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Tag: Idaho

  • Featured Idaho Patent: Portable apparatus for cleaning air filters

    U.S. Patent Number 8,236,076 – Portable apparatus for cleaning air filters

    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: Dennis Grieve (Tendoy, ID)

    This week’s featured patent discloses a device for cleaning air filters on vehicles used in off-road and other environments that quickly saturate the air filter with particulate matter. Unlike passenger vehicles, which slowly accumulate dirt in their air filters, heavy equipment is sometimes operated in conditions that result in clogged air filters relatively quickly.

    This invention does its magic by using rotating nozzles that aim compressed air at the internal surface of the air filter. The compressed air makes the nozzles spin, similar to a dishwasher’s spray arms.

    Link:

  • Featured Idaho Patent: Armor systems including coated core materials

    U.S. Patent Number 8,231,963 – Armor systems including coated core materials

    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: Henry S. Chu (Idaho Falls, ID), Thomas M. Lillo (Idaho Falls, ID), Kevin M. McHugh (Idaho Falls, ID)

    Assignee: Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC (Idaho Falls, ID)

    This week’s featured patent is an armor system that could be used for aircraft, armored vehicles, and body armor. The invention includes a multi-layer design, with a core material that is coated with a second material. The coating material is used to absorb some of the energy of projectiles hitting the armor.

    As described in the patent, the coating layer is sprayed on the core material. In one example, the coating is about 3 mm thick. One advantage of spraying the second layer is that complex armor shapes can be created just as easily as flat armor plates.

    Link:

  • Featured Idaho Patent: Chemical vaporizer for material deposition systems and associated methods

    U.S. Patent Number 8,225,745 – Chemical vaporizer for material deposition systems and associated 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.

    Inventors: Eugene P. Marsh  (Boise, ID), David R. Atwell (Boise, ID)

    Assignee: Micron Technology, Inc. (Boise, ID)

    Micron is by far the most prolific patent-getter in Idaho. (Of the 29 patents granted today to Idaho inventors or assignees, Micron received 20 of them.) So, if I featured Micron’s patents on my blog at a frequency proportional to the number of patents it receives, I would be talking about Micron in 2/3 of these blog posts. I don’t do that because I like the variety I’ve seen from patent applicants all over the state. Still, every once in a while I see an interesting technology from Micron that I like to feature.

    Today’s featured patent is a chemical vapor deposition system for fabricating integrated circuits. Chemical vapor deposition is a process commonly used to deposit a very thin layer on a semiconductor or other substrate. This invention regulates the amount of solvent introduced into the vaporizer apparatus to optimize the equilibrium and minimize clogging within the vaporizer.

    Link:

  • Featured Idaho Patent: Miniature football helmet bottle liquid bottle pourer

    U.S. Patent Number D663,575 – Miniature football helmet bottle liquid bottle pourer

    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: Randal J. Carroll (Woodstock, GA), L. Holden Morgan (Ketchum, ID), Rex A.  Robinson (Hailey, ID)

    This week’s featured Idaho patent is a design patent for a “miniature football helmet liquid bottle pourer.” As is the case with all design patents, the claimed subject matter is what the patent drawings depict (as opposed to utility patents, in which the claimed subject matter is a text-based description.

    Traditionally, design patents have been rarely used. Recently, however, patent applicants have filed design patent applications in increasing numbers. Because design patents only cover ornamental qualities of an article, this type of patent can often overlap (and complement) copyright and even trademark-based protection. In some cases, a sound intellectual property protection strategy should take advantage of such overlaps to maintain product branding and distinctiveness.

    Link:

  • Featured Idaho Patent: Non-occluding audio headset positioned in the ear canal

    U.S. Patent Number 8,218,799 – Non-occluding audio headset positioned in the ear canal

    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: Matthew Stephen Murphy (Boise, ID), Mali Kristin Murphy (Boise, ID)

    If you ever wished that your earbud headset was even smaller and could be put even farther into your ear, then this is the invention for you. Each speaker is actually inserted into the ear canal and anchored in place with a spring. The speaker is small enough and shaped to not completely fill the ear canal so as to allow the wearer to also hear ambient noises.

    Link:

  • Featured Idaho Patent: Systems and Methods for Performing Wireless Financial Transactions

    U.S. Patent Number 8,214,298 – Systems and Methods for Performing Wireless Financial Transactions

    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: Steven Harvey McCown (Rigby, ID)

    Assignee: RFinity Corporation (Idaho Falls, ID)

    This invention deals with processing financial transactions using wireless technology, and specifically by authorizing a transaction using the respective mobile devices of a buyer and a seller. Essentially, the flow of such a transaction follows this process: The buyer’s device sends the details of the transaction, including the dollar amount and the buyer’s credentials, to the seller’s device using a local wireless network. The seller’s device then sends a request to the buyer’s financial institution for a transfer of funds from the buyer’s financial institution to the seller’s financial institution, after which the buyer’s device sends an authorization for the requested transfer. If the transfer was successful, an acknowledgement is sent to both buyer’s and seller’s devices.

    There is no doubt that the mobile computing sector will continue to increase on an exponential scale and innovators are aware of the huge potential value that a patent like this can hold.

    Link:

  • Featured Idaho Patent: Strap Winder

    U.S. Patent Number 8,205,818 – Strap Winder

    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: Joseph Paul Gonzales (Chubbuck, ID), Donna L. Gonzales (Chubbuck, ID), Fernando B. Gonzales (Pocatello, ID)

    This invention can be used to wind cargo straps or cords. After cargo straps have been unsecured from cargo on trucks or trailers, the straps may commonly be left on the ground, which is generally dirty and therefore bad for the straps. The winder can be worn (slots on the chest plate can engage with a belt or harness) for added convenience.

    One interesting thing about the prosecution of this patent is that the patent was allowed only 11 months after the application date, which is unusually fast. A quick examination of the patent file history shows that the applicants filed a petition to make the application special, which was granted. In this case, the petition was made on the basis of age (one of the applicants is over 65 years of age).

    Link:

  • Featured Idaho Patent: Vector-Specific Haptic Feedback

    U.S. Patent Number 8,203,531 – Vector-Specific Haptic Feedback

    Every Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office publishes new granted patents. I thought some of you would like to read about Idaho-related patents–that is, patents having at least one Idaho inventor or assigned to an Idaho company. I’m going to do a weekly series of blog posts in which I will pick an interesting new patent that has Idaho connections and briefly describe it.

    Inventors: Cody George Peterson (Coeur d’Alene, ID), Andrew Parris Huska; (Post Falls, ID), James William Schlosser (Spokane, WA), Douglas M. Krumpelman (Hayden, ID)

    Assigned to: Pacinian Corporation (Spokane, WA)

    Current video game controllers provide haptic (tactile) feedback to gamers through vibration (using a mechanism similar to that found in most cell phones), which is a non-directional type of feedback. This patent discusses a type of controller feedback system that is directional. When a game system sends certain signals to the controller (the signals will indicate a direction and magnitude), electrically-deformable material move and deform the controller accordingly.

    Examples of devices into which this invention can be implemented include “game controller, hand-held computing device component, mouse, key or keyboard element, PDA component, smart phone component, remote or non-remote controller device, steering device . . .”

    Link: