IEOR 190G Reflection: Social Media Use

I found this class's emphasis on the utilization of blogs and YouTube videos to be both beneficial and cumbersome.

Writing the blog was an interesting exercise every week. It facilitated our learning and digestion of the material, while serving as an externally visible piece of work that we could show to interested parties. Overall, I found that making each week's deliverable two blogs posts was a good way to facilitate our knowledge of intellectual property issues and news. On the other hand, I did not find our YouTube channels to be very instructive. While it may have been helpful for other students in helping them to practice their public speaking skills, I personally felt comfortable delivering my YouTube videos in one run through, and did not find them helpful from a personal or professional development standpoint.

I have a similar response to the comments on other students' blogs and videos that we wrote every week. I did find it interesting to read other students' blogs, and found that commenting on them was a useful way to give and receive feedback on our ideas and perspectives. Commenting on other students' YouTube videos, however, was cumbersome and difficult. I found that it was difficult to provide feedback on the videos due to the length of the videos and the structure that most students, including myself, utilized in the videos, and that I usually had to refer to the related blogs in order to fully understand what most people were saying. While I could see the value that these comments provided, I feel that the same feedback regarding content could be provided in a more structured and concise manner by commenting on the related blog posts.

Utilization of blogs and YouTube is definitely a departure from the traditional learning tools of lectures, homework, and tests that most classes utilize. I found that this class structure did result in me putting in more effort each week, and that I will most likely retain the information better as a result. However, I found this structure to be repetitive after a while, due to the straightforward and structured nature of each blog post and video. If I had to do this class all over again, I would improve by investing more time into each blog post, ideally being able to pull from multiple sources to discuss different perspectives on each issue.

I further discuss my thoughts on this topic at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq4U-pigxlI

IEOR 190G Reflection: Class Experience

My semester taking IEOR 190G was extremely useful in helping me to understand the intellectual property landscape and strategies that patent holders use. The class covered both elements in depth, and was helpful in giving me both a broad perspective on the patent landscape as well as giving me a deep understanding of the tactics that intellectual property owners utilize.

The smartphone patent war, patent litigation court choices, the tactics of non-practicing entities, and the details of patent claims and applications were all covered in this class, with an emphasis on the role that such concepts have on companies' intellectual property decisions and tactics. I was particularly interested in the role that patent claims have in determining a patent's viability as an offensive and defensive strategy were, due to the strategic choices that must be made in making a patent broad or specific.

This knowledge is important to me as I believe that it will be useful from a career perspective. I would like to either work at or found a startup in the future, and believe that protecting my intellectual property will be crucial to the success of that endeavor. This class was successful in providing a foundation upon which to build that knowledge, and I definitely feel that I learned more about the patent litigation landscape as a result of the class.

I further discuss my thoughts on this topic at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQCw8Gcj9-g

Silly Patents: Apparatus for Simulating a "High Five"

US Patent #5,356,330 covers an apparatus that can be used to simulate a "high five". In simpler language, it is a fake arm with a readjusting elbow joint that allows high fivers to practice their high five-ing technique independently of a friend or acquaintance. A diagram of the patent is included below:

I found this patent particularly interesting due to its cited background. I have provided its full text for the purposes of added humor below: 
"During a televised sporting event, a "high five" is commonly shared between fans to express the joy and excitement of a touchdown, home run, game-winning basket, birdie or other positive occurrence. Unfortunately, as known in the art, a "high five" requires the mutual hand slapping of two participants, wherein a first participant slaps an upraised hand against the elevated hand of a second participant. As such, a solitary fan is unable to perform a "high five" to express excitement during a televised sporting event."

Another interesting feature of this patent is its prior art citations, which come from a variety of different sources. From a self-erecting football dummy to a "doll giving particular vocal responses on movement of particular appendages", each citation seemed to come from a different industry, but I could see how they all had an effect on the patent's novelty.

I further discuss my thoughts on this topic at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbut22dJJSQ

Silly Patents: The Cane with Three Flasks

In this blog post, I'll be discussing an interesting patent that I discovered on the blog site Patently Silly, which contains a database of "silly" patents. The patent covers a walking cane that has three flasks built into it. I have included a picture of it below.

This patent was awarded in 2004, under patent number 6,745,785. If you're interested, you can read the full text of the patent here: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6745785.PN.&OS=PN/6745785&RS=PN/6745785

The patent has a total of 12 claims, overall discussing the structure, materials, and shape configuration of the cane. In addition to being a "silly" invention, I found that the patent was not well written because of this reason. The claims covered within the patent are too specific, covering the specific configuration that the pictured cane's flasks are in. As a result, if, for example, I invented a cane that has four flasks contained within it, I would not be infringing on this patent. The specificity of this patent therefore prohibits it from having any real value as a revenue generating patent with which the owner could sue infringing parties, as the likelihood of a flask cane manufacturer adopting the specific configuration that is discussed in the patent is minimal.

Another point of interest that I found regarding this patent was the wide variety of prior art sources that it listed. On first thought, I would have assumed that such a patent would have minimal prior art references, due to the absurdity and novelty of the idea. However, this patent cited 15 previous domestic patent documents as prior art, in addition to 6 foreign patent documents. Furthermore, many of these prior art sources were extremely old, including patent number 26,721, which was filed in January of 1860.

Overall, this three-flask cane was an interesting case study in the importance of keeping claims broad enough to be meaningful, as well as demonstrating the amount of thought that must be put into trivial device patents.

I further discuss my thoughts on this topic at the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pwB-JAorbg