Strategies for Patenting Solutions to Scaling Challenges

            Whether your business has large- or small-scale production challenges, it is important to consider your intellectual property portfolio when developing solutions. There are a couple of strategies that may be helpful to improve the chances of success for applications geared towards production challenges.
            One strategy for a patent application that is directed towards a solution for a large or small production scale related problem is to describe how the solution in the application may address issues associated with that particular production scale.
            Another strategy may be to describe how a particular production scale enables the solution to work so that the production scale is intertwined with the solution in the application. An example of an application that intertwines the scale of the production with the solution may be found at U.S. Patent No. 4,906,578, which relates to temperature control of large tanks for the cultivation of microorganisms.

            U.S. Patent No. 4,906,578 recognizes that the large size of industrial-scale cultivation tanks may be leveraged to circulate liquid media throughout the tank. In particular, U.S. Patent No. 4,906,578 describes strategically cooling certain regions of large volume cultivation tanks to cause circulation within the tank.
            By jacketing the tank with a coolant jacket and including a cooling tube in a center of the tank, liquid media in contact with the cooling tube in the center of the tank and in contact with the walls of the large tank may be cooled to a lower temperature than a remainder of the liquid media in the large tank.
            As the liquid media in contact with the cooling tube and in contact with the tube in the center of the tank is cooled, this liquid media increases in density and sinks to a bottom of the tank, forcing circulation of the liquid media within the large tank. Such circulation may result in temperature consistency, as well as efficiently aerate the tank.
            Thus, the solution in U.S. Patent No. 4,906,578 is intertwined with the large size of the tank, as it is due to the large volume of liquid media in the large tank that a density disparity occurs for a long enough period of time to cause circulation within the tank. If the tank were instead a small tank, for example, including a central cooling core and coolant jacket with such a small tank would not result in a density disparity being maintained for a long enough period of time for substantial circulation to occur.
            So if you have developed a solution to a problem that is related to large scale or small scale production, describing how the solution is tied to the scale of the production (such as the large tank in U.S. Patent No., 4,906,578), may be useful to incorporate into the application for patent prosecution down the road.
           

Popular posts from this blog

Surprising Uses for Oobleck

Image
Oobleck is a common name for a non-Newtonian fluid comprising cornstarch and water. Named after a substance humorously described in Dr. Seuss’s classic children’s story, Bartholomew and the Ooblek, the cornstarch and water concoction is frequently used in children’s science classes as a fun way to learn about fluid mechanics. You may have fond memories, yourself, of playing with oobleck as a youth. Oobleck behaves as a fluid when touched gently, but becomes hard as a solid when hit with great velocity. For example, a person could run across a swimming pool of oobleck without getting their feet wet. However, if a person stood still on the oobleck, then they would slowly sink. Because oobleck is a children’s plaything and because of its simple recipe (cornstarch and water), one may be surprised to learn that inventors have attempted to patent serious industrial uses for the material. As an example, one current patent application, US 2015/0016885 (now abandoned), is for a system of fi...
Read more

Dispensing with the Formalities: Ex Parte Quayle Actions

Image
Checking my email after work one day, I was greeted with some unfortunate news: the application I was prosecuting had received yet another Office action.   Frustrated, I couldn’t resist skimming the substance of the rejection.   After all, like any patent practitioner, I thought my arguments were pretty irrefutable.   The news only got worse… or so it appeared.   The Office action was something called an “ Ex Parte Quayle action.”   Having never received one of these actions, I started mentally preparing myself to pull out the MPEP and research some arcane rejection. To my surprise, I didn’t find myself knee-deep in case law the following day.   Ex Parte Quayle actions, while somewhat inconvenient, are far from insurmountable.   In short, an Ex Parte Quayle action or “Quayle action” is issued when an application has objections remaining as to formal matters, but is otherwise allowable.   Accordingly, the mailing of these actions close...
Read more

Adaptive Headlight IP

Image
The recent Infrastructure bill signed into law by President Biden affects many things, but one aspect that affects the automotive world is adaptive headlights.  As noted by Jalopnik puts it somewhat crudely, this means “our headlights will suck way less” (link to https://jalopnik.com/finally-our-headlights-will-suck-way-less-1848067412 ). But with this sudden change, adaptive headlights in the US may be in for a particular messy IP situation since many companies may have considered it was not necessary to protect their adaptive headlight innovations in the US because of the 50-year old rule preventing such technology. Recent patents in the field from applicants such as Lumileds and Arex indicate that smaller players and startups may be able to break into the market which is expected to explode in the next few years once the final rules are implemented.  For those in the industry that have typically avoided US patent filings in the adaptive headlamp area, they may want to r...
Read more