Fostering innovation and promoting progress with Watson

Dennis Ellis | Jonathan Partlow | Nathan Potts

The Problem

“One of the biggest needs for education among innovators is ... showing them how to safely utilize the vast body of teachings (8,000,000+ U.S. patents) contained within the prior art as the basis for further innovation.” - Richard Goldstein, Registered Patent Atty.

“More than 95 percent of patents just sit there, unused.” -- Daniel Perez

If something is patented but not brought to market then nobody can introduce it to the world; this prohibits innovation. It is in effect locked in a knowledge vault.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/anti-troll-marblar-unites-nasa-patents-samsung-crowdsource/story?id=20661007

The research phase of the design process includes checking existing solutions to expose an opportunity space for design. Designers and Makers, especially those in small design firms, lack resources to do adequate research. More, companies rarely want to fund such re-search.

Watson’s capabilities can aid innovation in design by speeding up the research process, exposing available design spaces.

Opportunity Space - Designers and Makers

Example: “Apple has finally admitted that a British man who left school at 15 is the inventor behind the iPod.”

Research

Image: Kane Kramer prototype Kramer's prototype digital music player he invented back in 1979

Source :http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053152/Apple-admit-Briton-DID-invent-iPod-hes-get-ting-money.html#ixzz2lNViULMn

The iPod is an example of a suc-cessful product that was designed using a previous expired patent. In 1979, Kane Kramer invented a digital music player.

Apple then found this expired patent, partially due to their vast resources in research. This example highlights the power of being able to innovate based upon community wisdom and prior human innovations. The Ipod ushered in the change of “Apple Computers” to becoming ‘Ap-ple’. Using expired patents in the design process took the company from $500mm in debt and $9.07 a share to over $540 a share today.

Source: Maclife - How Ipod Saved Applehttp://www.maclife.com/article/columns/lifer_how_ipod_saved_apple

Interviews with:

Research

Richard Goldstein has built a career on working with both individual inventors and start-up companies. He has given critical advice to more than 10,000 in-ventors, and has obtained more than1,500 patents for his clients.

Registered patent attorney, a chemist with decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, and formerly Director of Product Development for a ma-jor pharmaceutical company.

She has experience with new products - bringing numerous prototypes to full-scale production and international product launch.

Roman Tsibulevskiy is a registered patent attorney with a strong background in computer science. Roman worked almost exclusively for large corpo-rations, on patent projects in a variety of emerging technologies.

He works on projects in a variety of areas, including mechanical, electrical, and software apps.

Interview Insights

Research

Roman - “The approval for patents is so low. There was a documentary on the USPTO and in the background on a patent examiners wall there was an approval board that says ‘Approval Rate 0%’ - Patent examiners are actually incented to NOT approve patents. There is no standardization. It depends on which examiner you get when you submit the paperwork.”

Pat - “ When non attorneys send an application it is amazing how many get rejected in one form or fashion. Even when Attorneys submit there is almost always an office action from the examiners. The approval ratio is so low. How is that possible that EVERY Attorney that has years of experience doing this is wrong EVERY time. That is part of the reason patents are so expensive the reworks and time to argue.”

Rich - “The patent landscape has changed and our clients have to worry about Global selling and competitors. We are making the move towards a unified patent system where a person can gain protection nationally and internationally. Technolo-gy has grown to where it can support that type of system and the US has changed to First to File. It is not an if it is a when.”

Design Core

Use Watson’s unique capabilities to foster innovation and promote progress in the design process for small designer firms.

Design Concept

Enable small design firms and individual makers to search through the existing body of human knowledge and innovation that is housed in the 8,000,000+ filed patents.

Natural Language Processing

Evidence-Based Learning

Hypothesis Generation

Watson learns the corpus of 8 million+ patents. Legal patents are full of language that is difficult to understand for non-lawyers.

A Designer submits a patent draft to Watson. Watson then parces through the corpus of patents to find possible infringements.

A Designer enters a search query early in the design process to gain an idea of what the current patent landscape looks like.

Watson generates a hypothesis as whether any part of the designer’s design infringes on an existing patent.

Watson uses evidence-based learning to combine current legal decisions and patent knowledge to deliver the best hypothesis as possible.

Watson learns the current legal decisions of the day, updating the corpus to provide context for the patent knowledge.

Watson uses the evidence-based learning to suggest ways to work around possible patent infringements.

Watson uses Natural Language Processing to inspect the different patents, finding applicable content and returning the findings to the designers.

Story

Lillian Mills walked into the maker community where John, Sam, and Amelia were already busy working on their own pet projects. Lillian waved at them, even though their backs were turned as she walked over to her usual space - a cleaned workbench. She pulled out several tools for her new 3D printer design. Just last week, Lillian had learned through the new Watson Patent Search that several key pat-ents were going to expire next year. She realized that should could make her own new designs and share them with the world and the maker community at large. This one would be able to rotate the base and allow for an even finer detail than any of other 3D printers that she had ever used before. She was putting the finishing touches on it as she brought the small soldering gun closer and closer to the two copper wires. Lillian took a deep breath, looking over the two wires before squeezing the trigger and the hot solder oozing from the gun and solidifying the wires together.

Story

By the end of the day, Lillian was closer looked over the design. Satisfied with her progress, she cleaned up and returned home. For the next several days, Lillian worked on her design, sketching, building, testing, putting both joy and tears as things worked and some did not. Months continued to pass until finally - on one day - everything worked. She smiled, calling Sam over to have a look at what she was making. Sam’s eyes scurried over the design, look-ing, marveling, and nodding at Lillian’s handiwork.

