patentlaw | The Patent Geek

Square’s Power Efficient Card Reader

By Vincent Look on September 29, 2020 • ( Leave a comment )

Square is a digital payment company known for its card reader that attaches to a mobile device (e.g., a smart phone). Square appears to be one of the ‘winners’ of this pandemic, having its stock practically triple in the last year.

Founder Jack Dorsey has many patents to his name relating to their mobile payment system. One of which is US9,858 ,603B2 which relates to a way of preventing the smart phone from perceiving that the card reader has been disconnected during power cycles.

Vaccine Patents? YES

By Vincent Look on March 11, 2020 • ( Leave a comment )

Part of the novelty and improvement here is that the vaccine is made by growing the measles virus in a chick embryo tissue sample instead of monkey-tissue. This avoids the problem of simian viruses that are associated with those vaccines that were developed with monkey-tissue.

Carvana’s Vending Machine Full O’ Cars

By Vincent Look on January 15, 2020 • ( Leave a comment )

For the holidays our family took a trip to Arizona to visit my in-laws. On the way, I noticed a tower full of shiny vehicles off of the 10 freeway in Ontario, CA. This tower is one of Carvana’s vehicle vending machines. Car buyers can buy a car […]

Disney’s User Profiling Patent Application

By Vincent Look on November 13, 2019 • ( Leave a comment )

Disney has recently launched a new streaming platform, Disney +. Here, we have a patent application (US2019/0340659A1) by Disney that relates to reviewing of content (similar to how Netflix allows users to review watched content).

Nintendo Switch Patent Application

By Vincent Look on October 30, 2019 • ( Leave a comment )

In addition, the controllers can include a “movable portion” that a user can move around as an input during gameplay. The moving portion can be a steering wheel, or levers used to change gears. The camera tracks the movable portion.

The Ocean Cleanup Patent

By Vincent Look on October 21, 2019 • ( Leave a comment )

Inventor and entrepreneur Boyan Slat made waves some years ago by introducing a device that could potentially remove floating trash in the ocean. The device acts as an artificial coastline that floats in the middle of the ocean. The device passively collects trash (e.g., plastics) that float at […]

23andMe can use Machine Learning to Determine Ancestry

By Vincent Look on August 28, 2019 • ( Leave a comment )

In this patent – US9213947B1 – 23andMe uses machine learning to help correspond ‘phased haplotype data’ to specific ancestries.

Taco Bell’s attempted ‘Crunch Wrap’ patent

By Vincent Look on August 21, 2019 • ( Leave a comment )

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 […]

Three, Two, One, Let it Rip! ‘Beyblade’ Burst toy patent

By Vincent Look on August 14, 2019 • ( Leave a comment )

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’s Privacy Setting Patent

By Vincent Look on August 1, 2019 • ( Leave a comment )

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, […]

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