Archive for Intellectual Assets
Why the Cosmic and Corporate Org Charts Are Broken: Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and Intangibles
In the past decade or so, scientists have been astounded to discover that the universe that we can see represents only a tiny fraction of the matter and energy that governs the cosmos. Based on the motion of stars and galaxies, strange “dark matter” must be present, increasing the gravitational tug on celestial bodies more than can be accounted for by visible matter. Further, based on the surprising discovered that the universe is expanding, not contracting under its own gravitational pull as expected, scientists have proposed that a strange, repulsive “dark energy” fills the cosmos countering gravity. The combined effect of these unseen entities, dark energy and dark matter, are so great, that they account for 96% of the matter and energy of the universe. In other words, the visible universe that we used to think is all there is actually is only a tiny fraction of what is there. What we see in the “cosmic org chart” accounts for only 4% of what really influences the cosmos.
It’s that way in the business world. too. Companies can create tidy org charts and draft neat process maps to describe how they work, but the unseen reality outside the visible systems may be what really dominates operations. Increasingly, experts in knowledge management are learning that easily overlooked and often invisible intangibles can dominate corporate value and performance. Numerous intangible transactions may be essential to the success of a company, including casual information sharing between trusted friends, helpful exchanges of tips and best practices between employees or between external partners and internal employees, or loyalty that is gained when people are included in decision making. The invisible linkages and hard-to-observe exchanges in a company’s internal an external ecosystems may be the real engines of value creation, regardless of what is on a process map or workstream. By not understanding the value of such intangibles, corporations can easily break key linkages and crush subtle engines of value creation.
Many companies focus on their “value chains” – a term popularized by Michael Porter in his seminal 1985 work, Competitive Advantage. The value chain describes the linear chain of events as materials and products move from sourcing through manufacturing and out to the market. It is a highly useful paradigm for manufacturing and was highly applicable to much of the economy in the era when Porter was doing his research. But since that time, the explosion of the knowledge economy has changed the way we work and create value. One of my favorite authors, Verna Allee, a revolutionary expert in knowledge management, has detailed the move from the value chain to modern ecosystems and Value Networks in her book, The Future of Knowledge: Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks (Burlington, MA: Elsevier Science, 2003). Verna Allee and Associates have introduced a clever, methodical tool called Value Network Analysis for analyzing and visualizing the transactions of intangibles and tangibles that affect a business.
After my training in Value Network Analysis by Verna and her associate, Oliver Schwabe, an exciting new perspective on business and human behavior opened up. I have been highly impressed with the power of Value Network Analysis and the insights that it can rapidly deliver for a company. The Value Network Analysis work that Innovationedge has done as part of larger projects for some of our clients has been a very exciting part of my work since joining Cheryl Perkins’ exciting company. We value the tool enough that we had Verna Allee speak at the 2008 CoDev conference to introduce other business leaders to the basic concepts behind Value Network Analysis. I’m very pleased to see a community emerging of people using Value Network Analysis and developing exciting tools for it.
Here are some resources that you may find helpful in further exploring this area:
- Value-Networks.com
- Hosted Value Network Tools
- A Value Network Approach (PDF) – 2002 Whitepaper by Verna Allee
- ValueNet Works™ Analysis for the Discovery of Viagra (PDF)
Part of the initial output in Value Network Analysis are maps, called “holomaps,” showing human entities as nodes and transactions of tangible or intangible items between them. There is much that can be learned from such holomaps – a topic for later discussion. For now I’ll show you two sample holomaps I created to illustrate simple ecosystems. One shows several external nodes around a manufacturer and the other shows some structure within part of a corporation. For simplicity, the maps lack all the labels explaining the transactions. (Click to enlarge.)
One interesting approach is to use the “holomaps” you get in Value Network Analysis as tools for “what if” scenarios to explore what new partners might do for your business model, or what new business models might do for your ecosystem. Using holomaps to explore innovation ecosystems is a particularly fruitful approach for those doing open innovation and wondering who should be in their external ecosystem.
We have further information on this topic that we’d be happy to share with you. It’s certainly something you should look at to understand how business really works.
