Patent, Trademark & Copyright : Law Office of Kloss, Stenger & LoTempio

When starting a new business one of the first things that needs to be done is to create a brand. Branding establishes the first impression that your target audience has of your business. Existing businesses sometimes need to re-create their brand.

I once asked an attorney "why does the public perceive you as the best personal injury attorney?" And he simply replied “because we told them in our advertisements.”

So if you're starting a new business or you own an existing business and your look is getting old and you need to upgrade or simply change and you need a fresh set of eyes to look at the situation where do you go?

I found Reagan Burns the owner and creative director at Lime Creative. Reagan and I had a nice conversation and she answered a few questions for me regarding marketing and branding issues.

What are some things a new business should be aware of regarding branding?

So when you're starting a new business you need to create advertising material, packaging, and trade dress of your actual place of business that says "this is who we are."

• Branding
• Advertising
• Marketing

Branding equals "look and feel of the company." The logo operates to allow consumers to identify with the company. We help determine what the company needs such as a logo, slogan or tagline.

How do you come up with new ideas without stepping on other people's legal rights?

When coming up with new ideas we have to be aware of trademark issues and copyright issues. This is where it's important to find a trademark attorney to perform a trademark search and file an application for trademark or copyright registration. Our company will pass clients onto patent and trademark attorneys to determine whether or not a federal trademark has previously been registered.

How do you come up with new ideas?

Our job is to determine what theme you're looking for. For example, a modern versus traditional look in which the target audience can relate. What is the look and feel of the company? How do you present yourself to the world?  Who do you want to become?

You can worry about efficiency while we worry about branding. In fact, not only do we love branding, but we also love worrying about advertising, and marketing, and designing, and inventing creative ways to add a little pizzazz and flavor to your business.

What do you do as far as following up with your branding plan?

Once we come up with a marketing plan it's important to implement it with consistency. Advertising should be memorable and uniformly consistent. Things like color codes and JPEG pixelation's should be consistent throughout the branding. Everything should have a unified feeling and the marketing plan should repeat the trademark over and over.

What rights does the branding company maintain?

Our client maintains all rights to use their logos as they see fit, whereas we maintain portfolio rights in all our work. Portfolio rights allow our company to maintain examples of our work to promote our business.

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Recently I received a calendar (PDF) from professional patent searcher Martin Keller.  On each month of the calendar is a patent drawing that is very unique.

So I contacted him because I wanted to thank him for sending me the calendar and see if he would answer a couple questions about preliminary "prior art" patentability searches.

Well here are a few of the "unique patent drawings" from patents that he came across over the years. If you click on the patent drawing it will bring you to a PDF of the entire patent.

Thanks again to Martin for his insight and gracious response to my questions regarding patent searching.

How long have you been employed as a patent searcher?

Since 1985 I have conducted a few thousand patent searches in my career, starting in the “paper only” days - all the way up to the present EAST system.

Have you had a lot of people come to you with regard to the same so called invention and you can just say hey I searched that one before and I know that is already out there? Like the self pasting toothbrush or the flip flop with an interchangeable toe piece?

Just did it the other day for a baby bottle with musical attachment that turns on when the bottle is tilted. Done this search - in a variety of ways. patent: 7134932 (PDF)

What types of things do you look for outside the particular classification of the invention, for example if someone came to you with a reel for a fishing rod would you look at reels on a sewing machine?

I look at all analogous art. I conduct every type patent search from a simple mechanical or electrical novelty search to validity and infringement studies and heavy duty chemical searches.

Since everything now is computerized do you conduct most of your searches online? Do you find that Google patents is a good searching tool? How does it compare with United States Patent and Trademark Office (see step by step search strategy) web page regarding searching? 

Google patents is only a fair tool. Better than the USPTO site.

Do you use use other search engines or websites such as IP.com as well? Do you ever actually go to the patent office anymore and search?

I go into the PTO every day and use EAST - the same system the examiners use. Nothing and I mean Nothing even comes close to EAST. In fact, the times when I find 102 art quickly on EAST - all other online databases fall very short.

Does anybody go through the old "paper shoes" and make searches? Do you ever make contact with an examiner and discuss the invention with an examiner?

No- all paper shoes are gone from the PTO. And on difficult searches I always consult an examiner.

