Clean Space Travel

We’ve written in the past about inventions that seem to be originally described in various popular culture outlets. For example, smart watches here,  here, and here, levitating cars, and moisture farming, and iPads and tablet computers. The latter were described by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Clarke popularized the concept of space elevators in his 1978 novel, The Fountains of Paradise. His protagonist, Vannevar Morgan, said

“If the laws of celestial mechanics make it possible for an object to stay fixed in the sky, might it not be possible to lower a cable down to the surface, and so to establish an elevator system linking earth to space? … Now the deep-space factories can manufacture virtually unlimited quantities of hyperfilament. At last we can build the Space Elevator … ”

Clarke proposed geosynchronous satellites in a 1945 Wireless World article.

There are presently four US patents with the phrase ‘space elevator’ in the title; US 6,981,674 is representative. “System and method for space elevator” was invented by James G. Dempsey of Oshkosh, WI. Oshkosh is the home of the Experimental Aircraft Association, and annually hosts “The World’s Greatest Aviation Celebration”.  It is also a prolific center for innovation, with 1501 US patents listing it as an inventor’s city. Dempsey’s January 2006 invention provides,

"A system and method for a Space Elevator using a transport tether shaped into double catenary with one catenary below synchronous orbit altitude and the second catenary above synchronous orbit altitude and while also forming a harmonic oscillator using a combination of gravitational and centripetal forces with the zero crossing of the harmonic oscillator at an altitude of approximately one half synchronous orbit altitude of attached elevator."

A catenary is the curve formed by a uniform cable hanging from two supports in a uniform gravitational field. Dempsey’s patent envisions a counterweight in orbit at about 88,000 km (54,681 mi), beyond geosynchronous altitude (36,000 km or 22,369 mi), a ribbon-shaped tether (containing carbon nanotubes), a base station, a transition point, a synchronously orbiting station, and an elevator car. All of these are described in Clarke’s novel.

Curiously, the patent does not cite The Fountains of Paradise, or any of the other documentation that Clarke lists at the end of the book. None of the other three patents (US 6,491,258, US 7,971,830; also by Dempsey, US 8,196,867) do either.

It’s a shame that one of the major proponents and early popularizers of this clean space transportation technology (there are only a few bugs yet to work out) did not get the recognition he deserved from the inventors, attorneys/agents, or examiners.

Electric Motors, New & Old

Several high school students zip by my house in the mornings and afternoons on bicycles with tiny 2-stroke gas engines. I perceive them from a long distance, hear the Doppler effect as they approach and recede, and cringe as they pass the house – the motors may be small, but they are SHOCKINGLY LOUD AND PENETRATING.

Surely there might be a less noisy solution to their desire not to have to pedal? One might ask why bother to ride a bike, but I won’t.

E-bikes (electric bikes) would solve my local students’ need for locomotion, and my, and my neighbors’, need to retain our hearing.

Enter the US Patent Office’s Green Tech Pilot Program, and patent US 8,222,786, issued in July 2012 to David G. Calley and co-inventors, all in Flagstaff, AZ; their patent is assigned to Motor Excellence, LLC.

Their invention is entitled “Transverse and/or commutated flux systems having phase offset”, and is described in the abstract:

"Electrical machines, for example transverse flux machines and/or commutated flux machines, may be configured to achieve reduced overall cogging torque via implementation of a sixth-phase offset. Individual cogging torque waveforms in the electrical machine may be evenly distributed across one-sixth of a voltage phase or other suitable spacing, resulting in a reduced magnitude and/or increased sinusoidality of the overall cogging torque waveform for the electrical machine."

In claim 10 one learns that “The stator of claim 2, wherein the stator is coupled to a wheel of an electric bicycle.”

