NIF Innovation Database - An Indispensable World Of Grass Root Innovations

During the course of my four years of study at the prestigious College of Agricultural Engineering, I invariably had some hard feelings about my academic discipline i.e. Agricultural Engineering. I always carried an opinion that, what I am pursuing as part of my course curriculum doesn’t have any relevance to the real world problems and it’s a sub-standard engineering science which lacks fundamentals and couldn’t stand on its own feet. I visited the NIF website earlier also, but with out a purpose and never felt much excited. This may be because I never had a purpose to perceive what it was all about. The purposeful visit this time led me to an altogether new world, a fledgling yet indispensable world of grass root innovations. The visit this time proved to be more purposeful, first by disabusing some prejudged notions I was carrying from the last six years about my academic discipline and second by rekindling the waning hopes on my capabilities as an Agricultural Engineer. Thanks to National Innovation Foundation, for it is not only igniting the minds of professional engineers like me but also the minds of people who never had any sort of formal education but have a sleight of hand to innovate and make the world better.

What interested me more while perusing the NIF website is the innovation database. The innovations pertaining to energy efficiency are very inspiring. I have the personal experience of using both wick based and pump based kerosene stoves at my home and I clearly remember my grandmother’s unflagging attempts to conserve the heat and stabilize the flickering flame by placing a metal sheet around the body surrounding the burner. Usha Shankar’s innovation addressed the same problem which many grandmothers in the developing world face. In the face of depleting fossils and raising fuel costs, this pressure type kerosene stove can offer a paradigm shift towards resource conservation and sustainable energy. Shankar’s ability to gain practical insights in to the heat transfer mechanism is commendable and worth rewarding. Another innovation which I felt interesting is related to harvesting the renewable wind energy. Though the wind mills are used on farm from the last many decades, there has never been an attempt to build the structure which is sustainable and cost effective. Hussain and Darrang’s ingenious thought to use light sheet metal and bamboo posts and engineer a mechanism which can convert rotary motion to reciprocating motion is simply out of box. Encouraging such low cost and sustainable technologies on farm will eventually result in reduced input costs and increased farm incomes which has a direct bearing on the food prices.

Along side the innovation database, what caught my sight were the excerpts taken from Dr Kalam’s address on IGNITE 08 which quotes, “learning gives creativity, creativity leads to thinking, thinking provides knowledge, and knowledge makes you great”. In a couple of lines, the whole philosophy of epistemology was beautifully embedded. I believe, NIF with continued support from its network partners Honey bee network, SRISTI and GIAN, is destined to make India a nation built on innovation.

A visit by Dr. Victoria Henson-Apollonio to NAARM..

There has been one interesting development which took place recently at NAARM not so long ago and, that is visit to NAARM by Dr. Victoria Henson-Apollonio who is a senior scientist and manager of CAS IP since its creation in 2000.

Her unique background combines both scientific and academic achievement with real-life IP expertise. She has many years practical experience as a patent agent and as a technology transfer (TT) and patent specialist at the Argonne National Laboratory and as a tenured member of the faculty of the Department of Biology at Purdue University, USA. This overlap of scientific and legal skills makes her exceptionally well placed to offer advice on IP and TT issues in agriculture. A graduate from the University of Florida’s College of Agriculture (Major in Animal Science), Victoria holds a PhD in Pathology (College of Medicine; University of Florida) and is a registered U.S. Patent Agent.

She talked to us about general IP issues and CG system. It was an hour long interaction but was fruitful in more than one way as it turned out to be a motivational lecture for all us. She talked to us various facets of IP, technology transfer, some of the issues that are likely to crop up and the like. Now, that we have begun to understand basics of patents, the effects, affects and implications of what Dr. Victoria was saying was much more meaningful to us than it would have been 3-4 months back. It was very encouraging to think that we are progressing at such a good pace in our journey of IP.

Many of us were motivated to go for higher studies after what she said especially the fact that non legal professionals like us are not totally at a disadvantage when it comes to legal studies.

In the end there was a small gift exchange ceremony and photographs were clicked. Our Course director Dr Kalpana thanked Dr. Victoria and presented her a token of our gratitude. Dr. Victoria in turn had presented all of us with a box of candies which she had brought as a present for all of us.

To sum up it was a warm interaction and a very enlightening one as well. We look forward to such interactions in future also.

Getting a patent- An end or a beginning….

After studying patent law and patenting process for about a year one would expect people to think that this the final fate of an invention, and an inventor gets the reward deserved by getting a patent. But an inventor was heard saying that ““An invention can be so valuable as to be worthless to the inventor”. This gentleman though had an invention that could have turned to a gold mine for him instantly, but he failed to recognize the fact and was carried away by the conception that its only he who should use the invention to make money, that is he didn’t bother to license his invention to others in order to gain commercial benefits.

