The Gtech cordless vacuum cleaner

I've been meaning to write before about Nick Grey's Gtech cordless vacuum cleaner.

Dyson has been making vacuum cleaners which are emptied from their bin for many years. Grey's vacuum cleaner claims to be an advance.

There are two small compartments which are in the cleaner head, just 5 cm from the surface being cleaned. The dust and debris is compressed in bales which can easily be removed. This means a 95% electrical saving: the motor is just 100 watts, compared to 1400 to 2400 for conventional vacuum cleaners. 

In addition, it is cordless. After a four hour charge it can operate for 40 minutes. Again, cords are certainly a nuisance and potentially a hazard.

It is also light -- the AirRam model weights 3.5 kg, half the typical rival model.

Nicholas Gerald Grey, his name in the patents, is from Worcestershire and states he is a mechanical engineer in company records. As a boy he was always tinkering with things. He was head of product development for another vacuum cleaner company but left with enough savings to last him for 18 months and set up his own company in 2001, believing that he could make something better -- light, energy efficient, cordless, and easy to use. The company is Grey Technology but somewhat confusingly uses Gtech on the site.

Many millions of units have been sold by his company Grey Technology, with models changing in appearance, with US shopping channels being the first advertising push. A short video by the company certainly makes it look very interesting. The company makes other cordless devices, over 22 million units so far.

This is a list of the fifteen World patent applications in the name of Nicholas Gerald Grey.

He does seem to have modified his ideas. Below is a model from 2006 for the cleaner head, as shown in among others EP1810603. 

The current model, the Gtech AirRam, has a squarish head, similar in appearance to (but not necessarily identical to) that shown below, which is from his Surface cleaning apparatus patent application.

It is interesting that the UK has, along with Dyson, another growing company which has made a leap forward in vacuum cleaner design.

Sensors in clothing

The Daily Telegraph published an article today with the title UK researchers win patent for wearable smart sensors. It sounds like a nice idea, from Liverpool John Moores University. I have for a long time thought that wearing sensors is going to be an important advance in telemedicine. There are just two things wrong with the article.

The first is that there is no mention of the patent document's number, or a link to it, to help those interested in learning more. Nobody would write a review of a book or film without mentioning the title, after all.

The second is that the university hasn't actually got a patent. All that has happened is that a patent application was published on the 11 September as Microwave monitoring using an electrically conductive textile. Granting a patent is a second stage. Maybe the usage by the UK Intellectual Property Office calling it a "milestone patent" confused the issue in their press release on the invention.

The invention provides continual monitoring of the body using non-invasive techniques. This area is so important that the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) has provided an area for classifying diagnostic sensors mounted on clothing at A61B/6804. Patent documents on that subject can be found by ticking the box next to the required classification and then on Find Patents (on the left). This gives nearly 3,000 hits.

Better, perhaps, is to click on Copy to Search Form when additional fields can be added, such as keywords, company names, or patent authorities to narrow down the hits found. A problem with the CPC is that often the classes are added many months after publication, while the less detailed International Patent Classification on which it is based is available on publication day.

In this particular publication, very unusually, the CPC is already available, perhaps to mark the fact that the publication is GB2500000 in a series that began with 2000001 in 1978.

Subject searching in a sophisticated way is complicated and it is easy to make mistakes, so I always recommend using experts to help, such as the librarians in the Patlib UK network.

Happy birthday, lava lamp

The BBC has a story on the 50th anniversary of the famous lava lamp. It is called Lava lamp creators mark 50 years of 1960s icon.The 50 refers to the 1963 date of setting up the original company.

I enjoyed it, and am providing links here to the two key patents.

In 1964 Crestworth Limited applied for what was published as the patent called Display device. Below is the main drawing.

However, there were four problems with this first model. This was explained in a second patent, filed in 1967 by Edward Walker, the former RAF officer who thought up the idea in the first place.

This was also called Display device. The first problem was that as it took a long time for the device to become ready when switched on, "It has now been found that some viewers may become impatient during the preliminary heating up period." The second was that if left on for a long time, overheating caused the globules to break up into "unattractive tiny droplets". The third was that the apparatus could freeze and therefore break in cold periods. The fourth was that draughts could cause problems, requiring careful positioning of the lamp.

All these problems were solved by adding something to the fluid. A "water-miscible liquid.".

Anti-freeze, in other words.

The Blaze Light for bicycles

The James Dyson Awards will be announced on the 12 September (national winners) with the shortlist on the 10 October.

One of the applicants is the Blaze Light for bicycles. It is a lighting innovation for cyclists. During my career at the British Library I met numerous inventors who had ideas related to bicycles. Many were for promoting safety at night, usually either enhancing visibility or for indicating turns, and I quickly realised that there was lots of prior art out there. I remember, shortly before I retired, two very secretive inventors who insisted that I sign a non-disclosure agreement, only for me than to explain that their idea was very well known. They had spent six months developing the idea without spending half an hour doing even a simple look through the patents.

The inventor is Emily Brooke of Bath, Somerset. Her Light projection safety device for a two wheeled vehicle was granted a British patent in April 2013. The main drawing is shown below.









An image of a bicycle is projected in front of the cyclist by an LED. The idea is
that heavy vehicle drivers, in particular, are more likely to notice the cyclist.

The video on the Dyson website starts by welcoming Kickstarter, the
crowdfunding site, and with that hint I found that the project had been funded with
£55,000 by 782 backers. More power to crowdfunding ! I wish the concept had
started sooner as good ideas find it much easier to get funding than with banks or
venture capitalists.

