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FedInvent Portfolio Taxpayer-Funded Patents for March 24, 2022
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This Thursday, March 24, 2022, USPTO published 197 taxpayer-funded new pre-grant patent applications.
The FedInvent Report is available here. If you prefer to browse by department, start here.
The E-Nose Knows
The last four decades have delivered a lot of research on olfactory electronic systems or electronic noses (e-noses). This week a new e-nose will be sniffing around your refrigerator.
The e-nose has been used in defense and law enforcement applications. These thin-film gas sensors have been used to "assess time-dependent chemical and biological markers in the hope of gaining a better understanding of the decay process in cadavers." The Department of Justice funded research to help determine a more accurate time of death in criminal investigations using e-nose sensors. E-nose sensors have also been used to detect chemicals and the presence of munitions and land mines. E-nose type sensors are being developed to monitor mercury, natural gas, carbon monoxide, petrochemicals, and even whiskey and wine.
The latest taxpayer-funded e-nose invention will determine if your food and beverages are spoiled or expired. Inventors from the Oak Ridge National Lab in Knoxville, Tennessee, had the following three interrelated "electronic nose" patent applications published on Thursday.
20220091081, "Aroma Detection systems for Food and Beverage and Conversion of Detected Aromas to Natural Language Descriptors."
20220091083, "Chemical Detection System With at Least One Electronic Nose."
20220088876, "Additive Manufacturing System With at Least One Electronic Nose."
The Oak Ridge National Lab patent application notes that "aromas are an important characteristic of all-natural and manufactured products and their manufacturing and the life of products. Aromas may be a sign of health, freshness of food or beverages, quality of manufactured materials. Aromas are also a sign of danger or imminent threat. Imminent threats can come in many forms. For example, the smell tells you that there is a natural gas leak nearby. The aroma also wafts out of the three-week-old milk container that tells you not to take a swig or pore it on your Cheerios.
A lot is going on here. Here are a few of the features of the e-nose food safety application.
The trio of applications presents ways to use the e-nose to detect spoiled or about to be spoiled food using the aroma. It uses the e-nose and a collection of data points on food expiration, some of which can be obtained over the internet from reliable sources like the Food and Drug Administration.
A touch panel can display the foods the sensors have been trained to recognize. "One-touch button may be for milk and another for food, such as beef and salmon. The touch panel may display a list of food or beverage items that the sensor system has been trained and tested on. Another option is for the user to manually enter the type of food or beverage by spelling out the item's name.
The invention's identification scanner and camera system may scan an identification code on the food or beverage package. The invention may use a bar code scanner, a QR code scanner, or a UPC scanner. The identification code may convey the type of food or beverage and other manufacturing information to the sensor system, including the recommended expiration date and packaged date.
The frequency of acquiring the data points about the food items may depend on the type of food or beverage and how quickly the item deteriorates and spoils. Food and beverages with long shelf life or expiration dates far into the future would have less frequent data collection time frames, for example, once a week. On the other hand, products with short shelf lives or items that expire quickly may be scanned daily or even twice a day.
The claims note that the device can be attached to the wall or door of the refrigerator.
And no modern data collecting and analyzing invention would be complete without a wireless internet connection for collecting and exchanging data. Throw in a bit of machine learning to train the sensors on the foods and beverage aromas the e-nose will be investigating, and your refrigerator-based e-nose is ready to go.
A parallel patent application that enables the technology to scan your refrigerator to use the e-nose sensors and camera apparatus to find foods that have been recalled would be an excellent addition. It beats finding out three weeks after the recall was issued that you just ate the bag of salad greens that might have listeria.
Facing Heat
Assessing a person's thermal comfort is a challenge. Just ask people who live together. Inventors at the University of Michigan are using "a network of one or more thermographic cameras and one or more red, green, and blue depth (RGB-D) sensors to extract facial skin temperatures. Then, the facial skin temperature data is used to control the temperature in places people hang out.
We usually write about biometrics, facial recognition software, cameras, and sensors for identity management and security applications. These inventors have expanded the biometric universe to use facial temperatures sensors for controlling the environment in your "built space."
The sensors are used to determine the occupants of "a built space" — residences, commercial buildings, workplace offices and conference rooms, hospitals and nursing homes, and classrooms. A built space may also be a space within a vehicle such as a passenger compartment in an automobile, a cockpit in an airplane, and a passenger-carrying area in a train. Maybe a spaceship, our addition.
Once the invention finds the faces and measures their temperatures, it estimates the thermal comfort needed in the space. "The heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) directed to the built space can be controlled based in part or more upon the estimations in order to ultimately improve thermal comfort for the occupant(s) and minimize energy consumption by the HVAC system."
The National Science Foundation, Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) Division funded the work that led to this patent application. The inventors' application was published as 20220090811, "Detecting Presence and Estimating Thermal Comfort of One or More Human Occupants in a Built Space in Realtime Using One or More Thermographic Cameras and One or More RGB-D Sensors,"
CBET supports innovative research and education in chemical engineering, biotechnology, bioengineering, and environmental engineering, and in areas that involve the transformation and transport of matter and energy by chemical, thermal, or mechanical means.
