Patent Tales
July’s stroll through the Wonderful World of Patents was likened to Alice falling down the rabbit hole. This week’s post is more like Billie Goats Gruff making a run for it over the troll-dominated Bridge of Willful Patent Infringing. Audiologists rarely read patents, but eventually they are affected by patent skirmishes and patent law,…
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Hearing Device Patents in January and February 2014
Polymer materials were the standouts in today’s round of patents. Audiologists’ training is short on polymers so we may not fully appreciate their importance: Patent #8628831 praises polymers for their special properties such as “positional selective metallization” which can be applied to hearing aid components where “it may be desirable to combine electrical and mechanical…
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You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby: Hearing Device Patents in November-December 2013
Let’s launch the New Year with an exciting list of new patent approvals, in the tradition of previous posts, continuing the momentum started by E.G. Hyde in 1855 with the first US hearing aid patent (#12,951 shown above). If “exciting” doesn’t sound like the right word, how about “contentious” or at least “competitive”? The numbers…
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US Hearing Aid/Device Patents for September and October 2013
Another bunch of patents compiled, with a few notes of varying importance. Important: “Hearing aid” and “hearing device” are quickly becoming inadequate to capture innovations and new players in the ear-level communication field. Patent applications are proliferating from a variety of sources for diverse technologies and methodologies (e.g., Patent Application 20130272555). It’s tempting to include them…
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Hearing Device Patent Activity for May and June 2013
Patent reform just got sexy in the US Congress as politicians tout “innovation, not litigation, [a]s a bipartisan goal.” Hearing Economics did some foreshadowing of this trend based on recent patent fights in our little industry that didn’t go so well. New hearing device patent approvals for the last two months are shown in the…
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