It is only July 20, 2021 and we’ve seen 70 patent grants so far this year. Five important patents granted today and we cover them below. Getting a patent is challenging. It means that the invention claimed is useful, new and non-obvious. In other words, our inventors have created something that never existed before.
Patents issue every two weeks on a Tuesday. This is a “bi-week.” Look at any front page of a patent and check the issue date. Before 1995, patents did not “published” in the United States while they are pending. This meant new technology caught investors and competitors by surprise on the bi-week Tuesday. Today, most patents publish 18-months after filing. This gives the public an advanced notice of what is in the pipeline. However, we file practically all our utility patents under an accelerated program called “Track 1.” Instead of a few years to issue a patent, we aim to grant them in 6-8 months from filing.
An advantage of this acceleration is that our clients come to market with new technology without alerting their competition with a published patent application that is not yet enforceable. Every bi-week, we get pretty excited about what comes out of the pipeline. Here’s what got granted today:
Medical Supply Case
Genuine First Aid International Ltd. out of Kowloon, Hong Kong received a patent for a novel medical storage case that provides quick and unique access to supplies.
Linear bi-stable compliant crank-slider-mechanism (US Pat. 11067118)
University of South Florida received a patent for surfaces that can change shape in response to externally applied forces. This allows conventional surfaces to achieve new functionality. Consequently, surfaces are precise and at lower cost. This enables a low-cost modular building system. Thus, it provides customizable degrees-of-freedom and stiffness with stability in multiple positions.
System and method for reconstructing music catalogs (US Pat. 11068535)
Symphonic Distribution Inc. received a patent to help musicians maintain their presence and prominence on music platforms. In the music industry, content owners (such as an artist or label) create catalogs of music releases. The content owners hire distributors to distribute the catalogs to digital service providers (DSPs) such as download stores or streaming services. Each distributor has its own preferred types of data and data arrangement for its catalogs. Thus, a music catalog will likely have a different representation between distributors. This invention automatically and correctly reconstructing previously released music content to ensure that DSP usage data follows the music content.
Virtual Payment Card Fraud Detection (US Pat. 11068898)
Vpay, Inc. (Plano, Texas) developed a system to mitigate draft in virtual payment card transactions. The system stores data collected from a settlement transaction. This includes a merchant category code, a tax identification number, a merchant identification and an IP address of the processing terminal. Accordingly, subsequent payments from the same payor to the same payee are verified against the previous settlement transaction data to minimize the possibility of fraud.
VoLTE circuit switch voice and SMS interworking (US Pat. 11070596)
Syniverse Technologies, LLC (Tampa, FL) was granted a patent on telecommunications. Specifically, the technology relates to interworking of voice over long-term evolution (VoLTE) and circuit-switched (CS) voice and short message service (SMS) in a roaming environment.
Congratulations
The patents granted today are just five of the seventy we’ve seen so far in 2021. Since our founding, we are approaching nearly 1,900 United States patent grants for Smith & Hopen. The pace does not seem to be slowing. Patents promote progress. Accordingly, we celebrate the spirit of innovation and are honored to work with such outstanding companies and inventors.
