The White House has announced it is supporting waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines in an effort to expand access to vaccines worldwide.
Tag Archives: PATENTS
Future Apple Watches Could Scan Your Veins to Detect Gestures
While accelerometers and gyroscopes are generally how smartwatches detect hand movements, a newly-released patent hints that Apple may be considering scanning veins in your wrist via the Apple Watch to detect non-touch gestures in the future.
Continue reading Future Apple Watches Could Scan Your Veins to Detect Gestures
Meet the Female Inventor Behind Mass-Market Paper Bags
It’s natural to think about the processes that produced the food in your daily sack lunch, but have you ever stopped to consider the manufacturing techniques behind the sack itself? The flat-bottomed brown paper bags we encounter constantly—in the lunch context, at grocery stores, in gift shops—are as unassuming as they are ubiquitous, but the story underlying them deserves recognition. At the center of it is a precocious young woman, born in Maine on the heels of the Industrial Revolution and raised in New Hampshire. Her name is Margaret Kni
Continue reading Meet the Female Inventor Behind Mass-Market Paper Bags
The First African-American to Hold a Patent Invented ‘Dry Scouring’
The next time you pick up your clothes at the dry cleaner, send a thank you to the memory of Thomas Jennings. Jennings invented a process called ‘dry scouring,’ a forerunner of modern dry cleaning. He patented the process in 1821, making him likely the first black person in America to receive a patent. Continue reading The First African-American to Hold a Patent Invented ‘Dry Scouring’
The Woman Who Made a Device to Help Disabled Veterans Feed Themselves—and Gave It Away for Free
In 1952, Bessie Blount boarded a plane from New York to France to give away her life’s work. The 38-year-old inventor planned to hand over to the French military, free of charge, an extraordinary technology that would change lives for disabled veterans of the Second World War: an automatic feeding device. To use it, a person only needed to bite down on a switch, which would deliver a mouthful of food through a spoon-shaped tube. Continue reading The Woman Who Made a Device to Help Disabled Veterans Feed Themselves—and Gave It Away for Free
New Apple Patent Shows How That Edge-to-Edge Display Could Work
On Tuesday, the US Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday granted Apple a patent that gives credence to those rumors of an edge-to-edge OLED iPhone. For years, users have longed for a phone that’s totally made up of a screen—no bullshit bezel needed—and this looks like one way it could happen.
Continue reading New Apple Patent Shows How That Edge-to-Edge Display Could Work
Samsung Thinks It Can Make Smartwatches Useful By Projecting Onto Your Hand
Samsung thinks it has a possible solution to the problem of tiny, hard-to-read smartwatches: a projector. The company has filed a patent for a smartwatch that projects a larger screen onto the user’s hand or forearm.
Continue reading Samsung Thinks It Can Make Smartwatches Useful By Projecting Onto Your Hand