Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Secret EEStor Patents Not So Secret Any More

Thanks to what appears to possibly be a bit of a slip up on the part of the US Patent & Trademark office, we now know the descriptions of two additional EEStor patent applications. They are:

11/499594 Systems and methods for utility grid power averaging, long term uninterruptible power supply, power line isolation from noise and transients and intelligent power transfer on demand

11/45381 Methods of purifying barium nitrate aqueous solution

The slip up appears to be that the patent examiner did an intranet search on the USPTO network to locate all patents/applications whose inventor name is Richard Weir. He then published the search results to the file wrapper for patent application 11/400,875.

Oddly, these patents were filed before others that have already published which is odd. What is even odder is another patent filed at the same time, 11/400,875 is about to granted based on a recent issue letter. If that happens soon, it means we will have two patents filed at roughly the same time, where one has been granted and the other hasn't even been published yet!

Keep in mind, as I've stated previously, the normal process as I understand it is for a patent to publish 18 months after being filed unless the applicant makes a secrecy request, which would not be possible if World patents are filed. The other possibility is that EEStor's patents are under government secrecy protection.

For those keeping notes. The search was performed 6 August 2007.



Marine's B-day


Happy Birthday, United States Marine Corps! It's fitting to honor this day by recalling an example of why it is celebrated. Enjoy. Here's another.