Hello from FedInvent,
Here is this week’s combined FedInvent Patent and Patent Application newsletter.
The links will below take you to the FedInvent Report pages for April 5th and April 7th:
April 5th’s Taxpayer-Funded Patents
FedInvent Report —> LINK
FedInvent Details By Department —> LINK
Health Complex Patents Year-To-Date —> LINK
The Patent Office issued 7,200 patents on Tuesday. One hundred sixteen (116) benefitted from taxpayer funding. These patents cited 134 funding sources.
Bayh-Dole Scofflaw
There was only one Bayh-Dole scofflaw on Tuesday. Raytheon Technologies again. Their patent 11292113, "Tool system for installation/removal of interference fit components," covers tools for gas turbines and jet propulsion systems. We’ll chalk this one up to DOD.
You can see the rest of the Patents By the Numbers on the FedInvent Report page.
April 7th’s Taxpayer-Funded Patent Applications
Thursday the USPTO published 5,813 pre-grant patent applications. One hundred twenty-eight (128) were funded by US taxpayers. These patent applications had 231 department funding citations.
Colleges, universities, and academic research institutes added 83 new applications to their IP pipelines, 65% of the total federally funded patent apps on April 7th. FFRDCs funded 15 patent applications.
FedInvent Report —> LINK
FedInvent Details By Department —> LINK
Health Complex Patent Applications Year-To-Date —> LINK
Bayh-Dole Scofflaws
This week’s Bayh-Dole patent scofflaw is really a USPTO truncation scofflaw. Publication number 20220105171, "Materials and Methods for Respiratory Disease Control In Canines," has three applicants:
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA RESEARCH FOUNDATION, INC.
CORNELL RESEARCH FOUNDATION, INC.
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AS REPRESENTED BY THE SECRETARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF
So we have two out of three of the entities. Then there’s the government. It’s hard not to look at this bloated title and not think, how surprising, a bloated title from the government. We did some digging around in PAIR to no avail. All we could come up with is one of the Oath statements being signed by someone in the NIH Office of Technology Transfer. Did the inventors receive money from NIH for a veterinary invention? Maybe CDC? Maybe USDA?
Is one of the inventors a government employee?
Looking at the inventor’s grant history didn’t really give us a solid answer either. Next up, look for inventor bios. There are inventors from BARDA, CDC, and NIH NIDDK. There are also inventors from Elanco, Merck’s animal health company.
Then we looked at the international patent applications. The European application data on Google Patents says:
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A Intervet International BV US Department of Health and Human Services Cornell Research Foundation Inc University of Florida University of Florida Research Foundation Inc US Government
We are always amazed that it is so hard just to get an accurate name for assignees and applicants unless there is some hiding in plain sight going on.
We’ll assign this one to HHS for now. Hopefully, the Government of the United States of America as Represented by the Secretary of an Unknown Department will fix this if they are granted a patent.
Useful Pages
We also updated the FedInvent archive page to make it easier to find older reports and Substack FedInvent Newsletters. You can go to the 2022 page here. The 2021 archive is here.
We haven’t had any updates from our correspondents in Ukraine since our last newsletter. Things are escalating. When you are trying to survive you may not have time for sending messages. We are hoping to hear from our contacts there soon. As soon as we have news we’ll update our Messages from Ukraine page.
As always, please let us know if you have questions about our data or our analysis, You can reach us at info@wayfinder.digital.
We’re hoping to have the FedInvent Q1 Roundup soon.
Thanks for reading FedInvent. See you later this week.
FedInvent
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.