COVID, The Grid and The Soldier of the Future
FedInvent Patent Applications Report for December 16, 2021
Hello from FedInvent,
On Thursday, December 16, 2021, the Patent Office published 6,798 pre-grant patent applications. One hundred sixty-six (166) benefitted from taxpayer funding.
Sorry We're Late
Once again, executing our FedInvent analytics fell victim to information supply chain issues. This time USPTO had to take down its external systems for 12 hours for some "unexpected maintenance," aka we're afraid we're about to be hacked. Twelve hours was the time in the press release. Our experience was that the outage was longer.) FedInvent uses these external systems for downloading the patent and application data files. It's also where we do some of our research.
Like the rest of the federal government, the Patent Office got hit by the zero-day vulnerability called Log4j. The Log4j problem is one of the worst in years. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that he's "extraordinarily concerned" about a newly revealed critical flaw in widely used software that is roiling the internet that caused the US Patent and Trademark Office to temporarily shut down external access to its computer systems.
Commentary in the Beltway cybersecurity community was that a lot of the federal agencies got a late start on fixing this major flaw because, well, they took the weekend off." This apparently was not the case at the Pentagon or the Air Force where they never take the weekend off.
The FedInvent team worked on a systems integration project for PTO's outsourced patent classification contractor in a previous life. The physical security at the facility was extraordinary. If you worked on chemical inventions and you walked into the next area over to talk to a colleague doing medical device classification, your badge would trigger the red lights in the ceiling to flash, indicating stranger danger—no sharing of information other than on a need to know basis.
There was a similar level of concern on the cybersecurity aspects of the systems process for the patents. Everyone was worried about the usual portfolio of cybersecurity risks — bad actors, insider threats, zero-day vulnerabilities. There was a more serious concern. It would be a disaster if a breach resulted in some of the country's most important intellectual property being stolen. Then add having the contractor's name, and ours, on the front page of the Washington Post and New York Times, "Federal contractor enables hackers to steal some of America's most important intellectual property." The security engineers didn't take the weekends off.
If we had a choice between spending money on filing patent applications in docx format or upgrading the Pentagon's security, we'd go with the Pentagon. Perhaps a USPTO consultation with the folks at NSA is in order.
Back to the patent application data…
The FedInvent Patent Application Report is here. You can browse the patent application details by federal department here.
Here are a few highlights from Thursday’s published applications.
COVID-Related Patent Applications
On Thursday, the Patent Office published four pre-grant taxpayer-funded patent applications focused on therapeutics and vaccines to combat COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2).
The patent office published an application from Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Inc. for its SARS-COV-2 vaccines. The application covers their approach for "treating and/or preventing a coronavirus (e.g., Wuhan coronavirus (2019-nCoV; SARS-CoV-2))." We haven't seen the virus called the Wuhan coronavirus in a while. We're all focused on Delta and Omicron.
AbCellera Biologics Inc. and the Department of Health and Human Services are the assignees on an application for "Anti-Coronavirus Antibodies." AbCellera is a Vancouver, British Columbia-based biotechnology firm researching and developing human antibodies. The company is best known for its leading role in the Pandemic Prevention Platform, DARPA's Biological Technologies Office project.
The New Jersey Institute of Technology applies self-assembling peptides (SAP) that self-assemble atop COVID-19 for immune destruction and act as a functional COVID-19 opsonin. These Designer Peptide Oposins aid in the destruction of the coronavirus.
The fourth published application is a Naval Research Laboratory application for a method of "Detection of Host Protein Cleavage By Group IV Viral Proteases." The inventors are Dr. Patricia Legler, a biologist from the NRL Center for Bio/Molecular Science and Engineering (CBMSE); Dr. Elaine Morazzani, a molecular virologist from General Dynamics Information Technology; and Dr. Pamela Glass, the Chief of the Biosafety Office at US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
The Moderna NIH Patent Saga Takes An Interesting Turn
This week there was a new twist in the Moderna National Institutes of Health (NIH) patent saga. NIH and Moderna are in the midst of a dispute over the inventors that discovered the genetic sequence for the mRNA that created the spike protein used to trigger the immune response in the Moderna COVID vaccination. The Wall Street Journal reported that Moderna dropped the patent application "to allow more time for discussions with the NIH" aimed at an amicable resolution. Other news outlets reported that Moderna "halted its patent."
We weren't sure what "dropped" or "halted" meant. Neither of the two terms is part of the usual patent argot, so we did the usual digging around to figure out what is going on on the patent prosecution front.
According to the Patent Office, Moderna received a Notice of Allowance on its patent application on August 27, 2021. A Notice of Allowance means USPTO granted the patent and was waiting for Moderna to pay the issue fee. Issue fee is due three months from the date of the Notice of Allowance. Moderna didn't pay the issuance fee. So USPTO declared the patent application abandoned on December 14, 2021. (An interesting tactic.) So, for now, Moderna's invention becomes a widely known trade secret until NIH and Moderna agree on what's next. Stay tuned.
The Best of the Rest
Here are a few more highlights from the latest published patent applications.