The incident I am talking about took place long ago in South California in the year 1794. This case of an inventor called Eli Whitney and one of his great innovations- The cotton Gin. He came to his invention basically by accident. He was invited to become a tutor for a wealthy South Carolina plantation owner. On his arrival in Savannah, he was casually confronted with a major problem of that period.

The green cotton they were raising had short strands with seeds firmly attached to the fiber. The fiber was valuable but only without the seeds. All plantation owners and major cotton producers faced a major, insolvable problem. The cotton plant was easy to grow and easy to harvest but the fiber was difficult to separate from the seeds. Whitney – who had never seen cotton in his life – was captivated by the land owners request to try to come with something innovative. Whitney eventually came with what is known as a “gin”. The gin was easy to make and caused the southern agricultural states to see its fortune changing overnight to become one of the richest areas in the whole country.

Whitney got his patent in 1794. What Whitney and his former host and now commercial benefactor, Miller, did not realize at the time was that smart licensing of a good invention brings a lot more gain than trying to own all the cotton gins, something that is very familiar in our times, but then again we have learned the advantages of an “open innovation”. Whitney and Miller’s charged high prices for anyone who wanted to use the invention. Because of the too high a price, competing cottoners copied Whitney’s product. Whitney found out the hard way that those who invent something valuable are destined to a life in court, particularly when the patent laws are weak and vague. Whitney had to fight in court to get his patent validated, and this led him to say: “An invention can be so valuable as to be worthless to the inventor”. He found out the hard way that marketing and licensing the patent is as valuable to an invention as the invention itself.

The greatest lesson which comes out of this incident is that a good patent of a great innovation does not always lad to success. A patent is just the beginning of what is called spinning money out of the invention. A smart move can turn your patent to an asset and a not so smart one into a white elephant.

This article has been reported from a blog posted on IPEG.

Is Invention Valuable or Worthless?

There are many examples available in the history which put forth the true picture about the patents. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patent is one such example. His patent has been considered as the single most valuable patent ever issued in the history of the world. But he never had the money, political connection and above all the business experience to make his invention a commercial success. So he had to bring his invention to Gardiner G.Hubbard, a prominent Boston attorney and entrepreneur for the practical business and legal advice. Hubbard provided him all sorts of help for marketing and licensing the patent. Hubbard made the appropriate arrangements for ownership of the patent and creation of a new company to develop it. Hubbard organized a trust that issued 5,000 shares of stock. Bell shared the stock with Thomas Watson, his assistant, Hubbard, and Thomas Sanders, another key figure making his invention to become a business success, the Bell Telephone Company.

So the question that arises here is what if he had not found anybody to make his invention a success. I think his invention might have remained worthless for long.

Information Sources in Patents - a book review

Technology explosion in the last two centuries has brought about radical changes in the way we live, interact and conduct our business. Efforts towards channeling these developments have become a discipline in its own regard and this task became more structured when the human race moved in to the information age. The macroscopic analysis of patent data has taken our understanding to an altogether new level with the synergy it derived from the advent of information technology. Patent Informatics, a spin off, which has evolved as a result of developments in the way we handle information and because of our enhanced data processing skills has become pivotal in today’s technology development and management. Even now, there are relatively few guides and manuals which cater to the needs of various stake holders like patent information analysts, business managers, policy analysts, researchers, technology managers and students, in understanding and exploring the available patent information sources. Individual databases hosted by public and private organizations always provide the necessary functional and technical information necessary for using their databases to our advantage in the form of user manuals. However, it may not be that easy to actually maintain a host of these manuals because of the vast pool of databases that are in vogue. Stephen Adams attempted to address these problems in his guide titled Information Sources in Patents. This book comes to our rescue at a right time where we are overwhelmed with information and lost in the complex yet amazing world of patents.

The book is divided in to two parts with the first half dealing with the patent processes and documentation and the second half dealing with the databases and search techniques. The first five chapters makes up the first part and the next seven chapters makes up the rest and at the end a separate chapter is dedicated to throw some light on the future developments that are likely to take place in the areas of patent systems and patent searching.

As students of Intellectual Property & Technology Management (Agriculture), we take up courses which are centered on developing search strategies, conducting FTO analysis and infringement analysis. This guide on information sources in patents is well tailored to suit our academic and research needs. This book definitely is a master piece as it serves the purpose of a sign post offering the right direction for extracting the information from the growing patent data mines. It is a holistic book, which is as much helpful to a beginner as it is to an experienced professional patent search specialist.