U.S. Patent Number 12,439,938 – Potato Protein Powders
Every Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office publishes newly granted patents. This blog post is part of a weekly series in which I pick an interesting new patent that has Idaho connections and briefly describe it.
Inventors: Jeffri Curtis Bohlscheid (Boise, ID), Katrina Marie Fletcher (Palmerston North, New Zealand), Lee Meryl Huffman (Palmerston North, New Zealand)
Assignee: J.R. Simplot Company (Boise, ID)
Some patent titles make it difficult to ascertain the subject matter of the patent. Not this one; it discloses exactly what “potato protein powders” sounds like: protein powder made from potatoes.
In one of the patent claims, the powder’s ingredients include “crude protein extracted from potato fruit juice (PFJ)” and “about 1-about 20 wt. % ash from the PFJ.” The powder can be used to make sports bars and dry mix powders.
If I see this on the grocery store shelf, I will buy it. Way to go, Idaho!
U.S. Patent Number 12,421,754 – Net Securing System, Apparatus, And Methods
Every Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office publishes newly granted patents. This blog post is part of a weekly series in which I pick an interesting new patent that has Idaho connections and briefly describe it.
Fields where people play sports often need a net around them to contain balls, frisbees, or other flying objects. An older way of securing the net to a wall involves “pinching portions of the net between wall portions,” which “creates weak points in the net, which over time may break.”
This patent describes an improved apparatus for securing a net to a wall in a way that prolongs the life of the net. The apparatus is a wall cap that has an upper cavity and a lower cavity.
The upper cavity holds a nylon rod intertwined with the net. The lower cavity sits on top of the wall. The wall cap has a gap large enough for the net to pass through, but too small for the rod. A cable wrapped both above and below the rod secures everything in place within the upper cavity.
This design distributes load forces that occur when a ball impacts the net, lengthening the life of the net. Game on!
U.S. Patent Number 12,416,180 – Intelligent Door Lock System For Use With A Door Assembly
Every Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office publishes newly granted patents. This blog post is part of a weekly series in which I pick an interesting new patent that has Idaho connections and briefly describe it.
Inventors: Joshua Funamura (San Francisco, CA), Nicolás Pedro Lylyk (Palo Alto, CA), Patrick Kessler (San Francisco, CA), Eric Jadallah (Ketchum, ID), Jordan Fountain (San Jose, CA), Robert Sean Murphy (Sunnyvale, CA), Phillip Satterfield (San Francisco, CA), Greg Springer (Los Altos, CA), David Morgenstern (Los Altos, CA)
Assignee: WedgeTLS LLC (Ketchum, ID)
If you’ve ever fumbled with keys in the dark or worried about whether you locked the door, this week’s patent might pique your interest.
The patent describes a door lock system that improves upon the typical keypad or Bluetooth-enabled deadbolt. Particularly, the patent describes that previous electronic door locks were “quite large and hence conspicuous when mounted on the door assembly, thus affecting the overall aesthetic appeal of the room.” This lock integrates sensors, processors, and wireless communication modules directly into the lock assembly, resulting in a better-looking device.
One standout feature is its modular design. The system can be retrofitted into existing doors or built into new ones, making it flexible for both residential and commercial applications. It also supports multiple authentication methods, including RFID cards, key fobs, smart phones, and biometric inputs. That’s a big improvement from traditional locks, and it opens the door to smarter building management.
U.S. Patent Number 12,391,084 – Utility-scale Lithium-ion Battery Transporters
Every Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office publishes newly granted patents. This blog post is part of a weekly series in which I pick an interesting new patent that has Idaho connections and briefly describe it.
Inventors: Jonathan Edward Bellows (Waterbury, VT), Gregg Richard Noble (Saxtons River, VT), Alex David Perkins (North Ferrisburgh, VT), Lindsay Edward Gorrill (Coeur d’Alene, ID), Paul Brant Coombs (St. John’s, Canada), Nan Wu (St. John’s, Canada), Jason Jean Martin (Coeur d’Alene, ID), Mark Williams Hagedorn (North Plains, OR)
The power grid in Idaho and the rest of the country may not be ready for the future. As electric cars continue to increase in popularity, as power-hungry data centers continue to increase in numbers, and as industry generally continues to require more electrical power, it’s looking likely that the current infrastructure will be a limiting factor.
These inventors have come up with a creative solution: instead of moving electrons around the grid, let’s charge up a truckload of batteries in one location and transport the batteries to where power is needed. Energized batteries are mounted in racks, which are themselves anchored to an isolation platform working to dampen the external forces intrinsic to moving vehicles. In this manner, energy can be transported at a “utility-scale” to where it’s needed.
The idea reminds me of the old quote “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes hurtling down the highway.”
Last week, the USPTO issued an order for sanctions against a Chinese company in connection with tens of thousands of trademark applications. The company was accused of exhibiting a “longstanding and widespread pattern and practice of filing submissions with false or misleading information and improperly entered signatures.” Thousands of these trademark applications included falsified evidence including mockups or digitally altered specimens (meant to show use of the trademarks in commerce).
I found this order especially interesting because I’ve had my own run-in with this kind of fraudulent trademark filing. Specifically, I want to talk about a trademark registration for the word TODENG, a name you’ve probably never seen on a product in any store, online or off. That’s exactly the problem.
Last year, I wrote and filed a petition with the USPTO asking them to reexamine the registration for TODENG, a trademark which was granted to a Chinese company called Shenzhen Tuming Juchuang Technology Co., Ltd. Our reason? There’s strong evidence that the trademark was never actually used in U.S. commerce, despite claims to the contrary.
A Trademark with No Real Products
The original application claimed TODENG was used on a wide range of household goods such as furniture, curtain rails, baby pillows, pet kennels, and more. But when we looked for any trace of these products being sold under the TODENG name, we came up empty. No listings on Amazon, Walmart, Target, eBay, Temu, or even Alibaba. No Google results. No real-world presence.