Inventor Calley has 14 patents assigned to Motor Excellence for which he is the first-named inventor; five of these issued from the Green Tech Pilot Program. Four of the Green Tech patents are found in the patentECO Energy | Energy efficiency | Motors & alternators | Design hierarchy (Index | Category | Technology | Feature), and the fifth is categorized as Transportation | Electric vehicle | Motor | Stator.  A fascinating aspect of all of Calley’s Motor Excellence (ME) patents is that they cite US 1,361,136 as the earliest citation. In other words, ME’s key technology derives from a patent issued in 1920. The ‘136 patent, “Dynamo-Electric Machine,” “relates to an improved method and form of construction of dynamo electric machines which is especially applicable to comparatively small sizes of motors, generators and the like. The main objects are to simplify the method of construction and reduce the amount of labor necessary and also reduce the cost of material while producing a strong and durable construction with reduction of size and weight of the machine.”

The Motor Excellence web page states:

"Motor Excellence (Me) is an innovative clean technology company that has designed a new class of high-efficiency electric motors for use in a vast range of applications. Unique in their design, Me boldly offers a 21st century answer to a world tied to inefficient, wasteful and polluting 19th century motor technologies. Me motors enable highly efficient, more cost effective and less resource-intensive electric-powered machines, which will ultimately reduce the world’s reliance on unsustainable energy sources."

No word on 20th century tech.

The company owns a subsidiary, Me eBike LLC, that “provides motors with unprecedented range, acceleration and hill climbing ability to the global electric bicycle industry. Electric bikes (e-bikes) are two or three wheel pedal-driven bicycles with an electric hub motor that provides propulsion assistance to a rider.”

Motor Excellence, founded in 2007, is one of the Young Gun companies in Way Better Patents’ Discovery and Analysis report on USPTO’s Green Tech Program. They completed a move to new Flagstaff headquarters in 2009, and expanded into additional manufacturing space in 2011. This expansion was funded in part by “a $962,000 grant from the 21st Century Grant Program coordinated by the Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA) in 2009, it hired five new workers the next day. The grant program is designed to utilize federal stimulus funds to invest in and promote energy efficient and renewable energy products manufactured in Arizona,” according to a company press release. The Arizona Daily Sun reported in late December 2011 that Motor Excellence had laid off 24 workers and eliminated one management position in November/December 2011. A cached version of inventor David Calley’s Linkedin profile states that he continued with Motor Excellence to July 2012, when “Motor Excellence’s assets were purchased and the new company is called Electric Torque Machines.” A subsequent patent awarded to Calley and assigned to ETM also reaches back to the 1920 ‘136 patent.

According to Pike Research, the electric bicycle market in the US is expected to triple by 2018 with global sales exceeding 47 million vehicles generating nearly $12 million in revenue.  China dominates the global market for e-bikes sales accounting for 92% of the total sales.  The US market accounts for only about 89,000 e-bikes this year.  (The e-bikes are a popular favorite for food delivery people in big cities.)  Sales of e-bikes in the US are expected to reach 265,000 by 2018.

Of course, the ME and ETM patents for electric bike motors refer to many other intervening patents and technologies, as you will see if you review some of them. However, Calley and his co-inventors determined how to improve on an old design in a way that meets USPTO criteria for

• what can be patented (process, machine, article of manufacture, composition of matter, improvement of any of the above)
• novelty
• nonobviousness
• adequately described or enabled (for one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention)
• claimed by the inventor in clear and definite terms.

Another thing that reduces the noise from 2-stroke bike motors is cool weather – the high school boys apparently aren’t members of the Polar Bear Club. Or the gasoline has gelled. Either way, wunderbar, as they say in Deutschland.

The Art of Prior Art

We have come to love the art of excellent prior art. Finding really good prior art is one of those serendipitous search moments. Just doing a prior art search makes you smarter but when you find an elegant, amazing piece of prior art it's great. The best prior art quests tend to be part of invalidity efforts with big money, big principles, or both at stake. The one we discuss here is a big principle example.

A refresher on what USPTO says about prior art:

Under 35 U.S.C. 102(b) states: "A person shall be entitled to a patent unless -- (b) the invention was patented or disclosed in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of application for patent in the United States."

Excellent prior art was found by the people at Public Patent (PubPat) Foundation at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; a not-for-profit legal services organization whose mission is to protect freedom in the patent system. PubPat.org says that they represent the public's interest against undeserved patents and unsound patent policy. We are nonpartisan about their mission but impressed by their finely honed prior art skills.

