The year 2007 saw a number of groundbreaking inventions from many sectors. Medical technology, personal communication, sports safety, energy saving breakthroughs, and other gadgetry saw huge advances throughout the year. However, some inventions simply outshine the rest of the pack and deserve higher mention. In this article, we will examine the top 10 inventions of 2007 and what makes them a cut above the rest!

1) Air conditioner that controls “superbugs”

The Kunne air conditioning system is a tremendous breakthrough in climate control: the first ever AC that controls both heat and humidity! By controlling both of these elements, buildings such as hospitals can regulate the flow of viruses, mold, and germs in the air. This will, in theory, help prevent such buildings from becoming “sick buildings” where people get sick simply by working there or visiting. If the Kunne system becomes widespread, the days of catching “that bug that’s been going around” might become a thing if the past!

2) Electro Needle Biomedical Sensor Array

Tired of sticking needles into your flesh just to run a blood test? With the electro needle biomedical sensor array, this painstaking task might not be necessary for much longer. It is a small patch of a device that contains electro-chemically treated probes. When it gets applied to a patient’s skin, the probes perform an astonishingly accurate determination of chemical readings in the patent’s bloodstream without having to withdraw any actual blood. In this way, a patient’s electrolytes, toxins, carbohydrates, proteins, bacteria, and even viruses can be spotted without a single needle, all through this one patch. This patch could spell a whole new era in disease prevention, as those who refuse to get needle tests out of fear no longer have an excuse to avoid those annual checkups!

3) Diesel Exhaust Purification System

In these environmentally conscious times, it seems that everyone is looking for ways to protect the environment and lower pollution. This is exactly what Raymond Covit, a Los Angeles mechanic, did with his diesel exhaust purification system. This incredible invention forces diesel engines to re-breathe their own exhaust fumes, a drastic change from the engines of today which simply spew their fumes into the air we breathe. If Covit’s system catches on, we can expect a significant reduction in vehicle-based air pollution, not to mention those hideous black clouds we see pumping into the air during our morning commute. That’s something we can all be happy about!

4) Sports safety clothing that hardens on impact

The Dow Corning Active Protection System (named after its creator) is a new type of clothing material for athletes and bikers. The clothing is soft and flexible in the normal course of events, but contains a never-before-seen security feature: the clothes harden and become rigid upon any type of hard impact! This protects the wearer in the event of nasty falls and collisions, during which their clothes will protect any skin that is covered by them. Best of all, the material bounces back to its regular, flexible consistency after you are out of harm’s way and is completely washing machine safe. Anyone involved in extreme sports like skateboarding, BMX bikes, rock crawling, or rugby may soon find that these clothes are the standard apparel!

5) Organic light-emitting diode

Organic light-emitting diodes (or OLEDs) are said to have the potential to change the way we light our homes and design clothing. OLEDs are simply thin strips of plastic with the ability to conduct electricity and harness solar power for later use. The applications of this technology are virtually limitless, such as changing the color of clothing. Another novel use (no doubt suggested by the owner of a sports bar) is OLED strips on beer cans that display up-to-the-minute sports scores. The best part is that OLEDs are significantly more energy efficient than today’s light bulbs, paving the way for guilt-free innovation and lighting possibilities!

6) Steam-O-Lene Engine

Enraged over high gas prices and wasteful engines, Bruce Crower decided that it would be more productive to do something about it than complain about it. The result? The fascinating Steam-O-Lene engine that makes more efficient use of steam to squeeze more life out of every gas tank. While the typical engine wastes ¾ of its energy in the form of heart, Crower’s engine (a single-cylinder diesel with 8HP) uses that heat to create steam, thus recapturing some of that precious lost energy. It runs much the same way that conventional four-stroke combustion engines do, but just as the Steam-O-Lene finishes the fourth stroke, water is squirted into the 1,500 degree cylinder. This intense heat and the ensuing reaction of the water creates steam, which generates a 1,600-fold expansion in volume and drives a piston down to create some more power.

The end result is more of that lost heat being converted to power strokes that actually move the car forward instead of evaporating into nothingness.

7) The Green Brick

While clay bricks have become a fixture in American construction, inventor Henry Liu has a new vision: a green brick. His brick is made entirely of fly ash, which is a major waste product of coal power plants that simply sits in a landfill after it is produced. And rather than solidifying under extreme heat like regular bricks do, the green brick forms under pressure. This saves a considerable amount of energy and costs some 20% less, which puts a smile on manufacturers’ faces. They are even desirable from a construction standpoint because the way they are molded leads to smoother, more uniform surfaces that slash precious time off of the bricklaying process.

8) StarChase Pursuit Management System

If you were planning on orchestrating a heart-pumping police chase anytime soon, this device might give you reason to reconsider. The StarChase Pursuit Management system uses a laser-guided “gun” that is mounted on the front grill of squad cars. The beam can tag fleeing vehicles at almost any speed with a GPS tracker that will retain the data and forward it in real-time back to police headquarters for further analysis and use in assisting backup patrols. Bad news for thieves and drug dealers, but great news for the crime fighters.