Watching the Smart Grid
One of the pressing issues for successfully upgrading the US power grid and efficiently integrating a diverse portfolio of energy-generating technology, not to mention all of those EV chargers, is monitoring and improving the grid's power distribution. It gets even more challenging when keeping track of two-way traffic on and off the grid. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory applied for a patent focused on solving this problem. Their latest patent application is for technology that allows system engineers and operators to relate sensor-measurement information (e.g., voltages, currents, power flows, and phase angles) to the grid state and determine the distribution grid's operating status. The Lab invented better tools for figuring out what's happening on the soon-to-be-new and improved grid.
An Aircraft With a Gas Turbine Engine
Raytheon Technologies Company's application for a "Gas Turbine Engine Inlet Wall Design," which isn't a design patent, is for a blended wing aircraft including a blended wing fuselage and at least one embedded gas turbine engine in the fuselage. We liked the drawing. NASA funded this work.
We’re Going to MARS!
NASA's application for an "Aerospace Vehicle Entry Flightpath Control" is a guidance and control system for aerospace entry vehicles. This is one of the more interesting space-related patent applications we've read in a while. The application notes,
Many state-of-the-art hypersonic atmospheric entry vehicles return to Earth unguided, elevating the cost and risk of vehicle recovery and limiting the types of payloads that can be flown. The need for precision landing of high mass payloads on Mars or returning sensitive samples from other planetary bodies to specific locations on Earth is driving the development of an innovative NASA technology called a Deployable Entry Vehicle (DEV), capable of being folded and stowed.
Treating Parkinson’s Disease
Two published applications deal with different aspects of treating Parkinson's Disease.
In the December 2nd newsletter, we wrote about a published patent application for a pharmaceutical-grade neuroprotective caffeine compound for helping treat Parkinson's disease. At the time, we wrote, "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." In an outbreak of political correctness, we didn't add that men who smoked and drank coffee also had lower rates of Parkinson's diagnosis. The cigarette-smoking coffee-drinking people may have been on to something?
This week a new application from inventors at Howard University, "Method for Treating or Mitigating Parkinson's disease Using Nicotine Inhaler or Nicotine Nasal Spray," was published. The application explains that nicotine's primary targets are nicotinic receptors that are widely distributed in the central nervous system. These receptors have been directly implicated in the reward pathway and addiction to nicotine. Nicotine also has a variety of central functions such as cognitive and attention processes, pain, mood regulation, and neuronal plasticity. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) funded this work. NIH has articles all over its websites on nicotine addiction. It looks like NIAAA and NIH funded research that may lead to the beneficial use of an addictive stimulant.
The second Parkinson's related application is from Stanford University. This application uses 3D video technology to estimate a patient's disease-related gait impairment severity using the MDS-UPDRS. Movement Disorder Society (MDS) Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) is a commonly used tool to measure progression in patients with Parkinson's disease. The MDS-UPDRS gait test has a participant walk approximately 10 meters away from and toward an examiner. By observation, trained specialists assess the participant's posture with respect to movement and balance (e.g., stride amplitude/speed, the height of foot lift, heel strike during walking, turning, and arm swing). The score can range from 0 indicating no motor impairments, to 4 for patients unable to move independently. This new technology automates the assessment. The process to use a trained temporal convolutional neural network (TCNN) on the sequence of 3D poses to quantify movement-linked disease markers. This process will help enable a more accurate diagnosis with each assessment and over time.
A Warrior Web for the Soldier of Future
This week we found another cyborg invention. A Cyborg is a person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body. Here it isn't built into the body. It's worn on the outside.
SRI International, a defense contractor, is the assignee on published patent 20210387327, "Exosuit System." The invention is a flexible exosuit that can be configured to augment the physical strength or endurance of the wearer. The flexible exosuit (alternatively referred to as an exosuit, a WarriorWeb, a strength suit, or a programmable body augmentation system) is configured to be worn by a wearer and apply forces to the wearer, among other functions, to enable various physical activities of the wearer.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Department of the Army (DOA) Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) Army Research Laboratory (CCDC ARL) funded this research. The soldier of the future is here.
Applications By The Numbers
On Thursday, December 16, 2021, the Patent Office published 6,798 pre-grant patent applications. One hundred sixty-six (166) benefitted from taxpayer funding. Here is how the numbers came out this week:
One hundred sixty (160) patent applications have Government Interest Statements.
Thirty-six (36) have an applicant or an assignee that is a government agency.
The 166 applications have 195 department-level funding citations.
These applications are the work of 595 inventors.
The 564 American inventors come from 37 states and the District of Columbia.
The Top Three States This Week:
California
Massachusetts
Maryland
Thirty-one (31) inventors are from 10 countries.
There are 105 applications (63%) 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 thirteen applications.
A federal department is an assignee on 21 patents.
There are two Bayh-Dole scofflaws — Carnegie Mellon University and Frontier Diagnostics, LLC. Both applications are healthcare-related. This is an unusual pair of scofflaws.
Patent Application Count By Department
The Health Complex
The table below shows the Department of Health and Human Services count of funding citations found in Thursday's pre-grant published patents.
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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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