Martin Keller
Professional Patent Searcher
1940 Duke St., Suite 200
Alexandria, VA 22314
tel 703-624-0310
fax 703-636-7700
email: kellerpatents@gmail.com

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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Watching the former Jeopardy champions versus Watson the IBM super computer makes you wonder how far innovation will take us in the future.

Can a computer think like a man? Here IBM made a computer that can speak and understand language and the nuances of questions like those that are asked on Jeopardy.

But can it carry on a conversation or make life or death or even everyday decisions?

Matt Silverman as a special to CNN wrote that "Watson doesn't really "think" anything, and it struggles with simple questions that most humans can answer without a second thought."

IBM wants to push the limits of science and push the limits of human accomplishment. IBM scientists state that there are two types of innovation:

• Incremental innovation improving existing products and advancing them in a linear fashion; and
• Exploratory grand challenges like making a computer think like a man.

I was wondering how many answers these guys knew but were just not as quick as the computer and here is what  Ken Jennings had to say on  on People.com TV Watch:

"Is it really head and shoulders above the best human Jeopardy! players, the way it looked on TV? Not by a long shot," Jennings wrote. "The reflexes of even a very good human player will vary slightly, but not Watson's. If it knows the answer, it makes the perfect buzz. Every single time. And it's hard to win if you can't buzz."

John Timmer of Ars Technica wrote for Wired Science that the world’s total CPU power can't compare to "one human brain." And if our brains are the ultimate computer why can’t we organize and pull up information the way Watson can?

I attempted to Google the information as quick as the answers were given and the Google search engine invariably came up with the right information for the question somewhere on the page. Remember in Jeopardy Alex Trebek gives the answer and the contestant must supply the question.

But the real question is can the computer understand the nuances of language? Even though a computer beat the grand champion Jeopardy players isn’t it still prone to silly mistakes?

In the second day the machine wrongly guessed Toronto to the answer: "Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero, its second largest for a World War II battle." The Final Jeopardy category was U.S. Cities. Shouldn't the computer have known Toronto is not a a US city? Luckily for the computer it wagered very little in Final Jeopardy.

Here is what IBM posted on its webpage:

The challenge is over. Watson, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter concluded their final round of Jeopardy! and the winner was… resoundingly, humankind. Watson’s advances in deep analytics and its ability to process unstructured data and interpret natural language will now be applied to humanity’s most vexing problems. If we can teach a computer to compete on Jeopardy! what could it mean for science, finance, healthcare and the future of society?

How can this type of technology help the human race? Will computers get to the point where we can simply carry on a conversation with them? The Watson computer by IBM certainly is the most advanced computer in the world and I didn't hear Alex Trebek try to start a conversation with the computer.

But even so, it never ceases to amaze me as to how fast technology improves. In fact I am dictating this blog post using a Dragon app on my iPad. And although I am not carrying on a conversation with this computer, I am talking to it and it understands my language and interprets it and puts it in writing on this electronic device on my lap. And I just take it for granted that it operates as such.

The IBM people speak about how they helped put a man on the moon in 1969. At that time the computing technology was so inferior to today's but yet I remember in 1969 thinking that our technology was so great and that what we accomplished in those few years after Pres. John F. Kennedy gave us the space challenge was more than all the technology the world could gather up until that point.

I truly was proud to be an American when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and I am proud of the US innovation of today. I like the idea of IBM pushing the limits of technology and I hope that someday soon we can all profit from this technology either in the medical field or our everyday lives as they discussed on the Jeopardy show. I certainly wish that my car would understand me better when I try to get directions using the voice recognition.

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President Obama issued on February 8, 2011 an Executive Order called "The Establishment of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Advisory Committees," establishing two intellectual property enforcement advisory committees designed to improve the Federal Government’s intellectual property enforcement efforts.

The Enforcement Advisory Committee shall develop a Strategic Plan as provided for in title III of the PRO IP Act.

The President's issuance of the Executive Order is evidence that there is a growing awareness of the commercial importance of intellectual property laws and the need to strengthen the enforcement of the laws designed to protect and foster America's inventiveness and creativity.

The executive order states that in the development and implementation of the Joint Strategic Plan, the heads of the departments and agencies shall share with the Coordinator of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Advisory Committee and the other members of the Enforcement Advisory Committee relevant department or agency information such as: 

• (A) plans for addressing the Joint Strategic Plan;


• (B) statistical information on the enforcement activities taken by that department or agency against counterfeiting or infringement; and


• (C) recommendations to enhance cooperation among Federal, State, and local authorities responsible for intellectual property enforcement.