9) Blood type conversion

It used to be that if you needed type-O blood, nothing but that would suffice. This has long been a vexing problem for blood banks, as type-O negative is by far the most valuable blood commodity there Is. However, testing is underway for “Blood Simple”, a device that Danish researchers created to convert other blood types to O with the aid of bacteria. The crux of the discovery? Two isolated enzymes made by bacteria that can erode the sugar molecules which demarcate types A, B, and AB-negative blood from one another. This would more or less convert them to type O, greatly increasing the potential supply of this highly sought-after blood type. With technology like this on the horizon, blood transfusion shortages may not plague us for very much longer!

10) Apple iPhone

Named Time Magazine’s 2007 Invention of the Year, the iPhone has delighted critics since Steve Jobs dramatically unveiled it at the MacWorld convention earlier this year. In one device, the iPhone consolidates a wireless phone, an iPod, a web browser, a camera, and an e-mail communicator. The Internet is rendered much as it looks on normal computers and easily navigated with a super-intuitive touch screen. The iPhone also boasts a massive 8GB of storage for your music, movies, pictures, or documents. And gone are the days of cheap, fast-dying cell phone batteries: the iPhone offers 24 hours of life for continuous music playback, and as long as 12 hours for continuous video. With so much power and capability packed into one gadget, it is no wonder the iPhone took home Time’s top invention honors!

One of the most common obstacles facing the new inventor is running a patent search. There are many reasons why an inventor would want to do this. The most obvious reason is to justify spending a great deal of time and money on an invention by determining that no one else has patented it. You may even have a specific patent number that you want to investigate further for any similarities to your project. Whatever the reason may be, the ins and outs of conducting a patent search are not always obvious. In this guide, we will explain how to do so in easy to follow steps.

Step One: Narrow your search to a 5-15 very specific names.

This is a crucial yet oft-overlooked step in the patent search process. Before running any type of search, anywhere, you need to narrow your search to a handful of very specific names. This is because the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) demands specificity. The vaguer a patent is the more control the holder can exercise over the market. Therefore, there is an immense burden on patent applicants to be as narrow and specific about the nature of their patent as possible. You need to heed this fact when running a patent search. For example, if the patent you are looking for pertains to an online shopping database that ties a user’s shopping preferences to his shopping history, running a search for “online shopping database” is almost pointless in this context. It will return more results than you could possibly screen, and few if any will be relevant to what you are looking for.

Instead, a much better search would be something like “online shopping history based matching metrics.” The closer you can get to describing what the patent truly protects, the more helpful your search results will be. Simply think long and hard about what you are looking for and come up with 5-15 very specific potential names for it. These are the names you will use to conduct your search.

Step Two: Run the search via the USPTO’s official website.

It used to be that the only way to run a patent search was hiring a patent attorney. Prior to the advent of the Internet, these attorneys had a near exclusive monopoly on running searches and doing all manner of patent-related work. Fortunately, this is no longer the case. Anyone who wants to run a patent search can visit the USPTO website and do so in a simple, self-service fashion.

SRC: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

There are a couple of options at this page that you can use depending on your exact needs. If you just want to run a cursory search for the patent you have in mind, the Quick Search will work wonders. From here, you can type in two descriptive terms and specify the years between which you would like to search: either 1976 to the present or 1790 to the present. Now, common sense will go a long way towards making your life easier in this regard. If the patent you are searching for is in any way high-tech, you can filter out a lot of irrelevant results by choosing the “1976 to the present” option. However, if your invention is timeless or mechanical in nature, the full “1790 to the present” option is probably best.

You can also drill down into the patent database for the exact type of information you want. Clicking the “All Fields” drop-down menu turns up a cavalcade of search options. You can search for the abstract, the issue date, patent number, assignee name and city, and about a dozen other options.

SRC: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html

However, what if you already have a patent number and just want to see information about what it pertains to? This link takes you straight to a patent number search. Just key in the number and click “Search” to find the full text of the patent in question.

SRC: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm

Now, you may notice in using these pages that the USPTO’s website is not the most user-friendly resource out there. Luckily, there is an easier way: Google Patent Search. The reason we covered the USPTO’s site first (or at all) rather than Google is because this is the official first source of all patent-related data. While Google is by all counts reliable, you should use the USPTO’s site if there are any worries about gaps in the patent records you are seeking.

Step 3: Use Google Patent Search

Google Patent Search is a beta service that combines the easy searching of Google with the patent data from the USPTO. That is the true beauty of using Google instead of the USPTO: your search results and patent profiles are significantly cleaner, more readable and easier on the eyes.

