Sunday, October 31, 2010

On hiatus

Hi folks!  This blog is going to be on hiatus for November.  See you December!

-The Management

Monday, October 25, 2010

Independent Inventor's Conference

It's once again time for the USPTO and InventNow's annual Independent Inventor's Conference.

Registration is open for the conference which will take place at the USPTO's campus in Alexandria, VA, on November 4 and 5.

Get the full details here.

Who's ready for some networking?!

Saturday, October 16, 2010

30 Dumb Inventions via Life

From good ol' Life:


Apple awarded patent for text message content control program

TechCrunch reported this week that Apple has patented a computer program that allows users to censor certain words from incoming and outgoing text messages.

The TechCrunch story focuses on the parental control (anti-"sexting") potential of the patent, which I'm sure will be a big seller for parents who are on the fence about allowing their teenage children to have iPhones.  Another potential use involves allowing only messages with a specified amount of content in a certain language, suggesting the possibility of forced language practice through text message restrictions.

I can also see the potential for spam filtering.  If text messages become the next frontier for unsolicited advertisements, perhaps one could filter out some key words.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Tech dominates patents in the Bay Area

Well, duh, right?  But I hadn't realized the extent of the domination of high tech industries in Bay Area patent applications until I caught a glimpse of a list of the top 25 patent recipients in the Bay Area in the Oct. 1-7 San Francisco Business Times.

Of the top 25, only three were not software, hardware, or network companies: UC Berkeley was number 8, Stanford 22, and Genentech just made the list at the 25 spot.  The rest of the list features the usual cast of Silicon Valley giants -- Intel, Sun, Oracle, Google, etc.

Also interesting is that none of the companies on the list are headquartered in San Francisco but are mostly in the Peninsula.

You can have a look at the SF Business Times every week at the Main Library and also several branches.