Innovation Watch

New National Invention Contest

2009-04-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

AbsolutelyNew Launches National Invention Competition
Winner to receive $20,000 in product development & marketing expertise

AbsolutelyNew, Inc., the consumer goods company that partners with inventors to launch innovative products, has launched its first National Invention Competition with the not-for-profit United Inventors Association (UIA).

The competition gives current UIA members the opportunity to showcase their patent-protected ideas and become eligible to win professional product development and marketing-licensing services valued at $20,000.

Additional competition facts:

• Entries are 100% safeguarded—entrants will be protected under a strict agreement of confidentiality.
• A panel of AbsolutelyNew experts will judge all ideas based on their originality, market potential and manufacturability.
• Competition is open until May 31, 2009. The winner will be notified no later than June 15, 2009.

Entry forms, more details and official terms & conditions are available at www.AbsolutelyNew.com/uiacontest.

This marks AbsolutelyNew’s first sponsorship of a National Invention Competition.

Live Invention Seminar

2009-04-13T05:41:00.001-07:00

WHO: Product Coach Matthew Yubas

WHEN: Saturday May 30, 2009

TIME: Afternoon

WHERE: Lubbock, Texas

WHAT: Invention seminar in Lubbock, May 30, 2009. The seminar shows how to license or sell product ideas to companies for royalties or lump sum payout. Seating is limited. To register, or for more information, please visit:

http://www.productcoach.com/sell-idea/sell-lice…

For more information, contact Matthew Yubas at (858) 233-9639, matt@productcoach.com

Reasoned Uplift

2009-03-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post carried a fine piece of reasoned uplift.
We're compiling an article about "recession is over, if you want it" (with apologies to John Lennon), and Lynda's blog post strikes that very theme.
President Obama twice referenced inventor-entrepreneurs in his inaugural address. He was right when he said "our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year," and that we owe our prosperity and freedom to "risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things."

The NYTimes gets innovation

2009-03-14T10:26:00.001-07:00

Check out Don Kelly and a host of other thought leaders on innovation, entrepreneurship and inventing here.

Own a Piece of Inventors Digest

2009-02-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

We’re willing to create a regular, dedicated “sponsored editorial” section of the magazine devoted to your business or cause ... plus design an accompanying ad for you.

The cost of this sponsored editorial program: competitive.
The return-on-investment: priceless.

• We clearly label the page(s) as sponsored by you. We generate the stories or work with your content.
• We run a full-page ad for the duration of the sponsorship adjacent to the special section or somewhere else in the magazine. This ad does not have to run concurrent with the special section.
• This content can be displayed on your Web site – we will waive reprint costs.
• Become one of our go-to sources for other stories in the magazine, as warranted.

Through a dedicated sponsored section that is clearly branded, a full-page ad, and seeding in other areas of the magazine, you can amplify and share your message with our global readership of innovators.

For details, call 704.405.0712 or e-mail info@inventorsdigest.com

Bud Font

2009-02-26T03:48:00.001-08:00

Our March issue featuring Nathan Myhrvold on the cover is out. Extremely cool guy. He likes quantum physics, digging for dinosaur bones, photography, monetizing patents and cooking. We should have the story, and others from that issue, posted soon.

We just put our April issue to bed. It will highlight eco-friendly innovation. We've got another celeb on the cover. And the font we used evoked some pretty interesting reactions here. One guy said it looked like marijuana. You guys be the judge.

To Tweet or not to Tweet

2009-02-24T06:28:00.002-08:00

I’m trying to figure out Twitter. It keeps coming up in conversations with colleagues, business associates, sources and in seminars. There’s a PR event this Wednesday here in Charlotte where a guru in PR is going to talk about leveraging Twitter for your business, among other things. I just don’t get how conveying mundane stuff in 140 characters of less is of any value to anyone.
That said, I set up a Twitter account awhile back: http://twitter.com/inventorsdigest
If anyone has any insight as to why anyone should Tweet, I’m all ears.

The recession is dead

2009-02-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

I posted this query on a reporter's source network this morning and received more than 60 responses ... and counting:

Inventors Digest, an international magazine celebrating the intersection of business and innovation, seeks to change the current dour economic narrative.

Like mushrooms in the dark, innovation tends to sprout during recessions.