SRC: http://www.google.com/patents

As a demonstration, we will run a search for the patent on the electrophotographic copier, or “copy machine.”

http://www.google.com/patents?id=Pp48AAAAEBAJ

As you can see, the page is very helpfully divided up into distinct sections, making it easy for you to find the information you are interested it. You can choose to download the whole patent, view it as an Adobe PDF document, or even click a direct link to the USPTO’s record. On this same page, you can also view the patent’s list of citations, the claims it makes, and the drawings the patent holder accompanied with his patent application. Again, while these things can be found at the USPTO site, those unfamiliar with patent records will waste hours looking for what Google organizes so readily.

There you have it: three simple steps to conducting a patent search. Above all, remember that the more specific your searches are, the more likely you are to find the patent you want – or – the more justification you will have to conclude that no one has your patent, if the search comes up empty. Good luck!

Eric Corl is the Founder and CEO of IdeaBuyer.com, a marketplace for new technology and products that gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email him at EricCorl@IdeaBuyer.com. You can visit the site by clicking here > Patents for Sale.

What is old becomes new again with a high-power microwave

John Gerbich

Inventor Frank Pringle might have begun the end of an era of wasted energy with the introduction of his new “Hawk” microwave.

Do not let the name fool you; it is not any ordinary microwave. According to Popular Science magazine, this microwave is capable of extracting the hidden oil and natural gas bound together inside of almost everything around you, including such items as tires, plastic cups and even rocks.

The secret is that all of these items contain a base of hydrocarbon. This giant microwave can break down the old strings of hydrocarbon that the item was originally composed of into component parts. One tire, when broken down to a size that the microwave can handle, can be broken in to four different parts: diesel fuel, carbon black, combustible gas and high-strength steel, said an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The process is fairly straightforward. The item is placed into the microwave in manageable pieces and the microwave is turned on. Once separated, the diesel fuel goes into a glass container and the natural gas goes to a tank. The only thing left in the microwave unit itself is the carbon black. Video of the microwave in action is available online.

This new process is a huge advancement in the world of recycling. Many experts have been unsure as to what to do with these materials once they are no longer usable. Stockpiles of old used tires are often stored in large tire dumps – wasted energy. This new microwave provides a solution. As many of these materials were once thought of as useless, they are now able to be renewed and reused.

The development of the microwave took Pringle 10 years, much of that time spent perfecting the correct microwave frequencies to extract resources from a variety of materials. Because of this, many materials can be extracted, all at different wave frequencies – hundreds of materials. His exhaustive efforts have not gone unnoticed. With this large number of workable materials, his invention can appeal to an extremely large market.

The most obvious market is that of the scrap metal industry. According to NewScientist.com in reference to a particular auto recycling company, “for every ton of steel that the company recovers, between 226 kg and 318 kg of (trash) is produced.” With the new microwave, the auto recyclers are no longer stuck harvesting only scrap metal; they can now make use of almost all parts of the vehicle. This greatly reduces the amount of materials that must be deposited in landfills. Not surprisingly, the first of Pringle’s microwaves was sold to an auto recycler in New York. The price was $5.1 million.

Another possible customer is the US military. The war in Iraq has produced massive amounts of plastics from water bottles and food containers that could easily be converted back to essential fuels needed by the military. An investment such as this would definitely be valuable in reducing unnecessary waste as well as creating more energy sources in a limited environment.

Oil companies may also provide an unexpected market for the Hawk. The microwave creates competition for them, but might also prove to be extremely useful in extracting petroleum trapped in shale. While an investment in the Hawk might be financing their potential opposition, the benefits far outweigh the possible negative effects.

The Hawk is also able to make recycling of other materials much more simple, said NewScientist.com. An excellent example is that of recycling copper wiring. When recycling this wiring, there is no need for its insulation. The insulation, however, can be recycled with the use of the microwave. Not only does this allow the recycling process to be more inclusive, but it makes the copper itself much easier to obtain. The wiring with insulation can be put in the microwave and all that will remain inside of the unit is the copper and the resulting carbon black – metals cannot be extracted.

Inventions as useful as this new microwave are not created often. These kinds of tools could help make the world a cleaner place. They can also help us hold on to what few natural non-renewable resources we have. The ability to reuse will undoubtedly drive us to a more “green” future. Creative minds must continue to create and lead us there.

This article is provided for your personal use by http://www.IdeaBuyer.com. Idea Buyer is the online marketplace for intellectual property and gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and retailers who are looking for new products to bring to market.

Please do not redistribute or reproduce this article without written permission.

John Gerbich is the Staff Writer for IdeaBuyer.com, a marketplace for new technology and products that allows inventors to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. Visit the site by clicking here > Patents for Sale.

This is an interesting invention - the disappearing car door. While the cost is not disclosed on the site, I doubt it’s a modification that can be made economically at this point in time. However, if you’re looking for that eye catching trait for a modified import and price isn’t a concern, this would certainly do the trick. You can read more about the invention at http://www.disappearing-car-dood.com/ or watch the video below.

Eric Corl is the Founder and CEO of Idea Buyer, a marketplace for new technology and products that allows inventors to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers at www.IdeaBuyer.com. You can email him at EricCorl@IdeaBuyer.com.