Best Practices or a New Way: Patent Drafting vs Ideation

By Ty Hagler and Brian Castle

We hear a lot about best practices in innovation management circles.  In fact, we recently interfaced, at the same conference, with a speaker who had authored a book called Best Practices Are Stupid, as well as a consultant who recommended applying best practices in certain aspects of product development.

We were impressed with both of these people and their recommendations.  So the question is—who’s right?

Well, they both are. It depends on the context.  First, let’s look at how best practices can be useful to a process within innovation management.  Best practices can be essential to processes that have to be air-tight in execution, especially when security and liability are involved. What comes to mind is our firm’s work in intellectual property, specific to our work in patent drafting through Trig PDQ.

In the Trig PDQ framework, we collaborate with patent attorneys all over the country, as they are working to secure patents with the US Patent and Trademark Office.  Patent work represents a combination of speed and accuracy—attorneys are working under fixed deadlines, and errors can mean a rejection from the USPTO and the addition of much unwanted delay.

Recognizing this challenge, we have developed our own best practices for patent drafting orders, their execution by our team of industrial designers, and their ultimate delivery to the client.  The process is systematic, driven by checklists and proofing assignments, ensuring that each time the process moves like clockwork.  These best practices are thus critical to limiting human error and create an efficient, repeatable process.

In contrast, we see have discarded the best practices model with our ideation services.  When we facilitate ideation sessions, we go through a structured process of encouraging multidisciplinary teams to be wildly creative, yet focused on appropriately-scoped goals.  Human psychology, especially within the dynamic of creative teams, is a fascinating topic where we are constantly experimenting with techniques for better extracting brilliant ideas from our clients.    

We like to think of ideation sessions as a jam session of jazz musicians.  Much like jazz music, ideation feels free and improvisational. Yet, when you stop to consider jazz, the notes still have to make sense, have some kind of order, to achieve music—having components like rhythm and harmony—versus collaborative noise.

In the same way that jazz musicians want to make music, we want to generate structured, workable ideas from free-form concepts.  To make this happen, we are employing a constantly expanding set of tools encourage creativity in the ideation format.  From visual scribes (designers who sketch ideas as fast as can be written) to a deck of Ideation Divergence Cards that we’ve recently launched, we like to think that rather than relying upon best practices in ideation, we are constantly pushing the envelope with new techniques. 

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.



Better Patent Applications through Better Patent Figures

The United States Patent and Trademark Office reviews around half a million patent applications each year, and the agency approves these applications at a rate of roughly 50 per cent year to year. The level of execution of many elements of the application can lead to the pass or failure of the patent. One such piece of the application, the patent figures section, a visual layout of the patent’s design intent, is sometimes neglected.

From time to time, our Trig PDQ division receives patent drawings that have caused an office action on the patent application. We get requests to correct fuzzy, poorly illustrated figures that caused the USPTO’s rejection, and thus have added considerable cost and headache to the applicant. Compared to our work in the more expressive industrial design projects where creativity and artistic interpretation drives the 3D CAD sculpting, drafting patent figures require a different level of attention to detail to make sure the figures accurately represent the claims and comply with USPTO standards. 

For designers to assist intellectual property attorneys properly there is a learning curve.  Unlike the more subjective role of design in co-creating the rules governing a visual brand language, patent figures have a more defined visual script with specific rules for treating line art.  We not only carefully follow the USPTO Drawing Guide to make sure the figures adhere to professional standards, but also take note of individual patent attorney’s preferences to seamlessly integrate with larger patent applications.  Trained illustrators thus ensure that the figures are publication-ready for both utility patents and design patents.

In addition to finding the right talent that has been trained for the task, it is also important to have the right software tools.  At Trig PDQ, we use vector-based illustration tools to ensure accurate, clean lines on all of our patent figures.  Not only are the vector files clean, they are much smaller and easier to transfer among designers, intellectual property attorneys and staff, and the patent applicant.  Typically, we see a huge difference in file size—for example, you might see a vector file at 100KB versus a 2MB rasterized figure that had been scanned in from a hand-drawn illustration.

The process of bringing new products to market is difficult enough.  Like most things in life, it’s better when you don’t create your own problems.  With the knowledge that the USPTO rejects almost half of the applications it sees each year; applicants will be wise to work with seasoned IP attorneys and their trusted partners to make sure that the patent is weighed on its own merits, and not handicapped by cutting corners on the application itself.