FFRDC Patents Are Non-Obvious
FedInvent Patent Application Newsletter February 10, 2022
Hello from FedInvent,
This week the US patent office published 7,535 pre-grant patent applications. One hundred seventy-six (176) benefitted from taxpayer funding.
The 2022 count of taxpayer-funded patent applications reached 1,032 on Thursday.
Here are the links to the data. The FedInvent Report is here. If you like to browse by department, start here. Or just hit the big button below.
We've been engrossed in a sea of patent data. Here is what's going on.
Stroll Down Memory Lane
We've been working on consolidating all of the FedInvent portfolio patents and patent applications for 2021. We've identified 9,225 pre-grant patent applications published in 2021 that we've added to the FedInvent portfolio of taxpayer-funded patents and patent applications.
Data on patent applications is messy. At the moment, we're classifying patent applications in the gray area. We're working on a few of the pesky issues.
Suppose the applicant for a patent is a group of inventors from a university, and the grant cited as funding went to the university as the research institution. Should it be classified as a Higher Education R&D (HERD) patent? (Yes.)
What do we do with patent applications that are published more than once? As a rule, we add each publication occurrence to our FedInvent Portfolio.
We dig up the earlier publication if a taxpayer-funded patent application has more than one publication number and date. So now we have an older publication with no government interest statement and a more recent publication that has a government interest statement. FedInvent keeps a link to the older patent or patent application. We're working on how to best represent these documents in the FedInvent portfolio.
We find patents where the inventor is or was a federal employee, but there is no government interest statement, and the agency name isn't in the assignment or applicant data. So what do we do with the original patent application with no government interest statement? We don't want to ignore them. The disputed Moderna patent application had government employee inventors but no government interest statement. A patent document like this is an antenna-raising grey area document. We add them to our watch list.
We are working on all of the business rules on what goes into the FedInvent portfolio now that we have a full year of patents and applications. We'll publish the rules as part of the FedInvent 2021 Innovation Report. Please stay tuned,
Finding FFRDC Patents Is Non-Obvious
This week there are 20 patent applications from Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs). Finding new applications and patents from FFRDCs is non-obvious.
Patents that come from FFRDCs — National Laboratories and DOD's University Affiliated Research Centers — are usually assigned to the entity that holds the contract to operate the lab on behalf of the government. Because of this assignee convention, it's not obvious that the patent application came from an FFRDC, as the lab name isn't on the document.
We are making it easier for our readers to see what work is coming from FFRDCs. To do this, we are changing the FedInvent Report. First, we added the FFRDC data to the Count By Department and the Patent Applications By Department sections of the FedInvent Report. Next, we've added a section on the FedInvent Report Details page that presents all of the FFRDC patents or patent applications in one section. You can access it here. Then we upgraded the Funded By section for each application panel to add more FFRDC specific information. The image below shows how the panel funding information looked before and after the update.
The weekly count is up-to-date and accurate. The year-to-date information isn't complete yet, hence the blank spots in the year-to-date columns. (We're working on it.)
What We Learned This Week
Federally-funded patents are loaded with interesting facts on American life. We assume they are facts because it's bad form to lie on a patent application. Inventors do a good job presenting the problem they are solving using statistics. Here are some of what we've learned so far.
From 20220040309, "Compositions with Permeation Enhancers for Drug Delivery" — Twelve to 16 million physician visits per year in the United States are attributed to otitis media (OM), ear infection, making it the most common specifically treated childhood disease. Acute OM (AOM) has a prevalence of 90% within the first five years of life, and 90-95% of all US children have at least one documented middle ear effusion by age 2.
From 20220040349 "Antiviral Methods and Compositions" — The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the novel coronavirus outbreak of 2019 to be a global pandemic. To date, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected more than 15 million people globally and claimed more than a half-million lives. Although several vaccines have been developed that are very effective against SARS-CoV-2, a strong division has arisen between pro-vaccination activists who are enthusiastic about the several vaccines that are >90% effective, and a significant component of the world population that are strongly anti-vaccination and resistant to appeals to take the vaccine. Although a high percentage of the world population has taken the vaccine, it appears that getting a sufficient fraction to be vaccinated and thus create "herd" immunity is likely impossible for the current SARS-CoV-2 and future viral pathogens. Today's numbers are 413,746,208 cases and 5,827,947 according to the Johns Hopkins CORONAVIRUS RESOURCE CENTER.
From 20220040410 "Needle-Free Intradermal Injection Device" — The advantages of needle-free injection devices have been recognized for some time. Some of the advantages of needle-free devices and methods include the absence of a needle which can intimidate a patient and also present a hazard to healthcare workers. (True but we're numb from seeing so many needles going into arms in all these COVID-19 vaccination news stories.)
Looks scary.
Working Dogs Need Peace and Quiet
This week we learned about hearing and military working dogs.
Military working dogs (MWDs) are vulnerable to severe hearing impairment due to the auditory assault caused during combat and non-combat training.
