Test your patent-searching skills!
The esp@cenet quiz is an exercise proposed to our readers. Its aim is to show that patent searching can be an exciting quest, yielding relevant results in almost all technical fields.
New quiz: A more efficient Wind Generator
Recently, one could read:
"A Japanese manufacturer in Akita Prefecture says it has developed a bladeless wind generator that is twice as efficient as conventional turbines. Mekaro Akita says it uses the "Magnus effect" to rotate the unit, which can generate 16,000 kWh a year in wind speeds of 6 m/sec. Officials want the unit on the market in two years for a cost of US$92,000."
Imagine you are this company and you want to try to retrieve patents covering similar devices by accessing esp@cenet®.
Last Quiz: Glasses preventing sea sickness
The glasses depicted in this picture are designed to help you fight sea sickness. They contain a small floating bar to create an artificial horizon. This gives the eye permanent information on the position of the horizon, and consequently helps to prevent sea sickness. Try to retrieve the patent covering this invention and the countries for which protection has been sought.
Solution to the last quiz
Step one: assuming that this product is covered by one specific patent, one should define the concepts best covering the invention - common technical features that may be found in patents relating to the subject - and per concept, define the most comprehensive set of synonyms covering it
In this case, the following concepts - groups of synonyms covering one aspect - can be used:
- glasses
- horizon, horizontal*
- seasick, seasickness, nausea
None of the possible combinations using these words yield any relevant patents.
The right strategy is to modify the set of concepts to be combined or to adopt another search approach. In this case, we will replace the synonyms used for one concept by a classification symbol covering the same concept.
To do so for glasses, you should enter the word glasses in the classification search screen of esp@cenet®, which yields the following results.
Browsing through the classification definitions, it appears that G02C corresponds to the glasses concept: SPECTACLES; SUNGLASSES OR GOGGLES INSOFAR AS THEY HAVE THE SAME FEATURES AS SPECTACLES
Restarting the search using the classification symbol G02C combined with horizon* yields the following list.
In which you can detect: US5956114 Artificial horizon spectacles.
Searching for the name of the inventor (Philippe Tassier) in Google provides you with the following list.
From this list you can retrieve the site of the product depicted in the picture:
www.optic-tempest.com
At this stage of the search you can be pretty sure of having found the patent covering these special glasses.
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