USPTO Patent Awarded to Atiyeh, Hagler for FizzLoc Soda Clamp

January 5, 2012 (Durham, NC) Trig® Innovation, a Research Triangle, NC-based innovation management firm, announces a patent award for one of its product collaborations, the FizzLoc Soda Clamp.

FizzLoc is a compression device developed by Phil Atiyeh of product innovations, LLC of Cheshire, Connecticut in collaboration with Trig® Innovation.  The patent application, filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in December of 2008, was approved by the USPTO on December 13, 2011.

Atiyeh developed the device to solve a common problem—carbonated beverages losing their fizz, also known as “going flat.” The device uses a unique clamping mechanism to remove airspace from soft drink bottles, enabling the beverages to retain their carbonated fizz much longer than without the help of the FizzLoc.

“This is a special thrill for me, because I have worked with Phil for many years since our time with Home Depot’s Innovation and Design team, and I’m very proud of him,” stated Ty Hagler, principal and founder of Trig® Innovation. “The FizzLoc captures the essence of who we are as industrial designers and product innovators in a really fun way.  Phil tackled a very challenging problem that required an elegant solution.  By developing a deep understanding of the problem, we pushed for a pragmatic solution that works, while the existing fizz-saving products just don’t get the ‘fizzics’ of the problem.  His persistence in bringing the FizzLoc to market is an inspiration to me personally, and he is an example to others with a great idea seeking to navigate the possibilities.”

For more information on the FizzLoc patent award, please follow this link to the US Patent and Trademark Office listing.

For inquiries regarding the FizzLoc product, please contact Phil Atiyeh at patiyeh (at) sbcglobal (dot) net.

About Trig® Innovation

Trig® Innovation is a Research Triangle, NC-based innovation management consulting firm dedicated to delivering a toolkit of strategies and expertise for the development of new products and services for inventors and corporate product and brand teams. With practice areas focusing on the development and branding of products for the home improvement, medical device, and housewares industries, Trig® Innovation draws upon a well of leading experts in industrial design, intellectual property law, mechanical engineering, and marketing strategy to bring new client products to market. Led by Principal Ty Hagler, a seasoned product developer from his start in marketing and product development at The Home Depot in 2004, Trig® Innovation services clients throughout the United States from its base in Durham, NC.

Media Contact:
Ty Hagler
Principal
919-480-TRIG (8744)

tyhagler@trig-in.com

www.triginnovation.com

Trig® Announces New Registered Trademark

Trig® Innovation is proud to announce the procurement of a service mark for its name, Trig®.

Trademarks are standard fare in the world of the products we design and develop for others, and the word, Trig®, has taken on so much meaning for us in the last year that we decided to take the “what’s good for the goose” approach to our own name.  As a service mark, we can now utilize the Trig® name as an exclusive expression in advertising and promoting our firm’s suite of services, including innovation consulting, industrial design, 3D CAD, animation, ideation, packaging, and messaging.

2011 has been a very good year for our company, as we launched a new era and transitioned from the Studio Hagler branding.  At the end of 2010, we realized we had reached one of those tipping points, where we needed a new brand expression to better capture the evolving services and attendant client results of our company. Thus, we created our new name, along with the tagline, “Navigate the Possibilities,” to capture our enthusiasm and optimism with regard to the future of product design and development.

A longtime client of our Trig® PDQ patent drafting service, Julie Tennyson, a patent and trademark attorney in Paducah, Kentucky, recommended in April that we file a trademark on the new name.  After concluding that this was a strategic asset for our ongoing efforts to build a brand, it made sense to invest in registering the mark with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

We were thrilled Trig® received its official trademark from the USPTO on December 6, 2011, and we are very grateful to Julie for her hard work in making this happen.



Relating to Ideation—Part One

As an industrial designer and innovation management consultant, ideation is a familiar topic, the principles of which can be applied across many industries.  At Trig Innovation, we have built deep industry experience in consumer products, but we have also found that most of our talents translate easily into medical devices and most recently, even to service companies.  As Trig has expanded its talent base, we have actively sought to build service areas like ideation that can transcend our traditional industry niches of tools, hardware, furniture, and other products for home improvement.

