[Music] [Music] Thomas Edison's electric lamp Orville and Wilbur Wright and their flying machine Walt Disney's Art of Animation camera Steve wnac and the microchip for use with video display Stephanie qux protected fabric even Michael Jackson's method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion with they and many other share is something called [Music] Innovation so you wanted to do triangles that's triangle students are designing and building candy Bridges um we started by introducing them to different types of bridges whether it happens among students in a classroom or engineers in a laboratory Innovation is a process a series
of steps that begins with imagination and results in the creation of something of value for society Innovation is improving upon the knowledge and the information that's out there and taking what is already known in the world and improving it making it better christianne pulum is a supervisory patent examiner at the US patent and trademark office headquartered in Alexandria Virginia the US PTO is an agency of the Department of Commerce that employs more than 8,000 patent examiners many of whom are scientists and Engineers is the agency in the United States government which oversees uh patent and
trademark functions a patent gives the inventor the right to exclude others from making using selling or offering for sale their invention without permission for a limited period of time on average the US PTO receives about 500,000 patent applications a year it also registers trademarks which help designate the source of products or Services the trademarks can be logos brand names most commonly but they can also be colors a trademark can be almost anything characters shapes and even sounds such as NBC's signature three note chime The Innovation process begins with vision creativity and the simple desire to
address a particular problem or need you have to see what's out there and see a problem that you want to fix and then you have to come up with a way to fix it figuring out a new technique a new method a new combination of existing things can be Innovative Beyond just an idea Innovation also often requires financial support in the US many Innovations are funded by government agencies such as the National Science Foundation as well as by private companies foundations and other institutions the NSF an independent Federal agency issues about 10,000 grants per year
for research and education in fields of Science and Engineering we write a proposal to National Science Foundation to explain this is our idea to explain how to device or science will benefit the society Beyond imagination research and funding Innovation also requires Vision persistence and involvement of people from different backgrounds and varied expertise who collaborate in order to create a new product or process something that may solve a problem in a new way teamwork is important because now you have many eyes on the same problem from a different angle teamwork is so essential that I would
say without any hesitation that it won't happen without teamwork and you don't really know where the shortcomings are where the most powerful refinements are until you actually go through the process of doing the experim mentation building the devices doing a few design iterations to apply for a patent the inventor is required to fully disclose the necessary details about the idea which is then investigated by a patent examiner the patent examiner conducts a thorough examination of previous patents scholarly journals the internet and other sources to ensure the invention is new during this process the inventor is
often asked to make revision to the application to help clarify the invention and distinguish it from mothers there's a lot of give and take with the patent examiner so that their job is to help you craft a language of these claims you're not overstepping onto somebody else's property it takes quite a bit of time to do all that searching and to produce office actions allowances rejections for each application that's handled here at the office right now the average filing to First action for a patent application is about 23 months Congress has passed the American invents
act and one of its goals is to reduce the amount of time a patent application takes to be processed once a patent is issued the inventor has a tool to protect his or her invention against patent infringement which occurs when someone makes uses sells or attempts to sell the invention without the inventor's permission but when a patent is issued the Innovation process doesn't end instead the patent's disclosure of the details of the invention helps other people draw on the knowledge and potentially Inspire future innovations that enables the Next Generation to learn your stuff and come
up to a new set of knowledge to go forward if you don't bring it into the world then the inventor down the street might not be able to improve upon it if they don't know that it's out there so it's about sharing that knowledge yes perhaps most important in The Innovation process in addition to having imagination is education especially in the subjects of science technology engineering and math providing the base that can help a student become an innovator USPTO volunteers work with local students to help promote Innovation it's so exciting to see the light go
on in the spark uh when these kids figure out that they know how to do it that they have an idea that they can implement it what's the bridge can look like when you look at it whether building a candy Bridge or designing a new machine Innovation is what helps us imagine invent improve and Inspire others and along the way give back to the world [Music]
