Game On and USPTO Says Nyet
FedInvent Portfolio Pre-Grant Patent Applications for March 10, 2022
Greetings from FedInvent,
This week 145 published patent applications cited taxpayer funding or that were the work of inventors at federal government agencies. We added these to the FedInvent Portfolio.
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Game On
Back in the day, I was the most unpopular Mom in the neighborhood because I let my son and his friends play video games. Video game playing was a misdemeanor. Letting the boys play video games on the really big projection TV in our family room was a felony.
Here's the deal. Boys who play video games know how to figure out how to collaborate, share responsibilities, share ideas, and how to, well, find the cheat codes to get to a win faster. They build a team and a strategy. Yale has been studying boys and video games for a while. One study revealed that boys who play video games are more likely to have higher GPAs and are less likely to smoke or drink. (You need both hands on the game controller to win.)
In short, gamers know how to strategize and work together to win. (Or at least move up to the next level.)
The Army and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) have also realized these gamers know what they are doing. Researchers at the Department of Defense are looking for gamers who were also experts in artificial intelligence. Interestingly there are quite a few.
DARPA and DOD contractors and Artificial Intelligence/Gaming startups are working on using gaming skills, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to build virtual battle spaces and create new strategies for simulating warfare situations using AI and gaming. They have been hacking existing battle and war games to see how things work. The players of these Battle Royal video games must be on to something.
DARPA has a program called "Gamebreaker ." The Gamebreaker program seeks to create a more immersive experience — a metaverse — for wargaming.
This week Boeing checked in with its latest published patent application, 20220072432, "Containing Opponents In an Encounter Set in a Competitive Environment." If you're wondering how you explain a real gaming environment used for battlefield simulation, here's how it sounds:
"A competitive environment may include a team of members competing against a team of opponents. Managing the positioning and assignments of members of a team in a competitive environment may involve directing the members to move to a certain position (e.g., in a space in the competitive environment) and directing the members to perform an assigned task with the objective of neutralizing an opponent or achieving some other objective. Such management tasks may be applicable in a virtual/gaming environment, a sports environment, a combat environment (e.g., ground, air, and/or space environment), etc."
The Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency funded the Boeing R&D that funded this patent invention.
There is other work going on. You can read about Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing Company, and its Gamebreaker work here. And if you think gaming and AI and defense don't belong together, consider this. In August of 2020, an Artificial Intelligence pilot developed by Heron Systems beat one of the Air Force's top F-16 fighter pilots in DARPA's simulated aerial dogfight contest. It was a 5-0 sweep. The technology isn’t ready for deployment but it’s getting there.
You can read about Northrup Grumman's Gamebreaker contract announcement here.
By the way, we’re pretty convinced that DOD will get to the metaverse long before Mark Zuckerberg and his newly renamed company Meta.
Never a Dull Moment In the Health Complex
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has introduced a bill to break up the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and create three separate institutes.
The National Institute of Allergic Diseases,
The National Institute of Infectious Diseases, and
The National Institute of Immunologic Diseases.
There is also a move afoot to create ARPA-H, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. This organization would be modeled like DARPA at DOD, ARPA-E at the Department of Energy, and IARPA within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. ARPA-H will be tasked with building high-risk, high-reward capabilities (or platforms) to drive biomedical breakthroughs—ranging from molecular to societal—that would provide transformative solutions for all patients. The 2022 budget funded ARPA-H. ARPA-H will accelerate scientific breakthroughs for curing diseases such as ALS, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and cancer.
There's another one of these entities lurking around, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Climate (ARPA-C). This one seemed to be on hold at the moment. Climate change and the health complex are both looking at issues around illnesses and health concerns focused around exacerbated by warming temperatures and more severe weather.
One hundred million dollars here. One hundred million dollars there. Soon you're talking about serious money. Next up? The $1.5 TRILLION budget.