On the first reading of this patent application, the reaction was, "not in my house.' But a deeper, less personal privacy biased read revealed that this could be a useful invention, especially in hospitals, nursing homes, other residential facilities, and in a host of vehicle spaces - planes, trains, and automobiles.
This patent application was filed in January 2020, two months before the COVID-19 lockdowns and mask mandates popped up. Will this technology work on humans wearing masks?
A COVID Trio
This week there are three new patent applications for inventions related to COVID.
The first, 20220087930, "SARS-COV-2 Subunit Vaccine and Microneedles Array Delivery System," is the work of three inventors at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) funded this research and development.
The second, 20220087977, "Methods of the Prevention or Treatment of Cytokine Storm." Cytokine storm is another one of the phrases that most people were not familiar with pre-COVID pandemic. A cytokine storm or surge is an immune reaction to cellular stress, acute or chronic injury, disease, infection, or treatment. It is the systemic expression of a vigorous immune system resulting in the release of up to 150 (or more) inflammatory mediators (e.g., cytokines, chemokines, oxygen-free radicals, and coagulation factors). A new virus your body hasn't seen before invades, and your immune system floods the zone to fight it off. Unfortunately, a cytokine storm is an over-enthusiastic reaction that can harm your body and organs.
This invention is the work of six inventors. Three inventors are from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Two inventors are from the University of California, UC Davis, The Dean of the Emory University School of Medicine, rounds out the team. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) funded their work.
The third invention, publication number 20220088180, "Immunogenic Compositions and Use Thereof," is the product of a collaboration between four institutions — The Broad Institute, Harvard College, General Hospital aka Mass General Brigham Hospital, and the Boston University — and nine inventors. This research was funded by a cooperative research agreement between the Broad Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Bayh-Dole Scofflaws
There is only one Bayh-Dole scofflaw this week. General Electric's patent application 20220090505, "Airfoil Having Cavity Insert To Separate Flow." This application is for gas turbine engine technology and jet propulsion technology. GE holds a $1.6 billion contract with the Air Force and supplies engines to other defense contractors. GE also has contracts with NavAir. So we'll add this one to the "funded by DOD" list of taxpayer-funded patent applications.
Patent Applications By The Numbers
On March 24, 2022, the US Patent Office published 8,431 pre-grant patent applications, 197 benefitted from taxpayer funding. Here is how things broke down on Thursday.
One hundred eighty-eight (188) patent applications have Government Interest Statements.
Twenty-six (26) applications have an applicant or an assignee that is a government agency.
A federal department is the only assignee on 16 patent applications.
The 197 new patent applications have 231 department-level funding citations.
These applications are the work of 673 inventors.
The 637 American inventors come from 37 states and the District of Columbia.
The 36 foreign inventors come from 13 countries.
This week there are four (4) foreign inventors from China.
There are 140 patent applications (71%) where at least one assignee is a college or university, the HERD.
Nineteen (19) patent applications resulted from the collaboration between two or more universities.
Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) have ten (10) published patent applications.
There is one patent application with a Y CPC symbol indicating that the invention may be useful in mitigating the impact of climate change.
The Big Three
California got knocked out of its number one position this week.
This week's top three states are:
Massachusetts had 32 first-named inventors and 111 total inventors.
California had 28 first-named inventors and 90 total inventors.
Maryland had 13 first-named inventors and 46 total inventors.
The inventors from the top three states account for 39% of the inventors on the week's published patent applications.
Count By Department
Health Complex This Week
The Health Complex section of the FedInvent Report presents new patent applications from the Department of Health and Human Services and its parts. Each week the Health Complex has the highest number of published pre-grant taxpayer-funded patent applications.
Health Complex Year To Date
The Health Complex's inventors have included individual funding citations on the pre-grant patent applications published since the beginning of 2022. You can see the details here.
Messages from Ukraine
We've also been updating our Messages from Ukraine page with the latest news. The latest messages chronicle the destruction of the Kuindzhi Art Museum, where the original works of Arkhip Kuindzhi and Ivan Aivazovsky were stored. Arkhip Kuindzhi was born in Mariupol in 1842. Arkhip Kuindzhi earned a following in Ukraine and Russia for his masterly use of light and color. Early in his career, he was associated with the influential 19th-century Russian realist group known as the Wanderers. He parted ways with the painters to pursue his vibrant landscapes. The painting here, called Red Sunset on the Dnieper (1905–8), is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection in New York.
We'll be back with the March 29, 2022, FedInvent portfolio patents and March 31, 2022 patent applications next week. We'll also publish a Q1 round-up on taxpayer-funded patents this year.
Please let us know if you have questions on FedInvent or if there are topics you'd like us to explore.
Thank you for reading FedInvent.
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. FedInvent is a work in progress. Please reach out if you have questions or suggestions. You can reach us at info@wayfinder.digital.