MWD training can cost $80,000 to $100,000 per dog. Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) is an issue for hunting dogs and MWDs.
As in humans, the primary mechanism of NIHL is hair cell damage, but extreme noise can also rupture the tympanic membrane or cause damage to the ossicles — the three bones in either middle ear, the canine hammer, anvil, and stirrup.
In addition, the noise level in kennels can cause cumulative damage. Despite well-documented evidence that noise in a military environment can damage a working dog's hearing and degrade its performance, limited options are available for hearing protection.
While over-ear solutions (e.g., Mutt Muffs) provide some level of protection for high noise environments (e.g., aircraft, auto racing, concerts), their effectiveness and utility in a military or active environment are limited.
Military working dogs and hunting dogs may spend significant time in high noise environments, exposing them to significantly higher instantaneous and average noise levels, resulting in acute and chronic hearing degradation.
Noise in the MWD working environment is caused by a variety of sources that include:
Impact or impulse noise from weapons or explosive devices,
Broadband noise from machinery such as turbines and jet engines,
Tonal noise from rotating machinery such as helicopter blades and internal combustion engines,
Vocalization by humans (including but not limited to speech), and
Kennel noise.
These dogs have a tough working environment.
The solution? Zeteo Tech, Inc. of Sykesville, MD, has invented a hearing protection device with noise cancellation and passive noise reduction. Published patent application number 20220039353, "Hearing Protection Devices and Methods for Animals," is for:
They have enhanced hearing protection for animals. Passive noise reduction components provide reduction of at least 20 dB to 30 dB in dogs using flexible soft muffs in a hearing protection sleeve. Active noise cancellation (ANC) features may also increase noise reduction to about 40 dB over a large frequency range. The devices may employ passive noise reduction electronic bypass to measure and playback sounds at safe levels bypassing at least one ANC and passive noise reduction. Communication components may enable communication between the handler and the animal. This new invention protects the hearing and utility of military working dogs and hunting dogs.
The Army Research Laboratory funded this research.
The commercially available version of the invention comes in a lovely shade of khaki that complements the uniform of the human handler. This patent application is worth a read.
On to the rest of this week's numbers.
Patent Applications By The Numbers
On Thursday, February 8, 2022, the US Patent Office published 7,535 pre-grant patent applications. One hundred seventy-six (176) benefitted from taxpayer funding. Here are the numbers.
One hundred sixty-four (164) patent applications have Government Interest Statements.
Forty-one (41) applications have an applicant or an assignee that is a government agency.
A federal department is the only assignee on 11 patent applications.
The 176 new patents have 219 department-level funding citations.
These patents are the work of 630 inventors.
The 622 American inventors come from 39 states and the District of Columbia.
The eight (8) foreign inventors come from six (6) countries.
There are 129 patents (73%) where at least one assignee is a college or university, the HERD.
Eight patent applications (8) resulted from the collaboration between two universities.
Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) received 20 patents.
Three patent application was assigned a Y CPC symbol indicating that the invention may be useful in mitigating the impact of climate change.
There are no Bayh-Dole scofflaws this week.
The Big Three States
California held the number one position. Massachusetts got bumped to the number three position this week with Maryland, home of NIH, having one more patent application than the East Coast medical behemoth based on the number of first-named inventors (13) and 46 total inventors. Massachusetts only had 12 first-named inventors but had 53 total inventors.
California has 29 first-named inventors and 111 total inventors.
Maryland has 13 first-named inventors and 46 total inventors.
Massachusetts has 12 first-named inventors and 53 total inventors.
Count By Department
Here is the count by department. It now includes FFRDCs.
The Health Complex
The Health Complex includes the Department of Health and Human Services, its sub-agencies, and all of the institutes at the National Institutes of Health.
The Health Complex Year-To-Date
The table below shows all of the Health Complex components and the count of funding citations for pre-grant patent applications published since January 1, 2022.
Before We Go
If you are following the Infrastructure Law and the plan to deploy a network of chargers for electric vehicles, enabling technology for growing the adoption of electric vehicles in the US, the game is afoot.
According to federal officials, two pots of money for charging stations totaling $7.5 billion, which could start going out to states as early as September. The larger pot, $5 billion, is designated for high-use corridors that connect the entire country. The goal is to ease EV range anxiety.
The Biden administration will grant $615 million to states in the first 12 months of that program—with the most significant allocations to Texas, California, and Florida—using a formula that mirrors traditional federal highway grants to states.
According to a guidance memo by the Federal Highway Administration, EV charging stations will be installed every 50 miles, no more than one mile off the interstate. And stations will have to have at least 600 kilowatts of total capacity, with ports for at least four cars that can simultaneously deliver at least 150 kilowatts each.
The highway administration expects most states to contract with private-sector entities to install and operate the stations. The federal money can support only 80% of the cost of these stations.
Now it gets interesting.
Thank you for reading FedInvent.
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We'll be back later this week when the next load of taxpayer-funded patents is released. In the meantime, enjoy your week.
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.