We’re seeing it all around us – from the labs brewing diesel from algae, to the guys in the garage building new breeds of tidal turbines and more efficient combustion engines, to the woman in California making sex space suits (oh, and a new type of rocket technology).

History’s repeating itself. Innovation is brimming. So we’d like to skip the moping around part and move right on to kick-ass enterprising.

President Obama noted in his inaugural address that our products and services are needed as much today as they were last week, last month and last year, and that our freedom and prosperity rely on the risk-takers, the doers and the makers of things. Why, then, are we gazing at our collective navels?

We’re interested in interviewing professors, economists and business leaders for a story on economic optimism. We want to hear some hope. We want reaffirmation in our belief in compassionate capitalism. We want to bang the pots that this recession is a state of mind.

With apologies to John Lennon, recession is over if we want it.

Is this a good thing?

2009-02-03T08:11:00.001-08:00

So the United Inventors Association is under new management. A go-getter by the name of Patrick Raymond is now the executive director. We're running his op-ed piece in our March issue, where he unveils the UIA's new certification program.

We'd like to kick the tires on this program in more detail in an upcoming issue. Check out the particulars of the certification program here: http://www.uiausa.org/Default.aspx?page=279

It's generating some controversy. I've heard from some that the questionnaire is too invasive. One guy I know called it "a shake down." Others say it's a great step in the right direction and something the UIA should have been doing all along.

If you have an opinion on this, we'd like to hear it and perhaps include your comments in the magazine.

Impressions from CES

2009-01-26T06:33:00.000-08:00

Serial inventor James Burrell, who got a mention in our January 09 issue, recently returned from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. He's posted his insights from the show, as well as dozens of photo highlights, including the iBot wheelchair from the mind of Dean Kamen (the guy who invented the Segway scooter, among other great innovations).

Visit http://www.deafandblind.com/CES.html

New Inventor-Friendly Companies Listing

2009-01-21T13:30:00.000-08:00

Inventors Digest has unveiled an upgraded and updated list of inventor-friendly companies.

We spent considerable time and staff resources expanding our long-standing list. Some of those listings we culled from elsewhere on the forums at Edison Nation – so a big Thank You goes out to all of those who contributed.

Consider the Inventor-Friendly Company page your one-stop shopping destination for finding a potential fit for your product.

We’ll be updating the site regularly. If you know of a company that should be included, please e-mail us at info@inventorsdigest.com.

Best,
Mike Drummond, editor
Inventors Digest

Renewal

2009-01-20T09:49:00.000-08:00

There were many elements of President Obama's inauguration address to savor today. One of the moments I particularly enjoyed: "Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished."

I, for one, feel renewed.

Is any publicity good publicity?

2009-01-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

We're examining this question in an upcoming issue. The idea stems from complaints among some inventors who didn't like the way they were portrayed on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."

When I posed the query to a reporter/PR network, I received more than 80 responses ... and counting.

Seems not everyone agrees. Some think exposure on Leno is priceless. Others argue you have to control your message.

OBVIA.biz offers bailout for American Inventors

2009-01-14T06:21:00.000-08:00

I'm posting this as a favor for our friends at Obvia:

Casualties of the economic downturn might be wondering: Why do the fat cats get bailouts while we're left to fend for ourselves?

We’ve bailed out failed banks, failed insurance companies and failed auto makers. How about bailing out a sector that has never failed?

"Inventors -- all the worker bees who have yet to realize their ideas -- are the source of American ingenuity. Maybe now is the time to cultivate this talent base," said Scott Keeley, who owns OBVIA, a product-development and design company in Rhode Island.

To that end, Keeley has come up with his own idea: he calls it "The Great American Inventor Rescue." Between now and February, his firm will waive its inventor-assistance fees in the development of the next great invention.

The first rule of this competition is meant for the times: the inventor must be among the recently downsized.

Once the inventor submits his or her invention or product idea to OBVIA, OBVIA sends the inventor a nondisclosure agreement.(This is industry talk for a promise to not steal an idea.) OBVIA's engineers and marketers review the entries and pick the winning idea by April 1, 2009.

Submissions are due emailed by midnight on February 28, 2009 to rescue@obvia.biz.
For more information, see OBVIA's Web site at http://www.obvia.biz.

