Thomas Edison's "electric lamp".
Orville and Wilbur Wright and their "flying machine".
Walt Disney's "art of animation" camera.
Steve Wozniak and the "microcomputer for use with video display".
Stephanie Kwolek's "protective fabric".
Even Michael Jackson's "method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion".
What these and countless other inventors
and their inventions share is something called innovation.
So you want to do triangles?
Thats a triangle, thats a triangle.
The students are designing and building candy bridges.
We started by introducing them to different types of bridges.
Whether it happens among students in a classroom, or engineers in a laboratory,
innovation is a process-- a series of steps that begins with imagination,
and results in the creation of something of value for society.
Innovation is improving upon the knowledge and information thats out there
and taking what is already known in the world and improving it, making it better.
Christyann Pulliam is a supervisory patent examiner
at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, the USPTO is an agency in the Department
of Commerce that employs over 8,000 patent examiners,
many of whom are scientists and engineers.
It is the agency in the United States Government which oversees patent
and trademark functions, A patent gives the inventor the right to exclude others
from making, using, selling, or offering for sale,
their invention without permission for a limited period of time.
On average, the USPTO receives about 500,000 patent applications a year.
The USPTO also registers trademarks,
which help designate the source of products or services.
The trademarks can be logos, brand names most commonly.
But they can also be colors.
A trademark can be almost anything--
characters, shapes, and even sounds, such as NBC's signature three-note chime.
The innovation process begins with vision, creativity,
and the simple desire to address a particular problem or need in society.
You have to see whats out there and see a problem that you want to fix,
and then you have to come up with a way to fix it.
Figuring out a new technique, a new method, a new combination of existing things,
any of those things can be innovative.
Beyond just an idea, innovation also often requires financial support.
In the U.S., many innovations are funded by government agencies
such as the National Science Foundation, as well as by private companies,
foundations and other institutions.
The NSF, an independent federal agency, issues about 10,000 grants per year for research
and education in fields of science and engineering.
We write a proposal to the National Science Foundation to explain this is our idea,
to explain how the device or science will benefit society.
Beyond imagination, research, and funding, innovation also requires vision,
perseverance and the involvement of people from different backgrounds and varied expertise
who collaborate in order to create a new product or process --
something that may solve a problem in a new way.
Teamwork is important because now you have many eyes
on the same problem from a different angle.
Teamwork is so essential that I would say without any hesitation
that it wont happen without teamwork.
DR. JOHN ROGERS (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign):
And you dont really know where the shortcomings are
where the most powerful refinements are until you actually go through the process
of doing the experimentation, building the devices, doing a few design iterations.
To apply for a patent, the inventor is required to fully disclose the necessary details
about the idea, which is then investigated by a patent examiner.
The patent examiner conducts a thorough examination of previous patents,
scholarly journals, the internet, and other sources to ensure the invention is new.
During this process, the inventor is often asked to make revisions to the application
to help clarify the invention and distinguish it from others.
Theres a lot of give and take with the patent examiner so that their job is
to help you craft the language of these claims.
Youre not overstepping onto somebody elses property.
It takes quite a bit of time to do all that searching and to produce office actions,
allowances, rejections for each application thats handled here at the office.
Right now the average filing to first action for a patent application in 23 months.
Congress has passed "The America Invents Act" of 2011,
and one of the goals of which is to reduce the amount
of time a patent application takes to be processed.
Once a patent is issued, the inventor has a tool to protect his or her invention
against "patent infringement", which occurs when someone makes, uses, sells,
or attempts to sell the invention without the inventor's permission.
But when a patent is issued, the innovation process doesn't end here.
Instead, by disclosing the details of the invention in the patent,
other people can draw on that knowledge, potentially inspiring future innovations.
That enables the next generation to learn your stuff
and come up to a new set of knowledge to go forward.
If you dont bring it into the world, then the inventor down the street might not be able
to improve upon it if they dont know that its out there.
So its about sharing that knowledge.
Perhaps most important to the innovation process, in addition to having imagination,
is education-- especially in the subjects of science, technology, engineering, and math--
providing the base that can help a student become an innovator.
USPTO volunteers work with local students to help promote innovation.
Its so exciting to see the light go on and the spark when these kids figure
out that they know how to do it, that they have an idea and can implement it.
Whats the bridge going to look like when you look at it sideways?
Whether building a candy bridge or designing a new machine,
innovation is what helps us imagine, invent, improve and inspire others,
and along the way give back to the world.