Google patents

Google, Inc.'s awarded patent for "Transitioning a mixed-mode vehicle to autonomous mode" here.

From a BBC News article here:

"Google believe it is a technology that is here and now and will start appearing in motorcars in the near future," said Professor Alan Woodward from the department of computing at the University of Surrey.

"We already have systems that park your cars for you and automatically brake - the next obvious step is to have cars take over the routine driving.

"Google has funded a lot of this work at universities. Not surprisingly, if they think it is going to be big they want to patent it."

US Patent Changes!

Having written about patents in general, see here, here and here, the new changes USPO are creating excitement!

From Yahoo News, details here:

"The most substantial change brought about by the bill would be to switch the United States to a "first-inventor-to-file" system for patent applications used by all other industrialized countries rather than the current "first-to-invent" system. Supporters say the first-to-file system would put American innovators on the same page as their overseas competitors, making the process simpler, more certain and less expensive."

From The Hill, details here, the reader comments are enjoyable.

From The Wall Street Journal, details here:

"The Patent Office would also gain power to set its own funding, a move that is likely to mean higher application fees but also greater resources to process an application backlog that exceeds 700,000."

From The New York Time, details here:

"... the House is unlikely to take up a patent bill anytime soon, and people with an interest in the patent system say they expect its bill to be significantly different."

"Many smaller companies and inventors opposed the change, however, arguing that it favored companies that could hire legions of lawyers to quickly file applications for new permutations in manufacturing or product design."

"A consortium of technology and computer companies are already lobbying House members to resist addressing procedures to re-examine patents in their bill. The Information Technology Industry Council, whose members include Dell, Google, I.B.M. and Microsoft, said in a letter to Mr. Leahy earlier this month that it opposed the bill’s provisions to alter how patents could be re-examined, asserting that this would increase litigation rather than reduce it."

Technological Innovation in BRIC Economies

Good article focusing on an evaluation of knowledge driven innovation in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries here. Interesting to note are comparisons with developed countries and with VISTA (Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, and Argentina) countries.

Evolutionary Innovation - Pt. II & Patents

I will not belabor the subject of Evolutionary Innovation - click here for an article on multiple examples related to computer algorithms evolving an initial set of information for a solution (whether functional or not) to a new and possibly practical solution. The evolved creation (could I call it that?) is processed through computer aided simulation for validation.

This excerpt is particularly interesting:

"...the algorithm generated a bizarre flower-like pattern of holes that no human would have thought of trying."

Science Fiction? Machine that makes a better machine than what humans can create! I am reminded of what William Gibson said during an NPR interview:

"... the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed."

Not too far in the near future I believe computations that mimic biological progressions will allow us to build individualized and personalized solutions for our everyday needs. The person with issues of severe dry scalp in Winter will have a custom shampoo synthesized for her in a matter of minutes.

All this is exciting yet I also foresee the complexity that organizations like USFDA are going to face when computers will start to create customized Rx. For example, custom pharmacological cocktails for every person in a matter of hours or minutes - How does one regulate it? See a Wired article on pharma cocktails here.

This inevitability is a lot closer than we realize. Let us indulge for a minute - one of the main issues with customized pharma solutions is the speed of the computing power for analysis, for example, of biological side effects and reactions. Specifically, today's microprocessors run close to 200 Fahrenheit and fail when pushed farther. Diamond wafers are around the corner with diamond microchips running at speeds that would liquefy silicon. Manufactured diamonds are becoming prevalent, read detailed story from Wired here. 4Ghz CPU? 400Ghz may not be far!

Therefore, this is not an indulgence but an opportunity in desperate need of hype, frenzy, marketing and Davos panels for the preeminent entrepreneurial workshops of the World like Silicon Valley and Israeli invention machinery to go after.

So far I have touched on formulated products. Perhaps insights can be gleaned from the discrete manufacturing industry like the automotive industry. Base car platforms are being personalized, such as the Scion, that have started to democratize the "made to order" car previously the domain of brands like Ferrari.

Yet, as I touched on Patents previously in (algorithmic) Evolutionary Innovation - Pt. I, the bigger concern will be with Intellectual Property. The traditional and current patent office could be considered a detriment to the future. Why? Because in its current state, it will have to grant every permutation of the algorithmically evolved invention a patent, every algorithm in itself will be a patent and then the methods of dispensation of the invention will be a patent also.

Here is an article with an example to validate my concerns above. This article relates tough questions faced by the USPTO today due to the great excitement brought about when and since the first "business methods" patent was awarded in 1998.

In case of algorithmically evolved inventions, a solution could be to take the bold step of declaring the duplication of Nature as Open Source, while the effort of deciphering Nature licensable.

Unfortunately, governments through history have not been able to seize the possibility and design the future. Mostly it is that the future seizes them and the opportunity is lost to the chagrin of the knowledge creators, who then have to find new horizons to practice their art and science.

By the way, I tried in vain for fifteen minutes to search for a simple statement describing the purpose of the US Patent & Trademark Office i.e. Who do they serve? What do they do?  And how does that come about? This continues to be an area of improvement for USPTO.

Caring and nurturing of the seeker, the discoverer and the inventor through the USPTO has brought great success to the USA in the past two centuries. It must take the lead here to enable us to continue to remain at the head of the World in knowledge creation and the ability to leverage it for growth.