For Corporations, Intellectual Asset Strategy Should Lead Innovation
A problem with many corporate IP management efforts is that they are reactive only. These IP systems typically focus on incoming invention disclosures and existing patent applications, leading to recommendations on which disclosures to file, which countries to file in, and which existing applications to abandon for cost control. These are vital components for intellectual asset (IA) management, but they typically fall short in providing strategy that can inform prospective inventors about what kind of inventions are needed.
Effective IA management begins not with the processing of existing documents, but with the development and articulation of vision to guide the process of IA generation and acquisition. It begins with a roadmap of what the corporation needs to own and protect, and that roadmap can then be infused into a written IA strategy statement that guides the IA-generating community to know what they need to create, and also guides IA committees to know what they should be approving.
Written strategy statements can help innovators be more successful and decision makers more disciplined, though there must also be leeway for out-of-the-strategy-box inventions that could lead to unexpected opportunities. However, most IA generating work in a corporation can and should be targeted and focused on specific objectives.
Once a clear vision is communicated regarding the IA needs of the corporation, IA generating activities can be used to supplement normal new product development and R&D. These exercises can be driven by the IA management team to achieve low-cost IA estates in targeted areas for specific objectives, such as averting a disruptive threat, laying a foundation for future IP in a potentially disruptive area where R&D investment is not yet available, weakening the IP potential of a competitive merger or acquisition, etc. At least a portion of the IA generating efforts of a corporation should be driven from the top with a clear objective in mind, rather than waiting for random invention disclosures to trickle up during the course of normal R&D activities. IA strategy should lead innovation.
Was a Nobel Laureate Initimidated into Not Filing a Patent for Graphene?
Graphene: A Two-Dimensional Planar Sheet of Carbon One Atom Thick
A number of people have commented about a recent story on Andre Geim, the inventor of graphene and new Nobel Laureate in physics, and his decision to not pursue a patent. One widely read recent tweet linked to a discussion on Slashdot that allegedly “Puts the lie to the claim that patents help small inventors.” The Slashdot page begins with an observation about why Dr. Geim didn’t patent graphene. Turns out he almost did, but chose not to after a conversation with someone from a big multinational company that could become a major user of graphene in the future. Here’s the content that supposedly shows why patents don’t help small business owners and lone inventors against the big boys of industry:
gbrumfiel writes
“As we discussed on Tuesday, Andre Geim won this year’s Nobel prize in physics for graphene, but he never patented it. In an interview with Nature News, he explains why: ‘We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, “We’ve got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?” It’s quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, “We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it’s really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us.” That’s a direct quote.’”
While some people, including some in the anti-patent community, see this as a self-evident case for the problem with patents, it’s actually just the opposite, in my opinion.
Look at the story again. A brilliant inventor on the verge of filing a foundational patent for a major breakthrough in technology approaches a large corporation who might benefit from the technology. The company learns that the inventor is about to file a patent. A valid patent would mean that the company would have to pay royalties for the invention, perhaps very expensive royalties. If no patent is filed, the company can use the technology for free and develop its own patents without having to cross-license or worry about what Andre Geim owns. Hmm, which would be better: paying a lot, or paying nothing? Having to work with an inventor or tech transfer office or new patent owner who may end up thinking an invention is worth billions, or having the whole thing pretty much gratis? Tough call, but I think the corporate leader was quick to recognize the advantages to nipping the patent threat in the bud. How could he talk the inventor out of a patent? What negotiating tactic to deploy? ah, how about the Hindenburg? That’s where you explain to the other party that their intended course of action would be a flaming disaster, with burning bodies falling out of the sky–oh, the humanity!–resulting in the adversary becoming toast themselves.
The Hindenburg
The Hindenberg it is. The corporate leader then explains that IF Geim is so foolish, so greedy, so inhumane as to file a patent, disastrous suffering will follow and he’ll be burned. “100 patents a day!” Overwhelming force! You’ll go into debt suing us for nothing! You’ll be toast, baby. One big flaming Hindenburg crashing into the ground.
All bluff and bluster. But the intimidation and scare tactics work. “OK, OK, I won’t file my patent. Sorry for even thinking about that. Now I see that patents don’t help the little guy, Mr. Big. Here, take what I’ve got for free.”
