pitch was the perfect platform on which to start.

Winners of this portion of the contest will be notified on April 27th, and if Jasmine is one of those chosen, the first thing that she plans to do is to contact her husband’s brother so that he can plan a family reunion in Chicago.

You can check out The Sack Rack on the web at www.thesackrack.com. Special discounts apply for multiple purchases, and The Sack Rack is also available for both wholesale and fundraising opportunities.

[via prbuzz.com]
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