Taco Bell has a long list of patents related to various aspects of its business. One invention not on that list, is an abandoned patent application (published as US20080020106A1) that attempted to patent what appears to be their ‘Crunch Wrap’ food item. https://www.tacobell.com/food/specialties/crunchwrap-supreme Taco Bell’s claim read as […]
My six-year-old, Jasper, has been obsessed with Beyblade for over a year now. A Beyblade is a spinning top that you and your opponent ‘rip’ into action in an arena. The tops (or ‘Beys’) spin and move about emphatically in the arena where they bump into each other. […]
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, is a named inventor on a Facebook patent filed way back in 2006. The patent, US8225376B2, relates to your Facebook privacy settings and how you, as a user, can control what different groups can see. When you select a privacy setting, […]
Being as I typically share these articles on LinkedIn, I figure it’s only right that I feature a LinkedIn patent application – published as US2019/0096007. This patent application (which means it is still in the patent prosecution stage and not yet a protected patent) features an algorithm to […]
The most recent podcast episode of Freakonomics talks about the benefits of exercise, and implications of an exercise-replacing drug. One guest, Robert M Evans, a scientist who works at the Salk Institute, invented a drug, which was tested on mice, that essentially gave the mice effects of exercise […]
When a user enters her Netflix account, recommendations such as ‘Top Picks For ___’ and ‘Because You Watched ___’ are all over the place, and often spot on, based on certain algorithms. This Netflix patent US8887095B2 describes a method for recommending shows based on collecting information during your […]
Peloton Interactive brings the spin class to your living room. Peloton machines have displays mounted on them that can show a spin instructor while the user is exercising. Part of the experience is that the user can join a spin class with her peers, in real-time. In this […]
Amazon recently received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) for RnD purposes. With this approval, Amazon may start testing the UAVs for deliveries at certain authorized locations. Here, we have an Amazon patent US9305280B1 filed way back in 2014 that describes an […]
This recent patent by Lyft, the ride-sharing app, describes a very outgoing autonomous vehicle. The vehicle detects nearby ‘entities’, e.g., people and cars, and will display different messages to the detected entities based on the situation. For example, many of us who use Lyft or Uber have been […]
In honor of Mother’s Day, which admittedly passed last week, I would like to present a patent by one of the richest self-made mothers in the world – Sara T. Blakely. If you don’t know, she is the founder of Spanx, the undergarment and shapewear company. US Patent […]