U.S. slips in patent ranking

2009-01-14T04:59:00.000-08:00

IFI Patent Intelligence released its annual compilation of the world’s top-ranked U.S.-patent companies.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a total of 157,774 utility patents in calendar year 2008, up slightly over 2007’s total of 157,284.

Although IBM still tops the list and is ahead by a relatively wide margin, the scales of patent-quantity supremacy may be shifting away from corporate America in favor of companies overseas, especially to those in Asia.

American companies captured only 49 percent of U.S. patents granted to companies compared to 50 percent in 2007.

The Top 10 patent recipients:

1. IBM 4186
2. SAMSUNG 3515
3. CANON 2114
4. MICROSOFT 2030
5. INTEL 1776
6. MATSUSHITA 1745
7. TOSHIBA 1609
8. FUJITSU 1494
9. SONY CORP 1485
10. HP 1424

Want Your Picture Taken?

2009-01-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

New York-based photographer David Friedman is working on a portfolio celebrating independent inventors. Pictured here is Tony Pagoto, inventor of the personal computer wire management system.

“They say that necessity is the mother of invention. I’m interested in the rest of the family,” Friedman writes on his blog. “Of course, everybody gets good ideas, but not everybody writes them down before they’re forgotten. And fewer still actually take their ideas to the next level. With this photo series, I’m exploring who those people are.”

Inventors Digest is proud to announce we will be featuring David in an upcoming issue.

If you’re interested in having David include you in his growing body of work, please contact him. By all means, let him know that you heard about him here.
David Friedman Photography
www.davidfriedmanphoto.com
blog: www.dfpblog.com
917.214.7859
http://www.davidfriedmanphoto.com/blog/inventors/

Jack-in-the-Box Thinks Inside the Box

2009-01-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

So, this is lame. I recently took my wife and daughter to the Jack-in-the-Box near my house (that’s not the lame part).

The poor fidelity of the drive-thru speaker, the voice-response delay and the heavy, rich Indian accent made it nearly impossible for me to understand what the person at the other end of the order-taking line was saying.

Again, that’s not the lame part. I deal with folks with Indian accents all the time.

But this Jack-in-the-Box, and many like it, has outsourced its order-taking.

That, friends, is the lame part.

I chatted up the person at the window fulfilling the order. Odd that you’d outsource order-taking at a fast-food joint. She rolled her eyes, said everyone's complaining, and added that the company taking the orders is based in Texas and the decision to outsource the role of “you want fries with that?” came from corporate.

I complained on the company’s Web site that outsourcing this duty is irresponsible, given soaring domestic unemployment and the woeful state of the economy.

Jack-in-the-Box called me back. A guy named Bradley says corporate made the decision to outsource order-taking at some restaurants as a “labor savings and to streamline order taking.”

Bradley says the outsourcer is a Texas company called Bronco and all its employees are based in the U.S.

I suspect Bradley isn’t telling the truth or that Bronco isn’t being fully upfront with Jack. My wife and daughter say every time they’ve ordered drive thru at this Jack-in-the-Box, they’ve confronted someone with a sweet, sing-song Indian accent. Is it possible that all of Bronco’s employees are of Indian decent and live in Texas?

Bradley offered me a free meal.

I declined.

InventHelp Goes Open Innovation

2008-12-23T08:37:00.000-08:00

Look who’s joining the open innovation game … controversial invention submission company InventHelp.

The Pittsburgh-based company with the checkered past in the inventor industry announced this week that it is offering a Web portal to help companies find new products from inventors.

It joins a growing roster of open innovation players, including Inventors Digest partner Edison Nation, InventBay, MatchProduct.com and Big Idea Group, among others.

“For just minutes a month and at no cost, companies can tap into a new source of ideas, creativity and innovation,” InventHelp said in a press release.

Its InventHelp Open Innovation Resource Web site gives corporations access to business resources (white papers, testimonials, and interviews) and to register to receive new product announcements.

Companies may register in the InventHelp Data Bank at no charge and receive submissions of inventions that are matched to the companies' areas of new product development interest.

Gene Quinn, patent attorney, blogger and founder of intellectual property Web site ipwatchdog.com, found the announcement interesting.

"It seems like a good idea, although it coming from InventHelp makes me think there is an angle somewhere," he told me in an e-mail. "The only way it makes sense to do this is to have patent applications filed, and they would need to be strong ones otherwise the inventor would be giving away the keys to the kingdom for no benefit in return."