The Senior Advisory Committee shall be composed of the Coordinator, who shall chair it, and the heads of, or the deputies to the heads of: 

1. The Department of State;


2. The Department of the Treasury;


3. The Department of Justice;


4. The Department of Agriculture;


5. The Department of Commerce;


6. The Department of Health and Human Services;


7. The Department of Homeland Security;


8. The Office of Management and Budget; and


9. The Office of the United States Trade Representative

The $64,000 question is whether not this committee will actually do anything. It seems like committees are constantly being formed to vote on things to do in the future. For example the Senate Judiciary Committee voted recently to send bipartisan patent reform legislation to the full Senate. This was announced by the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy on February 3, 2011.

I spoke with Leahy press contact David Carle on the telephone today and I asked him when did he expect it to go to the full Senate. He said that Patent Reform has been kicking around for years and it was just recently voted on by the committee and he didn't appear to have any idea when it might actually go before the Senate. His tone of voice seemed to say that to ask "when" at this early juncture is a little bit ridiculous.

I guess that's just the way things work in Washington one committee after the next kicking it around. The wheels of progress keep rolling along. But at least the politicians that we've elected are discussing patent reform and the importance of protecting intellectual property rights.

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 Orville and Wilbur Wright, American inventors and aviation pioneers, achieved the first manned, powered sustained, and controlled flight of an airplane without any assistance at takeoff.

 Orville Wright

Born August 19, 1871 – Died, January 30, 1948

Invention: Flying-Machine  Airplane-

First Flight, December 17, 1903

Patent Number 821,393

Inducted to National Inventors Hall of Fame™ in 1975

 Wilbur Wright

Born April 16, 1867 - Died May 30, 1912

Wilbur first became interested in the idea of mechanical flight after reading of Otto Lilienthal's successful gliding experiments in Germany.

From these studies and observations, the Wrights built their first machine in 1899. It was a biplane kite which they fitted with wings that could be mechanically twisted.

Before attempting a powered flight, they decided to master gliding and built three biplane gliders, which they flew at Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

One of the major breakthroughs of the Wright brothers was the ability to control and maneuver their aircraft. Since we live in a three dimensional world, it is necessary to control the attitude, or orientation, of a flying aircraft in all three axis; roll, pitch, and yaw.

The Wright brothers' ideas for flight control were tested on a series of unpowered aircraft between 1900 and 1902. The first aircraft to achieve complete active control was the 1902 glider.

They completed their first powered machine, the Kitty Hawk, in 1903, and made history's first powered, sustained and controlled airplane flights from level ground without any assistance at takeoff on the morning of December 17, 1903.

NASA provides a great Overview of the Wright Brothers Invention Process. In addition there is a list of all the pages at the NASA web site which deal with the math and science of the Wright Brothers' aircraft.

Many of the pages contain "Interactive" programs so that you can learn by exploring. Clicking on the title will deliver a page with a slide and a scientific explanation of the contents. Some of the pages contain modern information which was not known by the brothers in 1905.

In 1908 they were able to conclude an agreement for production of the Wright airplane for the U.S. Army. Wilbur made the first public flight on August 8, 1908 in France and continued his exhibition flights there to the end of that year.

Invention Impact

They made history's first powered, sustained and controlled airplane flights from level ground without any assistance at takeoff.

Inventor Bio

Wilbur was born in Millville, Indiana; Orville in Dayton, Ohio. They were the sons of a bishop of the Evangelical United Brethren Church. Both completed high school courses, but neither graduated formally. In 1893 the brothers opened a shop for the sale, repair, and manufacture of bicycles. Income from the shop supported them during the early years of their aeronautical experiments.

Orville Wright was a founding member of NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) and served on NACA for 28 years. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency) was created from the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics in 1958.

Orville Wright received the first Daniel Guggenheim Medal. The Daniel Guggenheim Medal, awarded for "great achievements in aeronautics," which was established in 1928 by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics.

The Daniel Guggenheim Medal is now administered jointly by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Society of Automotive Engineers, the American Society of Engineers, and the United Engineering Trustees, Inc.

Both the brothers died bachelors; aviation had been their only passion.

Posted with the permission of the  National Inventors Hall of Fame™

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