Category: Innovation

Celebrating International Internet Day: Five Patents That Have Shaped the Internet Introduction: The Dawn Of The Internet Did you know that the first Internet message was just two letters long? On 29 October 1969, the message “lo” marked the beginning of a technology revolution that would change our lives forever. International Internet Day, observed on 29 October each year, commemorates the moment that first message was transmitted over the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). Interestingly, the intended first message was “login”, but the ARPANET system crashed after only the first two characters had been sent! Over the following 55 […]

10 UK Patent Applications of 2023: From Flatpack Coffins to Potato Cheese Introduction: Exploring Ten UK Patent Applications With UK-Based Inventors Published in 2023 The Guardian recently published an article titled “Flatpack Coffins And Robot Dogs: Patents Applications Show UK Inventions Of 2023”. The article identifies 5,955 UK patent applications published in 2023 with at least one UK-based inventor and highlights ten such patent applications. While the article summarises the technologies described in those ten patent applications, it does not provide direct links to the published patent applications or include detailed information about them. Also, some of the links in […]

The UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) recently announced a new “IP Access” scheme. At the time of writing this update, there was limited information on the scheme on the UK IPO’s website, so we contacted the UK IPO directly to find out more about the scheme and the related “IP Audit Plus” scheme. The information Russell IP received from the UK IPO on both schemes is reproduced below, starting with the IP Audit Plus scheme, which is a prerequisite to access the IP Access scheme. 1. IP Audit Plus 1.1 Information on the IP Audit Plus Scheme To deliver […]

In part 1 (link here) of this series of short articles on the value of “prior art” searching, I explained how I came up with an idea of a telescopic hex key, but knocked it out through some quick and basic prior art searching. In part 2 (link here), I explained how I used the setback of knocking out my initial idea as a springboard to think around the idea and come up with something, potentially, more useful – before knocking that idea out too. In part 3 (link here), I described how I took a bit of a U-turn […]

In part 1 (link here) of this series of short articles on the value of “prior art” searching, I explained how I came up with an idea of a telescopic hex key, but knocked it out through some ‘quick-and-dirty’ prior art searching. In part 2 (link here), I explained how I used the setback of knocking out my initial idea as a springboard to think around the idea and come up with something, potentially, more useful – before knocking that idea out too. At this juncture, I realised that a universal tool would potentially need to work with hugerange of […]

In part 1 (link here) of this series of short articles on the value of “prior art” searching, I (Iain Russell, founder of Russell IP) explained how I came up with an idea for a telescopic hex key, but knocked it out through some quick and basic prior art searching. I wasn’t ready to give up on the idea and used the setback of knocking out my first attempt as a catalyst for some further development. Back at the drawing board, I got thinking. Actually, maybe my idea isn’t limited to hex keys and perhaps it could be used for […]

One of the most important and valuable things an inventor / prospective patent applicant can do when working on an idea is to see if it’s already out there in the public domain. If so, it might not be possible to get a (valid) patent for the idea. As well as being a patent attorney, I (Iain Russell, founder of Russell IP) am also an inventor. I love problem-spotting and problem-solving and regularly come up with new ideas. In this series of short articles, I’ll share a story of how I managed to ‘knock out’ one such idea, including several […]