The only “proof” submitted with the application were screenshots of a website (now defunct) and a single invoice. But here’s the kicker: the website domain wasn’t even registered until after the supposed sale took place. That’s not just suspicious, it’s impossible.
The Bigger Picture: Specimen Farms and Copy-Paste Invoices
Digging deeper, we found that this wasn’t an isolated case. The same attorney who filed the TODENG application had submitted dozens of other trademarks using nearly identical invoices and similarly sketchy websites. Many of these sites followed the same URL structure and were hosted on domains that vanished shortly after the applications were filed (if they even existed at all).
For example, here’s two invoices, one filed by the TODENG trademark applicant, the other filed by a supposedly different individual:
Notice anything in common?
This pattern suggests a coordinated effort to flood the U.S. trademark system with registrations based on fabricated evidence in what we call specimen farms. These fake websites exist just long enough to fool the USPTO into granting a registration, then disappear.
Why It Matters
Trademarks are supposed to protect real brands used in real commerce. When foreign entities abuse the system with fake filings, it clogs the registry, blocks legitimate businesses from using marks they actually intend to use, and undermines trust in the system.
The TODENG case is just one example, but it highlights a growing problem. Fortunately, in our case, the petition was granted and the TODENG registration is now dead (check out the petition, linked below, to see what sort of arguments can successfully bring down one of these fraudulent trademark registrations). And as shown in the recent order for sanctions, the USPTO is cracking down on many other fraudulent cases.
U.S. Patent Number 12,383,915 – Portable Fluid Spraying System
Every Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office publishes newly granted patents. This blog post is part of a weekly series in which I pick an interesting new patent that has Idaho connections and briefly describe it.
Inventor: VanceTurbeville (Kimberly, ID)
This week’s featured invention is a practical device. It has a housing with an internal water tank, pump, and battery. It even has wheels and a handle. It can be used to “to water plants, wash a car or boat, and the like.”
The independent claims in this patent are highly detailed, which suggests a relatively narrow scope of protection. While I haven’t reviewed the prosecution history of the patent, it’s likely that the original claims were broader but were incrementally narrowed in response to examiner rejections. This kind of evolution is typical in patent prosecution, where applicants often add specificity to overcome prior art or other objections.
Such claim narrowing underscores the critical role of the prosecution phase in shaping the final scope of a patent. Strategic responses during this stage can significantly influence the strength and enforceability of the resulting patent, making it a key focus for both applicants and their counsel.
Patent law isn’t just about inventions, it’s also about the judges who interpret the rules. In their law review article Expertise, Ideology, and Dissent, Professors Gugliuzza, Nash, and Rantanen dive into how judges on the Federal Circuit (the court that hears nearly all patent appeals) disagree with one another, and what those disagreements reveal.
The authors analyzed over 9,000 Federal Circuit decisions from 2008 to 2021. Their focus? Dissents–those filed opinions when a judge says, “I don’t agree with the majority.” Dissents are quite common in patent cases at the Federal Circuit level. Why? The authors suggest it’s a mix of ideology, judicial philosophy, and subject-matter expertise.
Here’s one finding from the study that I found interesting: judges with technical backgrounds (think engineers and scientists) are slightly more likely to dissent in all patent cases, but significantly more likely to dissent in patent cases where the majority opinion wasn’t written by a judge with a technical background.
The takeaway? Even in a specialized court, expertise and ideology shape how judges see the law, but their political leaning has less of an effect than the authors predicted. And when they disagree, it’s not just academic, it can influence how patent law evolves.
U.S. Patent Number 12,381,466 – Compact Annular Linear Induction Pump
Every Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office publishes newly granted patents. This blog post is part of a weekly series in which I pick an interesting new patent that has Idaho connections and briefly describe it.
Inventor: Bryce D. Kelly (Idaho Falls, ID)
Assignee: United States Department of Energy
As discussed in the background section of this patent, after the U.S. developed sodium cooled nuclear reactors in the 1950s, this reactor type never enjoyed mainstream use. Recently, however, interest in sodium cooled nuclear reactors has increased due to their “breed & burn” design and their ability to be manufactured and deployed as microreactors.
“Breed & burn” reactors are desirable because they can use spent fuel and generate more fissile material during operation.
The sodium cooled nuclear reactor is defined by its molten sodium coolant. One improvement needed for this reactor type is an electromagnetic pump that can transport the molten sodium.
FIG. 2 of the patent, depicting a coil pair within the stator.
The invention described in this patent has a duct through which the molten sodium coolant passes, a stator around the duct, and an inner core surrounded by the duct. Molten sodium is a paramagnetic fluid that can be moved by an electromagnetic field generated by the stator.
The stator contains evenly spaced slots, divisible by three to correspond with a three-phase electrical system, each slot housing a coil. Three conductors, wired in series, alternate through the stator slots so that every third coil belongs to one of the conductors. Applying a three-phase current to the conductors generates a magnetic field, inducing the sodium coolant to move through the duct.
I’ve previously discussed patent maintenance fees in another blog post. Some of my clients choose to pay maintenance fees on their own. After all, it’s not difficult; all one needs to do is know their patent number and navigate the USPTO website to the Maintenance Fees Storefront.
Starting now, however, it’s slightly more burdensome to pay patent maintenance fees. The USPTO announced that a USPTO.gov account is required to pay these fees, which was not previously the case. While it is fairly simple to create a USPTO.gov account, it’s just one more step that must be done to keep a patent alive.
That being said, a good number of my clients have hired me to pay their patent maintenance fees (even before the new requirement) because they want to make sure it gets done correctly, which I am happy to do.