InventHelp made news recently when it said it was canceling INPEX in 2009 due to low corporate commitment. The company bills INPEX as the largest inventor trade show in the country. Next year was to be its 25th anniversary. InventHelp officials said they’ll resume the show in 2010.

InventHelp has no shortage of possible products for companies. Between 2005 and 2007 it signed submission agreements with 5,959 clients. Most of those never made any money, according to InventHelp.

As a result of its services, 98 clients have received license agreements for their products, and 20 clients have received more money than they paid InventHelp, the company has reported. In other words, inventor clients had a 0.3 percent chance of making more money than they paid InventHelp.

InventHelp is a trade name of Invention Submission Corp. (ISC), also known as Western Invention Submission Corp. and a division of Technosystems Consolidated. InventHelp is among the major invention submission companies critics call a scam. Complaints essentially accuse InventHelp of not doing enough to get inventors’ products to market. InventHelp, the accusations continue, lures inventors to spend more money on marketing and other services of dubious value.

In 1994, without admitting guilt, the company settled allegations of fraud with the Federal Trade Commission. InventHelp has been the target of lawsuits and consumer complaints. Entire Web sites are devoted to warning inventors to stay away from the company.

An Inventors Digest LexisNexis search of court records shows that InventHelp has never been convicted of fraud or wrongdoing.

Cranky During Christmas

2008-12-22T06:29:00.000-08:00

Must be something in the water, but some folks seem really cranky lately.

Last week I received an e-mail from an angry fellow who took umbrage with the recent announcement about our new redesign.

I mentioned global warming in that notice, and that lit his fuse.

He cited a Fox News report indicating press reports about global warming amounted to uninformed hysteria.

“What a bunch of blind mice your really are at ID! I’ll be cancelling my subscription.”

Ouch, dude.

I wrote him back, saying I don’t think there’s any debate whether the planet is actually warming – it’s heated and cooled many times over the eons. The debate is whether this warming cycle is caused by human-produced CO2.

I haven’t heard back, but I wished him a Merry Christmas anyway.

Another subscriber sent me a link to an interesting British film debunking human-caused global warming.

And then I saw this story today about an inventor who purportedly has invented some system that would cool the planet.

I don’t know that we want to be proactively tinkering with this kind of thing. Nonetheless, when it comes to this issue, I’ll be sure to keep my eyes open.

2009 calendar of events

2008-12-18T11:45:00.000-08:00

InventorsDigest.com is filling out its Events calendar for 2009. If you have an invention, engineering, science, math, intellectual property, do-it-yourself or industry trade show or event that you know of or would like to have listed on our Web site, please submit the following to info@inventorsdigest.com and put “events” in the subject line:

Event name:
Date(s):
Where:
What: (please define what the event is in a sentence or two)
Cost: (if any)
Contact: (at least a Web site)

One Laptop At A Time

2008-12-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

One Laptop Per Child folks asked me to pass this along. The organization has shipped more than 500,000 connected, solar-capable laptops to children in some of the poorest, most rural places on Earth.

Deployments are underway in dozens of countries, including Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Nepal.

These children learn, play, program, and have access to thousands of books in their language, as well as millions on the Internet.

One Laptop Per Child is asking people all over the world to give a laptop, or give and get a laptop, to transform the lives of children, and - one connected child at a time - change the world.

OLPC is a non-profit, humanitarian organization with a real story and success in the field.

Videos:
Skills - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPC2rbQG--U
Zimi's story - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4dNaXzSlgk

===
About OLPC: http://laptop.org/en/vision

Our Makeover Announcement

2008-12-17T12:13:00.000-08:00

In an era of downsizing, Inventors Digest is growing subscribers, increasing ad revenue, adding staff, launching new features … and it’s launching a bold new redesign.

January 2009 marks the makeover of the nation’s longest-running magazine in the invention industry. The redesign includes playful and explosive use of graphics and text presentation – garage fonts, grid-paper backgrounds and duct-taped call-out boxes. Even page numbering gets an Edisonian touch.

The publication’s award-winning production staff also is offering to design for free an ad for those who buy full-page ads with the magazine.

