COVID-19 Patent Gray Area
FedInvent Taxpayer-Funded Patent Applications for December 2, 2021
Hello from FedInvent,
On Thursday, December 2, 2021, the Patent Office published 9,493 pre-grant patent applications. Two hundred thirty-one (231) benefitted from taxpayer funding. A big week for new applications.
Analyzing this week's patent applications was a bit of a challenge. First, 231 applications are a lot of applications. New funding entities appeared this week. The big four funding entities — HHS, DOD, DOE, NSF — had 158 separate citations of funding sources. This week's patent applications present another look at policy-driven science and the federal innovation landscape.
Here are the links to the data. The FedInvent Patent Application Report is here. You can browse the patent application details by federal department here.
There are several food-related patent applications in the pool. On the human sexuality front, there is a new unisex non-hormonal method of birth control and a vaccine for herpes simplex. Inventors from the University of Pittsburg invented a new medical device that uses electrical stimulation of the foot to treat urological and gastrointestinal disorders. The Chan-Zuckerburg Biohub and Stanford are the applicants for a new invention measuring the fluorescence of biological material — DNA, RNA, and cells.
Here are a few of the highlights from Thursday's pool of federally funded patent applications:
The Gray Area — Two More COVID Inventions
From the Land of the Diner
Smartphone Chewing App
The COVID-19 Face Mask
The Scofflaws
And Patent Applications By the Number
The Gray Area - Two More COVID Inventions
Patent applications from the companies that run federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) and federal labs can be hard to analyze. For example, figuring out which patents assigned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are the work of researchers at the MIT Lincoln Labs, a DOD University Affiliated Research Center, requires following the grants and contracts back to work for DOD.
There is a similar analytical challenge with MITRE and Battelle patents and patent applications. Federal contracts fund both organizations. MITRE and Battelle both run FFRDCs for the federal government. Patents and patent applications assigned to these firms with and without government interest statements appear weekly. While some of these patent documents don't indicate direct federal funding of the investigators and scientists, others tilt in the federal funding direction.
This week there were two COVID-19-related patent applications from Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, that don't have government interest statements but seem likely to have had taxpayer funding:
20210373019 — "Systems and Processes To Screen for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) of 2019 (COVID-19)."
20210373020 — "Systems and Processes To Screen for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) of 2019 (COVID-19)."
The FedInvent team investigated. Should this patent application be classified as FedInvent taxpayer-funded? Here is what we found.
Battelle Memorial Institute is working with NIAID and Moderna on COVID-19 related research and development. The inventors cite the funding in their publications, but the patent application doesn't have a government interest statement.
mRNA-1273 is the pharmaceutical identification for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Moderna received funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, two of the centers that make up the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Melicia Gainey is the first-named inventor on both of these patent applications. She works for the Division of National Security at Battelle. An article posted at Science Direct cites her as a researcher working on an NIH contract.
A May 2021 Science Direct article, "A preliminary report of a randomized controlled phase 2 trial of the safety and immunogenicity of mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine," cites federal funding by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the acknowledgments section:
"We thank the participants in the study and members of the mRNA-1273 study team (Supplementary material) for their dedication and contributions to the trial. We also acknowledge our clinical team colleagues at PPD for working alongside us on this Phase 2 study and contributions from colleagues at the PPD Labs (Richmond and Kentucky) in the development of the binding antibody assay. From Battelle, we would like to acknowledge Jennifer Garver, Research Scientist, Melicia Gainey, Principal Research Scientist, and Amy Allen, Researcher. We thank Dr. Karen Slobod for study management, and Joanne E Tomassini for manuscript writing, funded by Moderna, Inc. The development of the Microneutralization assay used in this project was funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under NIAID's Preclinical Services Contract No. HHSN272201800013I/75N93020F00002"
A Battelle press release about its COVID-19 work also cited the same NIH contract:
"This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. HHSN272201800013I / Task Order No. 75N93020F00002 / TO 5." (This covers tasks 2 to 5.)
There are government contracts floating around these two applications but no government interest statement — the gray area.
The COVID-19 Face Mask
A scientist at Vanderbilt University presents a COVID-19 surveillance technique (20210371905). An insert is added to the protective face masks of essential workers. At the end of each shift, the insert is removed and tested for COVID-19. If the test comes back positive, additional follow-up and contact tracing can be done to identify workers who need treatment or need to be quarantined.
From the Land of the Diner
Two scientists from New Jersey, where the diner is king and open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, claim a novel neuroprotective composition containing caffeine, a compound of caffeine and trypamide, compounds found in coffee. (Tryptamide is an orally active anti-inflammatory and analgesic agent.)