After looking at her design for several moments Sam says, “Hey Lillian, I have a few designs I would like to print on your new printer. Could I borrow it for a couple of days to print them.”Lillian says, “Sure, I don’t see a problem with it, just take care of it. I spent a lot of time on it.”“Fantastic. I’ll take care of it.

Story

Sam borrows the 3D printer, prints a few things, and then returns it back to Lillian. Time moves on and the year 2014 rolls around. In January, Lillian comes up short on a few bills as her mother falls and breaks her legs and she needs help with the medical bills. Lilian decides to delay getting her 3D printer patent-ed to help her mother out. In February, she comes back and resubmits it with the help of a lawyer. A few months pass and the lawyer Lillian asks for help says that her design is already patented by Sam.

Lillian snatches up her phone, scrolls through her contacts, and dials Sam’s number.“Hello,” Sam’s voice comes in from the other side.“Sam! What the Hell? You copied my 3D printer!” Lillian shouts into the phone. There’s a slight pause as Lillian feels as if a disingen-uous smile is crawling up Sam’s face. “Oh That,” Sam gives a small chuckle. “Yeah. It’s First to File, Lillian, not first to Inve--”“Damn it, Sam! That was my invention - not yours!”Sam gives a small click of his tongue and says, “Whelp, too bad - All the best. Bye Now.”

Story

The phone gives a small low lone tone as she just stood there. A million ideas surge through her head wondering what she could do. She dials up her law-yer and he says there isn’t much she can do other than design around it. Lilian then goes back to Wat-son, and punches in her design once more. This time, Sam’s patent shows up as well as possible alternatives on how she could design around it.

She sees one in particular that inspires her on how she could change it and even make it better. Fortu-nately, Lillian is clever and she uses the patents to change the design to resubmit it and get the patent.

Thank You

Tarun Gangwani

Brandon Le

Mark Marrara

Marty Siegel

Process

1. Idea generation and narrowing down on core2. Research, primary (interviews), secondary examples.3. Core refinement, sketching, ideating on big ideas.4. Deliverable construction.

Process

Ideation and narrowing down on a core.

Process

Sketching - Ideating on core idea.

Appendix: Additional Research

Public domain and failure of the patent system to meet its Constitutional mandate. - Richard Goldstein

Now, here is how the patent system has failed to meet this Constitutional mandate.• It is a fundamental purpose of the patent system to – in essence – advance innovation by placing expired patents into the public domain so that innovators can build upon them to create more innovation.• Unfortunately, it is a rare innovator that can tell an expired patent from an unexpired patent!• As a result, innovators looking for solutions to problems are shy to access the vast knowledge base found in the patent record – because if they found ideas they like, they wouldn’t know that they could safely (without being sued for patent infringement) build upon them. In addition after they conceive an idea, if they research it and find a patent with a similar idea as theirs, they are more likely to give up (and stop innovating), believing that they “can’t do it, because it’s patented” – even if the patent they found is actually long expired!• Accordingly, the present system fails to effectively meet the promise of advancing “science and the useful arts”.Thus, my two assertions:1. An expired patent technically in the public domain isn’t (as a practical matter) in the public domain, unless the public readily knows it’s in the public domain.2. One of the biggest needs for education among innovators is not teaching them what qualifies for a patent or what qualifies for a trademark (as is conventionally done), but showing them how to safely utilize the vast body of teachings (8,000,000+ U.S. patents) contained within the prior art as the basis for further innovation.

Appendix: Additional Research

Value to the marketplace

“PwC and other sources attribute 80% or more of the market value of S&P 500 companies to intangible assets, primarily intellectual property rights. “ - Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenmakovsky/2012/04/26/an-opportunity-to-lead-on-intangibles/

“It is well known that IBM receives more US patents than any other company. The company also abandons more patents than any other company.”

- http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2012/03/ibms-patent-abandonment-strategy.html

Appendix: Additional Research

Search results from USPTO -- Search Query : “ I want to look at achieve-ments and televisions from 3d print-ing”.

This highlights the limitations for the status quo of patent searches.

Appendix: Additional Research

Search results from Google Patent -- Search Query : “ I want to look at achievements and televisions from 3d printing”.

This highlights the limitations for the status quo of patent searches.

Appendix: Persona

Name: Lillian MillsAge: 36

Background: Lillian Mills has, as long as she could remember liked to tinker with different things, like Legos, Ki-nect. Lillian’s father, an engineer, was her inspiration to make these several things. During college, Lillian underwent a crisis wondering if she really wanted to be an engineer, debating with herself if she really wanted to do this. She concluded that it was, but that she wasn’t going to be a traditional engineer. She instead wanted to work within the DIY community and help educate children in the same way she felt. She finished her degree, mostly at the pressur-ing of her parents. She is currently working for a small engineering company making the tubing in bicycle tires. She doesn’t really care about it, but it pays for the bills.

Personality: Lillian is an explorer and a tinkerer. She enjoys taking things apart more than putting them back togeth-er and her workshop typically has bits and pieces scattered throughout. While she can be very kind to people when she wants to even letting others to use her projects, she gets very irritated if someone touches something that is incomplete and in progress.

Goals & Challenges:Teach children how to make cool stuffBecome fully sufficient on just “making things”Wanting to make something that really helps the world. - Not sure what that is yet. . .