Really Serious Money
On Thursday, Congress finally got around to passing the FY 2022 budget before the House Democrats headed off to spend time hobnobbing and swag gather their latest retreat, and the Senate took a victory lap. Here is a sample of what the budget includes:
$728.5 billion for the Department of Defense, 5.6% than last year.
$108.3 billion for Health and Human Services (HHS).
$1 billion to establish ARPA-H within the HHS Office of the Secretary. The Secretary has the option to transfer this new entity to NIH,
$45 billion goes to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an increase of $2.25 billion.
$8.5 billion went to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This is an increase of $582 million over last year.
$4 billion is going to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
$7.2 billion for the National Science Foundation, which includes $544 million for polar research.
Oh, and the earmark is back. This time it's hiding behind the "Community Development Funding" moniker.
USPTO Says Nyet to ROSPATENT
On March 10, 2022, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced it had terminated engagement with Russia's agency in charge of intellectual property, the Federal Service for Intellectual Property (commonly known as Rospatent), and with the Eurasian Patent Organization. In addition, the USPTO has also terminated engagement with officials from Belarus's national intellectual property office. Their press release says, "Like so many, we are deeply saddened by the events unfolding in Ukraine. We hope for the restoration of peace and human dignity."
Bayh-Dole Scofflaw
There was only one Bayh-Dole Scofflaw this week. This week's scofflaw was from General Electric for gas turbine engine technology. We'll assign this one to the list of defense contractor scofflaws.
Patent Applications By the Numbers
On Thursday, March 3, 2022, the U.S. Patent Office published 7,883 pre-grant patent applications. One hundred forty-five (145) benefitted from taxpayer funding. Here is how March 10th's patent applications break down.
One hundred forty-five (145) 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 fifteen (15) patent applications.
The 145 new patent applications have 164 department-level funding citations.
These applications are the work of 509 inventors.
The 495 American inventors come from 38 states and the District of Columbia.
The fourteen (14) foreign inventors come from 10 countries.
There are 90 patent applications (62%) where at least one assignee is a college or university, the HERD.
Ten patent applications (10) resulted from the collaboration between two or more universities.
Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) have 10 published patent applications.
There are no patent applications with a Y CPC symbol indicating that the invention may be useful in mitigating the impact of climate change.
This week there was a shift in the federal innovation ecosphere. Massachusetts lost its number two position to Maryland, the home of the National Institutes of Health, and the Johns Hopkins University that had nine newly published patent applications that accounted for 34 of the 46 inventors from Maryland this week.
California had 29 first-named inventors and 118 total inventors.
Maryland had 13 first-named inventors and 46 total inventors.
Massachusetts had 11 first-named inventors and 36 total inventors.
The 200 inventors from these three states account for 40% of the inventors on the week's published patent applications. The other 38 states and the District of Columbia accounted for the rest. On Thursday, twelve states had no inventors who contributed to the federal innovation ecosphere.
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 2,466 individual funding citations on pre-grant patent applications published since the beginning of 2022.
We’ve been adding all of the details on subagencies and the NIH institutes all have made contributions to the Health Complex IP Pipeline. The bar chart above may be a bit unwieldy to read as the total Health Complex citation counts grow and agencies that create fewer patent applications are added to the mix. And, the type was getting too small for some of our reader’s mobile reading enjoyment. For the data junkies among us who prefer tables to charts, we added a new year-to-date count data table page here.
Before We Go
Our latest update to the Messages from Ukraine page can be accessed here. These messages are very compelling. They paint a very vivid picture of how Ukrainians are trying to get by day by day. We try to update the page as soon as we receive new messages.
We've heard from some of the local development shops that use freelance developers in Russia through gig platforms. Access to the gig platforms is now cut off. These firms are also stopping all work with the Russian developers. The dev shops tell us that their Russian developers are essentially cut off from both work and getting paid. It's unfortunate for Russian citizens caught up in the economic sanctions imposed because Vlad the Destroyer has invaded Ukraine.
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We'll be back with the latest reporting on taxpayer-funded patents later this 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.