In September of 2008, Pubpat asked USPTO to re-examine a patent for photomosaic images (6,137,498) The patent was filed in October 27, 1997 based on a provisional application dated January 2, 1997. The patent was granted in October 24, 2000. The reexamination appears to have triggered when the inventor, Robert Silvers of Cambridge, Mass. was sending cease and desist letters and asserting his patent against individuals, small businesses, and against the GIMP open source software program. On June 11th, 2009, PubPat received a copy of the USPTO Office Action invalidating 41 of the 63 claims including all of the independent claims. While the fight wasn't totally over, this was a major victory.

What was the primary piece of prior art cited in the USPTO Office Action? The cover of the "Being Double Digital, The Media Lab at 10" November 1995 issue of WIRED magazine. The cover featured a photomosaic portrait of Nicolas Negroponte. This piece of prior art was actually created by Mr. Silvers himself. A piece of art previously submitted to USPTO.

To add to the sublime nature of this particular piece of prior art is the fact that Mr. Silvers' bio cites the Media Lab under his educational credits. Mr. Silvers published a paper titled "Mosaics: Putting Pictures in their Place". The paper was submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and Planning as part of the requirements for a Degree of Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) That paper, published in 1996. The document itself states "In 1994, he entered the Media Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The very institution that the WIRED magazine profiled in the November 1995 issue that was used to invalidate Mr. Silver's patent. It's interesting that Mr. Silver's own work is not cited on the patent document.
Mr. Silver passes the patent number test. Mr. Silvers' web site includes his patent number on the bottom of every page. Perhaps Mr. Silver will need to modify his website now.

patentECO - A Guitar-Tuning Flashlight

I recently perused a musical supply catalog and saw a listing for “the world’s first chromatic green [guitar] tuner.” The description of this clean tech device went on to say that the user can “[s]imply give the crank a few turns and you’re ready to tune. No more expensive and wasteful batteries . . . [t]he built-in flashlight lets you tune on a dark stage.”

Of course, the ad doesn’t mention that one could use rechargeable batteries, but let’s not quibble. We can agree that using human-supplied mechanical power to turn the crank to supply the small (my tuners require 2 AAA batteries for a total of 3 volts DC) amount of power needed by this device is clean technology, good for the environment, conserves the metals and other material used for the eliminated batteries, reduces the amount of fossil fuels combusted or nuclear fuel reacted to charge the batteries, and, multiplied by the sale of millions of these tuners, represents one small step on the road to a clean tech society. We would find this tuner in the Energy area of the patent ecosystem.

And because it’s clean tech, and labelled a “green” product, it’s completely new and different, right?

Ah, no, not exactly.

Patent number 252,691, “Combined electric lamp and generator,” was issued on January 24, 1882 to Elizabeth Morey of New York, NY. The invention is classified as 362/192 in the USPC, a class and subclass covering illumination with a generator power source. The purposed of Morey’s invention is “to furnish a portable electric lamp for domestic and business purposes, which is directly combined with its generator, so as not to be dependent upon a central station for the current . . .” The lamp contains “a small dynamo-electric machine or current-generator . . .” Attached to the motor is a “convolute spring and winding-up devices — a motive power of sufficient power to actuate the current-generator.”

Also relevant to the hand-cranked green guitar tuner with flashlight is patent number 983,742, “Electric hand lamp.” Issued on February 7, 1911 to John W. Mead of Buffalo, NY, this patent is also classified in 362/192. Of historical note, this patent was issued exactly one week before patent number 984,519 to John M. Browning.

Mead describes his invention: “The current for lamps of this character has heretofore been furnished by dry batteries located in the handle of the lamp. Inasmuch as such batteries are necessarily small they soon become exhausted and require frequent renewal, thus involving constant expense for maintenance. It is the object of this invention to produce an electric hand lamp containing a magneto for generating the current for lighting the lamp, the body of said lamp having preferably the form of a pistol or revolver and the armature being operated by a trigger in substantially the same manner in which a pistol is fired.”

Much of what we see as new, clean technology in the patentECO patent ecosystem is the re-purposing of old technology in more efficient ways, for new uses, or with new materials. Prior art matters.