New Patent Ideas - Vetti Times - Part One

Note: This post is co-authored by my friend Sunil Mukundan

This aint those revolutionary or paradigm shifting technology ideas but more an aftermath of this article @ gigaom. I remember something similarly weird settlement for patent infringement couple of years ago. It was where Creative had this patent for organizing music based on artist-> album-> etc and Apple apparently infringed it by using it in IPOD. Apple settled it with Creative for 100M USD. What has MSFT really managed to do by patenting this? Have they been able to stop people for writing non – scrollable applications? Or has it spurned on research to invent a display that will scroll by itself. None of these have actually happened. The whole exercise is beneficial to a rather not so poor patent attorney who would have charged a few thousand bucks an hour for this!

The take on the whole patent thing is that it is motivated by different parties; the motivation levels are proportional to the size of incentive which is graded as follows (atleast for the non – fundamental ones where royalty earnings are meager)

Incentive for author(s) < Incentive for Lawyers < incentive for competitor to find a workaround and patent that!

This inequality translates into a vicious circle where people try to get into a mode where they find workarounds with performance penalties rather than build on the original patent and innovate to the next level. Examples for this scenario are aplenty and require a separate post for discussion.

I wonder the logic (or magic - for lack of proper words to describe) behind it (organizing music and keyboard). Is it that big companies have the right to go on a ‘Red Bull - I got wings’ trip in patenting things left - right and center? Well, I am no guru in analyzing IP.

This post will be the first among the multi-part post on New Patent Ideas with an Indian Touch.

From an Indian context, I urge the companies to think about the following new patents to be filed:

1. The process of washing clothes in India where you strike or beat the dirty clothes soaked in detergent water on the flat faced stones. This process is very effective in removing the dirty and also giving the clothes some stress and longevity molecules. There is also a feedback mechanism where such processes are observed and the cloth makers add more reinforcements in their manufacturing process of making these clothes. In some embodiments of the invention, the process might include the long circular movements over the head involved in striking the clothes on the stone. In another embodiment, the process might include small punches delivered to detergent laden, bubble-filled clothes while resting on the stone….for more details, please contact me.
2. The South Indian innovation at boutique coffee shops(another fancy name for street corner shops). In this innovation, the system is targeted for making tea or coffee with one or more glasses(substitute ->mug, tumbler or anything else used one at a time and a big container(that can be held with one hand). The process involves transferring of the liquid content (with each added ingredient like milk followed by coffee or tea concentrate followed by sugar etc) from one of the smaller glasses to the big container. This process is carried on until satisfactory levels of consistency in coffee or tea is achieved. In one embodiment, the big container or small glass can be placed on a flat surface when the transferring process is carried out. In another embodiment, both of them can be held in each hand and the transferring process is carried out. This system is much more effective than any of those expresso machines out there….for more details, please contact me.

In the next part of the patent ideas post, I will present some systems that can be used by individuals.