"My invention consists in the arrangement of two wheels, the one directly in front of the other..."

I can't think of any technological advancement more simple, elegant, and useful than the bicycle. With all of the bicycle-related-events going on this summer abroad and here in San Francisco, including a film series here at the Main Library, it's nice to see that people aren't taking the two-wheeler for granted after well over a century of popular use. This led me to wonder where the bicycle came from.

The history of technology is dotted with examples of spontaneous inventions, of people plucking inspiration from the sky and inventing something entirely new. In 1849, when New Yorker Walter Hunt needed $15 to repay a debt to a friend, he took a length of wire, invented the safety pin, and sold the rights for $400.

That doesn't happen very often. Like most lasting innovations, the development of bicycles involved a series of gradual improvements upon previous designs. The earliest vehicle that a modern person might recognize as a precursor to the bicycle is Karl von Drais' draisienne. This early 19th century two-wheeler looks remarkably close to a modern bicycle, especially considering some of the stylistic diversions later two-wheelers would take. Have a look:


Not bad for a first try, right? There are, however, a couple of things about this design that prevented it from starting a transportation revolution; most notably, perhaps, is the lack of pedals or a chain. The vehicle is propelled using Flintstone-era drive train technology.

In the 1860's, the solution to the problem of locomotion began to pop up in France in the form of pedals. At first, pedals were attached directly to the bicycle's wheel, like you see in the patent drawing below, from Pierre Lallement's 1866 "Improvement in Velocipedes:"


This design (the French called it a velocipede) represents a major step forward, but attaching the pedals directly to the front wheel meant that the bicycle was still going to be, well, rather slow. If you ever rode one of those little red tricycles as a kid, then you're familiar with this configuration -- for every turn of the pedal, you get one turn of the wheel. That means that for each stroke, the vehicle only moves the length of the circumference of the wheel, which is really tiny in the case of a little red tricycle and still small enough to inhibit fast cycling in the early velocipedes.

Although the chain transmission was around by the 1870's, the prevailing solution to the problem of the 1:1 pedal to wheel revolution ratio was to make bigger wheels which traveled a greater distance for each revolution. Thus, the "penny-farthing:"

The big-wheel solution proved temporary as the metallurgical technology would catch up within the next couple of decades to enable chains and steering mechanisms, both of which pretty closely resemble the components of a modern bicycle.

There was, however, one missing component that prevented the bicycle from transcending the status of amusement device to become a revolutionary means of transportation -- a comfortable ride. Early bicycles were called "bone-shakers," which gives you an idea of how people felt about riding on either solid wheels or wheels with solid rubber tires over dirt and cobblestone roads. A Scottish man named John Dunlop (last name bring anything to mind?) figured out that if he equipped his son's tricycle, the kid wouldn't get headaches from the bumpy ride. He patented pneumatic tires in 1888, and shortly began to manufacture modern tires with inner tubes. And the rest is history.

The development is a testament to the collaborative nature of technological advancement, the idea that we arrive at groundbreaking technologies like the bicycle by building on the advancements of others. There is no one bicycle patent; the bicycles that carry people to work and play are the result of hundreds of patents for gears, inner tubes, levers, ball bearings, and every other component.

We've got a pretty nice collection of books about the history of inventions, including fun titles by Umberto Eco and Tom Philbin that proved very helpful in writing this post.

Yeah, what he said...

Fellow patent librarian Michael White posted on his blog, The Patent Librarian's Notebook, a piece about the importance of class and subclass searching that very succinctly illustrates that, regardless of the type of invention, keyword searching won't suffice for a prior art search. I highly recommend it.

It's All About the Bar Codes at the New Electronic Copyright Office

A couple months back, I noticed that the U.S. Copyright Office was testing online registration for basic forms. At the time, I had no idea how serious those copyright folks were about using technology to streamline the copyright registration process.

As of July 1st, forms TX (literary works), VA (visual arts), PA (performing arts), SR (sound recordings), and SE (single serials) are no longer available for download on the Copyright Office's website, which tells me that they are pushing the electronic registration system (online registration and a new super-form, discussed below) as the primary method for registration.

What does this mean for copyright registrants? Ever the amateur analyst, I've devised three categories of copyright registrants and their options for registration.

For early adapters who wish to file a basic claim

To register many of the most common types of works, users can now go completely digital using the eCO system I mentioned in a previous post. The works that qualify for the online system are those featuring what are called basic claims, meaning "literary works, visual arts works, performing arts works, sound recordings, motion pictures, and single serial issues." You know, the artsy stuff.

I suspect that one of the reasons the Copyright Office is only now rolling out online registration is that they had to figure out a way to meet the deposit requirement. Title 17 of U.S. Code, the law that establishes U.S. copyright, requires a copyright owner to hand over copies of a published work to the Library of Congress. This requirement has worked its way into the Copyright Office's policies to include any work to be registered, published or not.

