"If you are a Lecorpio customer, one way or another you are probably going to have to go through...a long transition to a new IP management system.”
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"Inventing really does come down to perseverance, doing the hard work of identifying the problems, solving the problems, and then moving onto the next step.”
Lonnie Johnson, inventor
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He’s the inventor of the Super Soaker, the father of the Nerf N-Strike dart gun, and worked on NASA’s Galileo, Voyager and Cassini space programs.
He is developing a new type of engine without any moving parts that can convert heat directly into electricity, as well as a solid state battery using a glass electrolyte instead of a liquid. He has two engineering degrees and over 100 patents protecting an amazing variety of inventions.
He’s a really nice guy, too. He’s Lonnie Johnson, one of America’s most prolific and successful inventors.
“I started doing patent art in 1986 and have thousands of drawings on record at the United States Patent Office.”
- Jack Smith, patent artist
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Patent artists do their thing away from the klieg lights of product launches and marketing campaigns, and their names do not appear on drawings in the USPTO archives. To some extent, they're the phantoms of invention. Today, we welcome one of the busiest to the IPfolio interview studio.
Jack Smith, native Minnesotan and one of the most experienced patent artists in the US, provides a lot more, though, to his clients than drawing and diagramming services. He also helps them vet ideas, confirm sales and marketing opportunities, review manufacturing and distribution roadmaps and systematically clarify the feasibility of their inventions. We enjoyed learning about his three plus decades in the inventing trenches.
Image: A lot of expertise on stage for "The Art and Science of Creating IP Value" session
More than 125 IP professionals from the USA, Canada, and several European countries joined us last week for IPforward 2017. It was the third annual gathering we’ve organized for in-house counsel and IP operations staff to learn from their peers.
On an IP Management conference list, IPforward is definitely becoming one of the must-attend dates on the calendars of IP leaders in the United States. We’re delighted of course.
The third version of IPforward, April 13 at the Sofitel Hotel in Redwood Shores, continues the “bigger and better than the previous event” arc. IPforward 2017 offers more speakers, a superb keynote and an expanded topic range. With much higher pre-registrations than in previous years, we will host close to 200 IP leaders for an animated and interactive day.