One of the benefits of being a multi-industry innovation consultancy is that we bring fresh thinking to every engagement.  Many clients and prospects think of ideation on a pretty esoteric level—it’s often hard to get your arms around it, unless you’ve actually participated in an ideation session.  I enjoy relating the results of ideation to different products people see in the marketplace across various industries, as well as communicating the method that drives ideation by behaviors that people find readily accessible in their minds.

In the first installment of this two-part series, we’ll take a look at how ideation yields powerful results that transcend particular industries.  You’ll no doubt find the ideas behind directional oil wells and endoscopic devices, as well as how they are deployed in similar situations—albeit within entirely different landscapes.

Directional Oil Wells versus Endoscopic Devices

A great example of cross-industry results driven by ideation showcases the similarities between techniques developed by the oil industry for Directional Oil Wells and the medical device industry for Endoscopic Devices. 

Exploration companies use directional oil wells to reach oil or gas targets in difficult-to-reach places, such as areas beneath cities and swamps. Directional oil wells are composed of two key elements, the mud motor and electronic measurement devices. The mud motor provides additional power to the bit while drilling and can bend and steer the well in different directions, providing greater scope of reach.

While drilling, coteries of high-tech electronic devices located above the mud motor are used to calculate down-hole measurements and transmit data to the rig floor. These devices tell operators how and where to steer the directional oil well.

Since oil and gas reservoirs tend to accumulate horizontally, allowing more oil extraction per installed oil well.

As with directional oil wells, endoscopic devices are charged with reaching difficult locations, finding hollow places within organs or and other cavities within the body.  A friend of mine has described his frequent trips to his local otolaryngologist, who utilizes an endoscopic device to aid in the treatment of his chronic airway problems

Inserted through the nose, the flexible tube of the device, equipped with an LED light and camera at its tip, can reach nearly to the top of my friend’s lungs. The doctor moves the unit slowly down its course, first through the nose, then down through the airway, as he watches the camera in live action on an HD monitor. He clicks pictures along the way, with the device recording where in the body’s “coordinates” that the doctor sees inflammation in need of treatment.

This multi-element device, designed with some of the same features as the directional oil well, allows for much greater precision in the treatment of my friend’s chronic airway problems. And, much like the directional oil well, the endoscopic device eliminates the guessing game, pinpointing, in this case, the problem to be addressed.



Trig Innovation Announces Animation Services

We don’t routinely use this space as a direct commercial for Trig Innovation, but we’re too excited about this latest service development to stay silent. 2011 has been a very good year for us, and we are thankful that we have been able to achieve the continued growth of the company’s capabilities in developing new products and the marketing assets companies need to enhance the sales experience for their customers.

For some time, the design crew has been trying to grab the best approach for integrating animation into our process.  Why is animation important for new product development?  Animation, and the use of online video, is a more rich way of communicating the investment in the design of a product. We are using animation to build brands, enhance user experience, and enable better understanding of product features through visualization. 

After building our in-house talent base, Patrick Murphy will be spearheading the delivery of client animation needs, we have made a significant investment of our own in some fantastic software. Bunkspeed MOVE ’12 is an impressive suite of animation tools for designers like Patrick to generate elegant animated movies.  First, it’s a natural extension of one of Trig’s core capabilities, 3D CAD Sculpting.  As we have clients who need animated graphics to showcase their ideas, Bunkspeed has critical compatibility with SolidWorks, enabling the Trig team to migrate designs seamlessly between the two software environments.  With this ability to directly import 3D CAD models into MOVE, we can generate marketing assets for greater commercial viability, without sacrificing details in design along the way.

Second, we looked at a few competitors, and Bunkspeed MOVE stood head and shoulders above other animation software packages.  We ultimately made our decision on a couple of factors—we felt like Bunkspeed gave us the greatest opportunity for ongoing enhancements to our productivity, as well as the ability to create gorgeous animated files in less time.  It’s important that we are able to do great work, but our clients need us to be both better and faster at what we do each time out.

Finally, Bunkspeed will enable us to capture not just the high points, but all of the rich details that communicate the product's craftsmanship and value to the customer. We are now working on animated movies where we not only display dynamic views of the models themselves, but also moving parts, groups, and materials.  In the coming weeks and months, we plan on showing off some of our representative work here on the site.