Deposit of a hard copy is still required for most works, but it is still recommended that registrants file their claims online. During the online filing process, the system will generate a shipping label that the registrant can attach to the package that they will use to mail their deposit.

For some types of works, including unpublished works and electronic-only works, an online deposit is sufficient. In either case, the fees are reduced to $35 to reflect the reduction in man-hours required to process registrations.

For those who respect the efficiency of the computer-based application but still consider the tactile experience essential to registering copyright

The Copyright Office has developed a new form, called form CO, that can be used to register literary works, performing arts works, visual arts works, motion picture works, audiovisual works, sound recording, and single serial issues.

This new super-form generates bar codes as you type, which means that an application can be read by a machine for faster processing. I tried one out and was very amused. Using this method to file still costs $45, but I'm guessing it will greatly speed up the registration process, plus it takes the guess work out of choosing a form. Form CO can be used in place of forms TX, VA, PA, SR, and SE, and is the only form currently available for download at the Copyright Office website.

For the traditionalists

If you aren't ready to give up filing by hand, you don't have to worry yet: you can still get the forms, though you can no longer download them directly from the Copyright Office's website. If you fill out the electronic form linked above, they'll send you copies of the forms. We'll also keep the forms in stock here at the Government Information Center for as long as they'll keep sending them to us. There are still several types of works that must be registered using the paper forms, so logic tells me that the forms will be around for at least as long as that requirement is in place. The cost for paper registration will remain $45.

If you're still a little fuzzy about registration, check out the classic Copyright Office Circular Number 1, "Copyright Basics." As always, please feel free to get in touch with us at the Government Information Center if you'd like help figuring out your registration needs.

Dubious Inventor Resources #1, or, Dr. Phil and the Overestimation of the Power of the Provisional Patent Application

Syndicated television talk show host Phil McGraw, aka Dr. Phil, has made a career of pushing the boundaries of psychotherapy to include finances, dieting, and, now, intellectual property.

It just came to my attention that the good doctor has published an article on his website offering his unique brand of no-nonsense advice to inventors. Phil, who "worked in litigation for years and has experience with patents and intellectual property," also calls on his buddy A.J. Khubani, a big-time infomercial producer, to weigh in on the subject.

The bulk of the advice is solid, if a little obvious, truisms such as "make a business plan," " do market research," "be patient," and the like. The kind of advice that we can all agree on -- except for one little piece of advice from Mr. Khubani that strikes me as a little misleading and potentially damaging for fledgling inventors:

“Patents are the best way to protect your idea, but they take a lot of money,” A.J. explains, noting that a patent can cost $10-30,000. “The smarter way to do it is go online — USPTO.gov — and file for a provisional patent. It cost $105, and that’s it. You’ve protected your idea.”

I'm not actually interested in (read "qualified for") nitpicking all of the advice on the internet that pertains to intellectual property, but this one -- and I suspect it may have been taken out of context -- caught my eye because it reflects a potentially confusing part of the patent process that may be worth talking about a little bit here.

The problem that I see in Khubani's advice is that there is no distinction made between full patent applications and provisional patent applications, which is like making no distinction between appetizers and the main course.

Provisional patents are a relatively new addition to the inventor's arsenal, and they exist as a cheap and relatively easy way to establish the date of an invention and to tentatively protect the invention while the inventor evaluates its commercial potential. An inventor sends in a description of an invention, drawings if they're necessary to explain the invention -- and these don't have to be done to the same strict specs that full patent drawings have -- and a hundred bucks. The inventor then has a year to build a prototype, perform market research (like Dr. Phil said), try to sell the invention, and then, if all of that pans out, go to the trouble and expense of filing a full patent application.

In the old days (before provisional patent applications were given the green light in 1995) there were two ways to prove when something was invented: the inventor could either create and document the creation, with witness and all, of working prototype, or file a full patent. Neither of these options is particularly fast, nor easy to do on the cheap. Provisional patents enable inventors to take a year to evaluate their invention, and in the mean time, they can claim "patent pending" status on their invention. (Without the provisional patent application, it's illegal to do that.) If the inventor doesn't file a full patent application within a year, the provisional patent application expires, and the protection effectively ends.

And so we arrive at the point of this post -- filing a provision is not "it." For a successful invention, the provisional application is only the very beginning.

Dr. Phil seems, for the most part, to advocate a cautious approach to patenting. The provisional patent application as a first step fits nicely into this approach.

You may want to check out a couple of books that we have here at the library if you're interested in protecting an invention. Not that I think Dr. Phil is overstepping his area of expertise. Hey, if David Pressman wrote a self-help book, I'd probably buy it for the collection.