Posted on 03/25/2006 8:32:44 PM PST by Graybeard58
WASHINGTON — Every year more than 400,000 backyard Edisons, get-rich-quick tinkerers and scientists of all stripes send their dreams to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Some inventions could be eye-popping technological marvels destined to enter the fabric of American life –– think cell phones. Some are pretty mundane.
A couple from Wichita developed a new gardening tool. A woman from Kansas City has a clothespin hair clip. There’s a pet grooming brush, an over-the-door shoe rack and a universal fork.
But some inventions are, well, put it this way: Finally, someone has unlocked the secret to making frozen beer.
“It was really beer!” said Mark Giroux of St. Louis, one of the patent holders, still amused by their breakthrough. “An adult slushy. It was not going to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but we had an awful lot of fun.”
More about that in a minute.
The federal government issued more than 165,000 patents last year, including nearly 800 to inventors in Missouri and just over 500 to inventors in Kansas. They ran the gamut. While most of those went to corporations, some still went to tinkerers.
These independent dabblers have recently caught the public’s attention with the popularity of ABC’s “American Inventor” television show. Suddenly the pocket-protector crowd has become sexy. The winner of the show will take home $1 million.
Maybe that will perk up the declining rate of independent inventors winning patents, which has been dropping since 1999.
Patents also were in the news this week when the Supreme Court, for the first time in a quarter century, heard a case involving the basic question of what type of discoveries and inventions can be patented.
“From a new type of swim cap and a browning device for a microwave oven, to … a new computer memory chip and a novel device for transmitting light over an optical fiber,” said patent office spokeswoman Brigid Quinn. “We have it all.”
To receive a patent, an invention has to be new, useful and “non-obvious,” according to Donald Kelly, a former top patent office executive and examiner. In other words, the solution to whatever problem the invention has solved can’t be readily apparent.
Inventing is not cheap. Costs for product development and legal research and other fees run into the thousands of dollars. That is why most applications come from corporate-sponsored scientists and technical whizzes just doing their job.
Robert Haler is vice president of engineering at Digital Ally of Lenexa, which makes high-tech products for law enforcement. It is trying to patent a flashlight with a small digital video camera and a vibration-resistant camera to be mounted on an archery bow.
True, a bow and arrow isn’t standard equipment for most police departments. But Haler said it was the camera that attracted law enforcement’s attention and sent the company down its current path.
He is also the other kind of inventor familiar to the patent office: the basement hobbyist with an idea. Haler’s passion is astronomy, and he has patented a few esoteric devices for telescopes and pocketed a few dollars along the way.
A big payday rarely happens in the real world of patents, experts said, though that doesn’t stop anyone from hoping. Many are often content with just a small piece of immortality, something so they can say, “I did that.”
“It speaks to something about the basic concept of being an American,” said Kelly, president of the United Inventors Association. “The heart of it is, if you can dream something, you can do it.”
Like David Kesler, a meat processor from Sabetha, Kan., whose dream is to make the world’s tastiest vegetarian beef jerky.
He hit upon a recipe that could turn a leathery, seasoned strip of soy protein into something –– you’ll need to close your eyes very tight –– reminiscent of bacon, beef teriyaki or Buffalo chicken wings.
Kesler said that his buddies all say the flavor is so good “they could eat it all day.” His family is not convinced.
“My wife doesn’t care for it,” he said. And his four children? “One of them stomped her foot. I take that as a ‘no.’”
For the time being, Kesler’s meatless jerky business is on the back burner, though he’s making the real thing with beef and pork. Eventually he’d like to set up a Web site to sell his invention.
Tod Ricketts of Springfield, Mo., is a former elephant handler at the local zoo who already has several patents for devices to handle large animals. He owns a hydraulic machinery firm that makes zoo equipment.
Now he hopes to patent an idea that would generate electricity from passing traffic to boost local power supplies. Ricketts would install a grid of hydraulic cylinders in the roadbed. As trucks and other heavy traffic pass over, the cylinders would compress under pressure and create energy. He likened it to a hydroelectric dam where water under pressure is diverted to turn turbines and generate power.
Inventors, said Joanne Hayes-Rines, publisher of Inventors’ Digest magazine, share some common qualities: “Passion, guts and the gumption to try to do something against all good, common sense.”
Which brings us back to frozen beer.
In 2001, Mark Giroux was working for a St. Louis beverage equipment company that made the dispensing valves on most soda fountains and in many taprooms.
Anheuser-Busch had a beer on the market at the time called Doc Otis that few would drink, he said, but a marketing survey found they would “if it looked like a margarita or a frozen daiquiri.”
So Anheuser-Busch asked Giroux’s company to figure something out.
You can’t just put a bottle of beer in the freezer and expect to come out with a Slurpee or someone would have already done it. The beer will expand and the bottle will crack.
Giroux and his colleagues patented a process for freezing beer in a way that allowed it to expand without damaging its container or losing any carbonation and taste.
Developing and testing a new product can take up to a year or more. They had a prototype in 30 days and no lack of people eager to take the frozen beer taste test.
“It was tested wa-a-a-ay too much,” Giroux said
Anheuser-Busch eventually marketed frozen Doc Otis, but discontinued it a few years ago.
“It was a great product, something no one had done before,” said Giroux, who now sells frozen custard machines. “A hot summer day? Refreshing? Oh my God. It really made people smile.” Facts about patents
You can’t patent facts, but …
■ About 1,300 of the 165,000 patents issued in 2005 went to inventors in Missouri and Kansas.
■ Frozen beer and vegetarian “beef” jerky are two of the ideas coming from the region.
■ As patent office spokeswomen Brigid Quinn said: “We have it all.”
“An adult slushy. It was not going to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but we had an awful lot of fun.”
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Cheers to that!
"A woman from Kansas City has a clothespin hair clip."
Waaaaaayyyyyyy too much time on her hands
You would probably scoff at my three way mirror, or my camera uni-pod. I don't have the kinks worked out of the uni-pod yet, the damn thing keeps falling over.
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