Earlier research showed that the risk of Parkinson's disease among men routinely consuming a daily intake of 2–3 cups of coffee is nearly half that of men who do not consume caffeine. There is a new compound to bring the benefits of coffee to protect patients from neurologic diseases like Parkinson's, dementia, and Alzheimer’s without having to hit the Somerset Diner, where the late-night scrambled eggs are good and they give Rutgers students a 10% discount.
Smartphone Chewing App
One of the published applications is from researchers at the University of Alabama. They invented an app, the technical kind, 20210369187, "Non-Contact Chewing Sensor and Portion Estimator." The invention is for determining when and how long a user is eating. The chewing sensor can include an eye gaze-aligned camera and other sensors used to estimate portion sizes or amounts of foods being eaten. Geez, is there no privacy left? The inventors are also working with a multispectral camera used to collect a dataset of images of untreated lettuce leaves or leaves treated with vinegar, oil, or a combination of these. NIH funded this work. Dr. Sazonov is the recipient of a number of grants from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
The Scofflaws Are Back
Bayh-Dole scofflaws are the assignee on four of Thursday's patent applications. Bayh-Dole scofflaws are entities that do not provide the statutorily required funding information in their government interest statement. The four applications are DOD-focused. Unlike the Battelle Memorial Institute gray area applications discussed above, we at least have something to indicate government funding.
The General Electric patent application, 20210372290, contains the standard Raytheon Bayh-Dole scofflaw language, "This invention was made with United States Government support. The Government has certain rights in this invention." More turbine engines for an aircraft. GE is a subcontractor providing engines to Raytheon.
Raytheon's application for a Small Body Dynamics invention is classified as explosives using fins spread or deployed after launch, e.g., after leaving the barrel to stabilize a missile. Raytheon is the prime contractor on the Air Force's Small Diameter Bomb program. Raytheon's website discusses its program, "The StormBreaker bomb is a precision-guided weapon that can strike a target approximately 72.42km away. The StormBreaker bomb is cleared for integration on the F-15E Strike Eagle jets. The Stormbreaker is developed by Raytheon, a weapons manufacturer based in the US." This application is probably funded by the Air Force.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation's application, 20210373206, is for a graphene and carbon nanotube invention. The inventors on this application are from California. They work near Northrup Grumman's South Bay facility. The company's website says the Northrop Grumman facility is focused on "advanced aircraft design, research, and technology, advanced weapons design, spacecraft manufacturing, military satellite communications systems development, precision sensors, space instrument design, ground stations development, directed energy and orbiting space platforms."
The fourth Bayh-Dole scofflaw application is also from Northrop Grumman (20210375713). This application covers a superconducting device for semiconductors. We'll assign this one to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Air Force Research Lab.
Technology For Mitigating The Impact of Climate Change
Four of Thursday's published patent applications contained Y CPC symbols indicating that the Patent Office considers these inventions useful in addressing climate change. But, once again, we are perplexed. USPTO identified only four patent applications as climate change-related. Yet, without trying, we identified at least 17 applications that would be useful in reducing greenhouse emissions, improving battery technology, and solar power. Novel battery technology accounts for eight of the FedInvent list of green tech patent applications.
Applications By The Number
On Thursday, December 2, 2021, the Patent Office published 9,493 pre-grant patent applications. Two hundred thirty-one (231) benefitted from taxpayer funding. Here is how the numbers came out this week:
Two hundred twenty (220) patent applications have Government Interest Statements.
Forty-six (46) have an applicant or an assignee that is a government agency.
The 231 applications have 256 department-level funding citations.
These applications are the work of 736 inventors.
The 723 American inventors come from 38 states and the District of Columbia.
Thirteen (13) foreign inventors come from ten countries.
There are 142 applications (61%) where at least one assignee is a college or university, the HERD.
A Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDCs) is the assignee or applicant on sixteen (16) applications.
A federal department is the assignee on 22 patents. One of these patent applications is assigned to a State Government entity. (State and local government assignees in the government interest statement are another Bayh-Dole gray area.)
Patent Application Count By Department
The Health Complex
The table below shows the Department of Health and Human Services count of funding citations.
The Thanksgiving Patent Applications
There was no FedInvent newsletter on Thanksgiving, but we created the FedInvent Report with Thursday's applications for our readers. On Thursday, November 25, 2021, Thanksgiving Day, the Patent Office published 7,819 pre-grant patent applications. One hundred fifty-six (156) benefitted from taxpayer funding. You can access the FedInvent Patent Application for November 25, 2021, here.
Before We Go
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We'll see you later this week with the FedInvent report on Thursday's published pre-grant patent applications and the latest on taxpayer-funded patents, and the latest on the federal innovation ecosphere.
The FedInvent Team
FedInvent tells the stories of inventors, investigators, and innovators. Wayfinder Digital's FedInvent Project follows the federal innovation ecosphere, taxpayer money, and the inventions it pays for.
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