State of Innovation

Patents and Innovation Economics

How to Build a Patent Portfolio that Dominates Your Marketplace

The first step in build a market dominating patent portfolio is to undertake a survey of the patent landscape in your marketplace.  For more information on how to perform a prior art survey please see Competitive Analysis and Patent Portfolios .  This analysis will show you where there are gaps in the prior art that can be exploited and also help stimulate your thinking about design options.  Gary Boone, the inventor of the microcontroller, explains the advantage of surveying the prior art this way.  “Most engineering design groups do not feel there is much to learn by reading patents.  I feel that’s unfortunate, because there is a huge amount to learn from the accumulated five million issued patents, just picking up the U.S. patents alone.” Continue reading →

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September 28, 2009 Posted by | -How to, Patents, Uncategorized | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Did Edison Invent the Light Bulb?

            It is important to understand what is meant by innovating or inventing and what its properties are before embarking on how to encourage or measure technological innovation.  Innovating is creating something new.  What do we mean by new?  Was the light bulb invented by Edison new?  There were other electric light bulbs before Edison.  Some people suggest that Edison did not really invent the light bulb.  One website states “Contrary to what schools have taught for years, the American icon, Thomas Edison, neither invented the light bulb, nor held the first patent to the modern design of the light bulb.”[1]  Most of Edison’s detractors point to Joseph Wilson Swan as the inventor of the incandescent light bulb.  Swan was an English physicist and chemist and applied for a patent on his light bulb before Edison.  However, Swan’s light bulbs were low resistance light bulbs.  If you tried to setup an electrical power system to power Swan’s light bulbs, it would have required such a large copper conductor as to make the system economically unfeasible.  Edison created the first high resistance light bulb, which made it possible to create a commercially feasible electric light system.  Continue reading →

July 20, 2009 Posted by | -History, -Philosophy, Innovation, Patents | , , , , , | 4 Comments