According to the British patent, Brooke acted as her own patent attorney. I would
not advise that, as it is so easy to get things wrong. The claims on the final page, I would suggest, are unhelpfully restrictive ("broad yet precise", was what a patent attorney once said to me was the ideal).
The Patlib libraries can be asked for free and helpful advice for innovative businesses and inventors.

Apple's watch invention

The TechCrunch website has just announced that Apple has had a US patent granted for a disappearing bezel for an electronic watch to enable a bigger screen to be visible. Published today, it's US 8447114.

The problem with putting screens on tiny devices is that it's hard to see anything. Any ability to enlarge the screen is highly beneficial for the user -- and for those who wish to communicate with them.

But what do you call it ? In December 2012 Apple applied for the Taiwan trade mark iWatch in Class 9, which includes software, as quoted in an article on the MacRumors website.

If they want a US trade mark for that trade mark, the problem is that in August 2012 OMG Electronics applied for that trade mark with 85703706 in Class 9 -- but failed, inexplicably, to say it was for watches as well as various listed devices.

Earlier still, in July 2007 Platinum International Holdings applied for 77236688 for iWatch, again in Class 9, but mentioned "cell phones watch". This has not yet been registered, which is odd after six years.

This could be important, as listing goods is sometimes vital when the identical trade mark co-exists in the same class, on the grounds that they can't be confused. The earliest company to file gets the trade mark. You can quote a "priority", when you first filed it within 6 months in another country, to get an earlier filing date.

Forbes Magazine has an article on the subject which cites the Taiwan data.

The Google Glass patents

I t's been fun having a look for the patents associated with Google Glass, the spectacles that enable its wearers to interact with the Web and, above all, to see projections of information.

Google Glass itself is the subject of a US trade mark application which, oddly enough, was published 18 June 2013 for opposition -- several weeks in the future, as I write.

The key term seems to be "wearable" although it is possible that some new technology involved does not depend on a wearable frame and therefore may be hard to find.

There are seven US Design patents for the look of variant models, all with the title "Wearable display device" (although one adds the word "frame", and one "section").

An article on the CNET website, published 21 February, suggests that US20130044042A, is highly relevant. The article is called Google Glass patent application gets really technical. I prefer to link to the corresponding World patent application, Wearable device with input and output structures. One of its drawings is given below.

However, three other patent applications were published in March or April and there are in all eight World patent applications by Google containing the word "Wearable".

None of these have been granted rights as B documents. One advantage of using the World documents rather than the corresponding US applications (listed here) is that search reports listing prior art found by patent office officials is often available.

These are either on A1 documents (at the end) or in separate A3 documents. The USA only publishes search reports on its granted patents, where a brief summary is given on the front page.

[24 May -- the New Yorker website has an interesting article on forerunners, Glass before Google, which links to a copy of a patent by Morton Heilig, applied for in 1957]

[7 Dec -- see my article Google surging ahead with patenting for update on wearable technology]

Photographs of strange inventions

The Netherlands' Nationaal Archief has a collection of photographs of strange inventions, which can be seen at the Brain Pickings website in the page 27 of history's strangest inventions by Maria Popova.

Some of them, at least, seem to have been patented, and it would be fun to try to identify them...

Frank Hornby's inventions

I see that today marks the 150th anniversary of Frank Hornby's birthday. He was the originator of Meccano and also Hornby trains. Google has honoured him by using imagery from his products on today's page.

12 British patents by Frank Hornby are listed on the free Espacenet database. The earliest of these is that for Meccano itself, Improvements in toy or educational devices for children or young people, with its drawings page shown below.

A curious one which involves running trains on circuits is An improved toy or game.

Paint can as a camera invention

I was recently at the National Maritime Museum and saw in the shop a paint can that had been modified into a pinhole camera. Here it is -- with the patent number given near the bottom as (American) patent 6618556.

The patent's title is Chemically resistant pinhole camera. It is an ingenious example of recycling, and it works
by as the patent summary explains "The inner surface of the camera is coated with a chemically resistant light absorbing material such as a black epoxy paint. The inner surface also forms a curved image plane to support the photographic material."

Below is the main drawing for it.

I love it when apparently simple new products have patent numbers on them, so that people can learn how they work.. in this case, with 18 pages of information.

There is a website for those who want to buy one.

Squirrel-proof birdfeeders

I've just watched a 2011 episode of Dragons' Den with Julian Lipton pitching for money for a squirrel-proof birdfeeder.

I normally expect to see new products or services on the show, but the particular variation involved had been invented nearly twenty years ago by his father. I was delighted to see the featured product, as it is a concept which I use a lot when I run workshops on searching for patents, as the concepts are easy enough for everyone to understand, and why it's a good idea.

The main drawing from the patent application is shown below. The original World patent application by Leslie Lipton, Food dispensers for birds, gives details of how it works.


The basic idea is that the squirrels are kept away from the food by the big bars on the exterior, while small birds can slip through the bars.

The official entry states that the British patent, GB2275408B, is no longer in force as it has run its term of 20 years from the filing date and so anyone can use the invention.

The concept is a good example of how patent classification works. The invention was classified as A01K39/0113 in the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) and 372 patent specifications are listed for that class on the free Espacenet database. It can be amusing to look through them -- some have great drawings -- and to contemplate the various strategies used. Most involve using the squirrels' weight, or their lack of flying ability to try to outwit them.

So what happened ? Julian failed to secure any finance as the patent was shortly going to expire, and the dragons like monopolies. Also, the company was making losses.

The company website is The Nuttery.