Don Moyer Innovation Home

Helping the greatest
diversity of persons
understand and overcome
barriers to innovation.

New book -- Talking with Innovators -- free online

You can access a web version of the new -- Talking with Innovators -- book via this Talking with Innovators book link. It is a work in progress based on:

Patent Work

My patent practice is closed.
For patent and other intellectual property work, contact my colleague:

Inventor's Council

One of the responses to the oil crisis of the 1970's was creation of the US Energy Related Inventions Program in the US Department of Commerce and Department of Energy -- Commerce having expertise for evaluating inventions and Energy having funding for promising inventions. In 1983 ERIP held a large event in Chicago to make contact with inventors. One of the goals of the event was to bring about a Chicago based organization to help inventors so that those inventors would know about ERIP.

Thus, the Chicago based Inventors' Council was incorporated as an Illinois not-for-profit corporation and began operation the fall of 1983. Helping inventors meant convening meetings to answer inventor's questions. This happened at least once a week in various venues, the Chicago Public Library being the most frequent venue. The meetings had just enough steps-from-idea-to-profit structure to raise no end of questions.

The main struggle was funding the work, which got progressively more difficult as memory of the oil crisis faded and interest in inventors faded. To continue to help inventors I took the monster USPTO exam in 1994 to be a registered Patent Agent and started a solo patent practice.

As I was preparing for that monster exam late 1993, students at John Marshall Law School were starting a patent clinic to do patent work free for appropriate inventors. I was contacted because I had access to appropriate inventors. I was eager to help because this would help inventors and because it was an opportunity to add some understanding and respect for unsophisticated inventors into the education of patent attorneys.

The first client of the JMLS Patent Clinic was Noel Alsbrook. You can see that story via this Noel link. The second client Kathleen Cox also recieved a patent. Then things drifted leading the law school to decide to make the Patent Clinic a regular class. I was asked to teach this class which I did do starting in 1998 again because it helped inventors and because it brought some understanding, and respect for, unsophisticated inventors into the education of patent attorneys.

As JMLS Ptent Clinic work grew Inventors' Council work declined until operations were closed.

In 2009, in response to a request from the USPTO, the law school created an advanced patent clinic. This grew, with about fifteen cases on the docket by 2012. I retired from all law school work mid-April 2012 and do not know the current state of the Patent clinic there.

Physics

I am often asked how I got into this trouble, "this trouble" meaning the activities described above. Here's an attempt to explain.

I was lucky to study physics at university because that provided, and still provides, a very good base for many things to come. Was especially lucky to study at a time and in a department where there was no end of opportunities for hands-on experience.

Especially valuable are experiences devising ways to measure phenomena. Then building apparatus to make the measurements. Then making the measurements. Then comparing measurements with calculations based on assumptions about what caused the phenomena.

Measuring effects of gravity on masses and comparing the measurements with Newton's approximation of the gravitational force; measuring effects of electromagnetism on charged bodies and comparing with the Lorentz approximation of the electromagnetic force are basic examples.

Especially valuable are studies of all assumptions and errors in all measurements and calculations, presenting results with the error bars and with the assumptions acknowledged, and devising ways to reduce the error bars and improve the assumptions.

Acknowledging the messiness of science led me to see that science should drop the words "fact" and "law" and even "theory" which cause many misunderstandings.

Instead we should talk about approximate results with the error bars included. and talk about how the error bars continue to shrink and how new frontiers of sciences and technologies and innovations continue to be opened.

This would clearly distinguish science from claims of absolute knowledge with not the tiniest error bars. Acknowledging the approximations and error bars would make life hard for folks wanting to "teach the controversy" as the science error bars continue to shrink leaving less and less space for any imagined controversy.

History of Science

That, with all the messiness and all the temptations to cheat, the error bars do continue to get smaller and new frontiers of knowledge continue to be opened, led me to want to learn more about how this works. Which led to study of History of Science.

Looking into the past took me well beyond physics to history, philosophy, sociology of sciences and technologies. This was about understanding innovations of all sorts, about understanding how barriers to innovation are overcome.

In this journey which began with study of physics I then saw that my goal is helping the greatest diversity of persons understand innovation, barriers to innovation, ways to overcome barriers to innovation.

You can, if you must learn more via this bio link.

You can contact me via this email address link: don@donmoyer.com.