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New Quiz
The moving alarm clock
When the alarm clock goes off and the snooze button is pressed, this
innovative alarm clock will move away. Minutes later, when the alarm sounds
again, the sleeper must get up out of bed and search for it to stop it. This
ensures that the person is fully awake before turning it off. Try to find
patents covering this innovative alarm clock.
Photo credit: Gauri Nanda, Media Lab. MIT
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Solution to previous quiz
Electric cars are silent
Electric cars are coming and they are quieter than combustion
vehicles. Many people cross the street without looking carefully when they do
not hear anything. When you only have electrical cars, this may cause a
problem. Why not have cars emit noise to prevent this type of accident? Try
finding patents covering this concept.
Solution
Step one: To find similar patents, identify
the most pertinent aspects of the invention -- common technical features that
may be found in related patents -- and for each aspect, define a comprehensive
set of synonyms. This set of synonyms can then be combined as keywords in the
patent database.
In this case, the following concepts -- groups of synonyms covering
the different aspects of the invention -- can be defined:
- nois*
- electric*
- car* vehic*
- pedestrian*
- accident, injur*
The combination nois* vehic* electric* pedes* yields a
preliminary
list containing some good documents.
Warning device for low-noise vehicle,
JP2005343360
Running noise generator for running vehicle,
JP2005253236
Sound generating device and automobile,
JP2004136831
Additionally, searching the title field for the words noise
electric* car* yields this additional interesting patent document:
Apparatus generating sound for electric car,
US5517173
Usually we continue searching using classification symbols assigned
to the most relevant documents. In this case, electrical vehicles could be
covered by the B60L symbol. A quick search does not really yield many more
documents. Deepening the search would be a must if this search has financial
implications for your organisation: freedom to operate or a prior art search
before filing a patent.
A quick search on the Internet produces some interesting references
showing that issues do arise from silent electric cars, for blind people for
instance:
http://www.nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/bm/bm05/bm0506/bm050605.htm
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/03/are_silent_hybr.php
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