This is the second in a series of posts about technology landscapes, also called patent landscapes. In the first post, Why I Hate the Phrase "Technology Landscape,” I point out that the phrase “technology landscape” is used to describe everything from a $1,000 offshore basic patent search to a $200k high-end consulting engagement with strategy consulting firms or a law firm billing by the hour.
Categories: Patent Landscape, Patent Strategy, IP Monetization, Industry Study
A wise man once said, “Language gets in the way of communication.” In my experience, the lexicon of “technology landscape” or “patent technology landscape” gets in the way of making strategic and even tactical business decisions involving intellectual property and business strategy. That is why I hate the phrase “technology landscape” as applied to patents.
According to The Lemelson-MIT Program the Prize "recognizes individuals who translate their ideas into inventions and innovations that improve the world in which we live....Dubbed the "Oscar for Inventors," the Lemelson-MIT Prize is awarded to outstanding mid-career inventors who have developed a patented product or process of significant value to society, which has been adopted for practical use, or has a high probability of being adopted.
Dr. Raskar joined the Media Lab from Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in 2008 as head of the Lab's Camera Culture research group. His research interests span the fields of computational photography, inverse problems in imaging, and human-computer interaction. MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture Group focuses on making the invisible visible–inside our bodies, around us, and beyond–for health, work, and connection. The goal is to create an entirely new class of imaging platforms that have an understanding of the world that far exceeds human ability and produce meaningful abstractions that are well within human comprehensibility. The group conducts multi-disciplinary research in modern optics, sensors, illumination, actuators, probes and software processing. This work ranges from creating novel feature-revealing computational cameras and new lightweight medical imaging mechanisms, to facilitating positive social impact via the next billion personalized cameras. See: MIT Technology Review for articles and stories about his work.
As of August 2016 Professor Raskar was listed as an inventor on 71 issued U.S. patents and 26 published pending U.S. patent applications.
This IPVision Patent Portfolio Interconnection Map shows the U.S. patents and applications of Ramesh Raskar and the citation relationships within the portfolio. Note: Click on the Patent Map Image to View an Interactive Patent Map
The Raskar patents have been cited by 805 other U.S. patents owned by companies such as Microsoft (82 patents), Adobe Systems (53 patents), Seiko Epson (46 patents), Fotonation (38 patents) and Canon (26 patents) among a total of 225 organizations holding patents that cite one or more of Dr. Raskar's U.S. patent properties.
IPVision provided the Lemelson-MIT Prize Committee with patent analysis reports on each of the semi-finalist and finalist nominees for the 2016 Lemelson-MIT Prize. Obtain a free copy of the IPVision Patent Analysis Report on Ramesh Raskar.
IPVision provided the Lemelson-MIT Prize Committee with patent analysis reports on each of the semi-finalist and finalist nominees for the 2014 Lemelson-MIT Prize. Obtain a free copy of the IPVision Patent Analysis Report on Sangetta Bhatia.
On July 25, 2014, Bose Corporation filed a patent infringement suit against Beats Electronics, which is in the process of being acquired by Apple for $3 billion.
Let’s take a look at the complaint and what ammunition each side has in its patent portfolio.
Bose alleges that Beats “Studio®” and “Studio® Wireless” brands active noise reduction headphones infringe Bose patented noise cancellation technology. In the complaint Bose states “For almost 50 years, Bose has made significant investment in the research, development, engineering, and design of proprietary technologies now implemented in its products, such as noise cancelling headphones. Bose’s current line of noise cancelling headphones, for example, embodies inventions protected by at least 36 U.S. patents and applications (22 patents and 14 pending applications) ….. Bose’s latest noise cancelling headphones model, the QC20, is protected by at least 27 U.S. patents and applications (14 patents and 13 pending applications)”. In the complaint Bose asserts that Beat is infringing the following U.S. patents (the “Asserted Patents”):
In the first article of this series we explored the forces that have given rise to a more active market in Patent Portfolio Trafficking. In summary, increased recognition of the value of intellectual assets, increased ability to analyze and measure IP, the Open Innovation movement and increased Senior Management involvement in IP. In this and the following articles of this series we present real cases (disguised for confidentiality) of how companies are trying to deal with Patent Portfolio Trafficking.
Georgia Tech recently announced a "New Patent Mapping System Helps Find Innovation Pathways". This research created "a new patent mapping system that considers how patents cite one another may help researchers better understand the relationships between technologies – and how they may come together to spur disruptive new areas of innovation."
Categories: Patent Landscape
The Lemelson-MIT Awards Committee announced that the 2013 Winner of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize is Angela Belcher, the W.M. Keck Professor of Energy in Materials Science and Biological Engineering at M.I.T. and a faculty member at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.
According to The Lemelson-MIT Program the Prize "recognizes individuals who translate their ideas into inventions and innovations that improve the world in which we live....Dubbed the "Oscar for Inventors," the Lemelson-MIT Prize is awarded to outstanding mid-career inventors who have developed a patented product or process of significant value to society, which has been adopted for practical use, or has a high probability of being adopted."
The focus of Prof. Belcher’s research is understanding and using the process by which nature makes materials in order to design novel hybrid organic-inorganic electronic and magnetic materials on new length scales. She then uses these materials in applications as varied as solar cells, batteries, medical diagnostics and basic single molecule interactions related to disease. Her research is highly interdisciplinary and brings together the fields of inorganic chemistry, materials chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology and electrical engineering.
Please join Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery LLP and IPVision for a complimentary webinar, "Disruptive Technologies and Patents: A Case Study of Graphene," presented by Steven G. Parmelee and Alex Butler.
According to The Lemelson-MIT Program the Prize "recognizes individuals who translate their ideas into inventions and innovations that improve the world in which we live....Dubbed the "Oscar for Inventors," the Lemelson-MIT Prize is awarded to outstanding mid-career inventors who have developed a patented product or process of significant value to society, which has been adopted for practical use, or has a high probability of being adopted."