“The word we use to describe our new look is ‘organic,’” says newly hired creative director Ted Pate.

Indeed, the redesign reflects the lab experiment, coffee-spill, work-in-progress aspect of inventing and innovation.

“More people are turning to inventing and entrepreneurial pursuits in the face of massive downsizing and disillusion with 9-to-5 jobs,” says Mike Drummond, the magazine’s editor-in-chief. “And then you’ve got the overwhelming desire to wean ourselves from oil. We’re on the cusp of an energy and transportation renaissance. Inventors Digest is steeped in this cauldron of experimentation.”

To meet demand, Charlotte, N.C.-based Inventors Digest has brought aboard two new editors-at-large on the West Coast – Jennipher Adkins and Eva Winger.

Winger will be shepherding a new feature called Spark, which each month will chronicle the journey of three women entrepreneurs in different stages of their businesses.

The magazine also lured Kelly Blinson to head its Radar section, which features new products, off-beat innovations and other news from the inventing world.

“We’re going to add a new subsection for early-stage inventions called 'Under the Radar,'” Blinson says. “A place where newbies can get exposure.”

Inventors Digest also will be making a cameo in the upcoming Ben Stiller movie, Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian. Planned cover luminaries in 2009 include former Microsoft chief technology officer and gourmand Nathan Myhrvold, former Good Morning America host-turned-entrepreneur Joan Lunden, and famous researcher and Segway scooter inventor Dean Kamen.

Ford Loses Another Patent Battle

2008-12-15T11:04:00.000-08:00

It’s not been a good year for Ford Motor Company.

Not only did Ford and its Detroit cousins fail to secure a multibillion-dollar bailout last week, Ford also lost a $23 million patent-infringement case against independent inventor Jacob Krippelz Sr.

Krippelz invented a small light mounted to side rear view mirrors. Last Friday, a jury awarded Krippelz the payout. The case has shades of Flash of Genius, the movie released this year of intermittent windshield inventor Robert Kearns, who eventually won a patent-infringement case against Ford and other car makers.

"I can tell you we’re disappointed," Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans told Inventors Digest. "We believe the side view mirrors we purchased don’t infringe this patent and we intend to appeal."

Jake Krippelz, Jacob’s son, was happy with the initial victory. “The little guy prevailed,” he wrote me in an e-mail. “I think (this) will give hope to all the inventors out there.”

The verdict came 10 years after Krippelz Sr. first sued Ford in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Krippelz is the 77-year-old Chief Executive Officer of Jake's, Inc., a machining and heavy equipment component manufacturing company in Aurora, Ill.

Krippelz was represented in the trial by Mark Ferguson, Adam Mortara and Hamilton Hill, all of Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP of Chicago and James Ryndak and Mark Suri of the patent firm Ryndak & Suri LLP also of Chicago.

"This is the culmination of a very long fight for Jake Krippelz," Ferguson said in a prepared statement, "and we are pleased to have been able to help him finally vindicate his patent rights."

"It is an especially gratifying result," said Ryndak, "because it shows that a hard-working individual like Jake Krippelz with a patented invention can prevail against even one of the largest corporations of America."

The family is gearing up for a “willfulness trail” in a few weeks to seek triple damages.

“Many other automotive manufactures also are infringing,” Jake added in his e-mail to Inventors Digest, “which we will go after in ‘09.”

Today from Reuters:

2008-12-11T06:18:00.001-08:00

"China has greatly stepped up its applications for new patents and will pass Japan, the current leader in new patents, by 2012, according to a report released on Wednesday by Thomson Reuters Scientific.

The report found that China is moving away from traditional agriculture and manufacturing industry and concentrating more on innovation, especially in areas such as chemical engineering."

This is curious, as I recently read that the United States had surpassed Japan as of 2008 (?) as the leading nation for patent applications.

Code Red

2008-12-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

American fourth and eighth grade students made solid achievement gains in math in recent years, according to an international survey of student achievement, released Tuesday. But in science, fourth graders eked out only small gains, and eighth grade performance fell.

The results showed that several Asian countries continue to greatly outperform the United States in science and math, subjects that are key to economic competitiveness and research.

The survey, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or Timss, found that fourth grade students in Hong Kong and eighth grade students in Taiwan were the world’s top scorers in math, while Singapore dominated in science at both grade levels.