Patents are the great equalizer. It’s what gives lone inventors a fighting chance against the big corporation that wants to take what they’ve got for free. It’s not easy and may not work, but with patents you’ve got a chance and corporations know it. Good ones respect that and will work with out. Others will try to take what you’ve got anyway, or better yet if they can, talk you out of pursuing a patent. Without one, you’ve already surrendered. You might as well throw the keys of your car to any passing stranger and hope they will pay you someday after they drive away.
The story isn’t about why patents don’t help the little guy. In fact, I think it’s about how much some big corporations despise and loathe patents in the hands of little guys. So much so that they would make outrageous statements to trick a brilliant scientists into NOT doing the one thing that could have helped him most: filing a patent. Instead, he handed them his inventions for free. Score one for the big guys.
Chemical Engineers Interested in Innovation, Startups, and Intellectual Property? Join Us at the 2010 AIChE Annual Meeting
Innovationedge is pleased to be playing a role in advancing innovation and entrepreneurship for chemical engineers at the AIChE 2010 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City. On Wednesday, Nov. 10, Innovationedge’s Jeff Lindsay will chair a session featuring four outstanding speakers on topics that should be of interest to many chemical engineers. If you are conducting research that could lead to a new business, if you are involved in leading or managing R&D, if you are part of an effort where intellectual property could make a difference, then you should attend our session, “Intellectual Assets in the Digital Era.” You need to register for this conference through AIChE.
Time: Wednesday, November 10, 2010: 8:30 AM-11:00 AM
Location: Salt Palace Convention Center, Grand Ballroom G, Salt Lake City, UT
Chair: Jeff Lindsay, Director of Solution Development, Innovationedge, Neenah, WI
Co-Chair: Ken Horton, Gore School of Business, Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT
Schedule of Papers and Abstracts:
8:30 AM, Paper #406A, “Business Development, IP, and Manufacturing Success: Perspectives From Utah’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership” by David Sorensen, Executive Director of Utah’s Manufacturing Extension Program. (See biographical information below.)
Abstract: The Manufacturing Extension Partnership of Utah has assisted many companies in strengthening their strategy for success and continued growth. We will discuss what it takes to advance your business, including lessons relative to leadership, vision, intellectual property, and coping with changing regulations and policies.
9:10 AM, Paper #406b, “The Role of IP in Successful Startups,” Mike Alder, Director of Technology Transfer, Brigham Young University.
Abstract: Many AIChE members will be involved with a startup at some point in their career. While the capabilities of the management team is of utmost importance, in numerous cases, the success of the startup also depends on the quality of its intellectual property. In this era, an IP-savvy team can take several steps to secure competitive advantage and realize greater value from the technology, products, or services the company offers. This presentation will draw upon experience with many startups and startup teams and will provide guidance to researchers, business leaders, and future entrepreneurs on how to better prepare for success.
9:45 AM, Paper #406c, “An Introduction to IP Law: The Underpinnings of Intellectual Assets,” Ken Horton, Kirton & McConkie, Salt Lake City, UT
Abstract: An understanding of the basics of intellectual property law can help chemical engineers in advancing their own research, in evaluating competitive efforts, in building their own business, or in general advancing their career. This presentation will cover some of the key concepts that engineers should know, including the nature of patents, the different kinds of patents (provisional, utility, design), the role of trademarks and copyrights, what it takes to be patentable, and how changes in patent law may affect your career and business.
10:20 AM, Paper #406d, “Cost-Effective Pursuit of IP in a Down Economy,” by Jonathan Lee
Abstract: How does one get the most protection and benefit from intellectual property when the economy is down? How can patents and other forms of intellectual property be obtained in a cost effective manner when budgets are tight? In this presentation, an experienced patent attorney shares insights into cost effective IP with guidance directed to managers, research leaders, inventors, and entrepreneurs.
Biographical information:
David Sorensen
Mr. Sorensen has over 35 years of experience in a wide variety of technical and managerial assignments requiring comprehensive knowledge in several disciplines relating to engineering, manufacturing, information technology and business systems. He has been directly responsible for major contracts with industry and government agencies and has a proven record of technical competence, customer relations, and business planning in rapidly expanding technical companies. Mr. Sorensen has held increasingly responsible positions in product and service organizations. He is innovative, resourceful, and aggressive in accomplishing assigned responsibilities with major strengths in strategic planning, marketing and management. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering Science and a Masters in Manufacturing Engineering Technology from Brigham Young University.
Since 1995 he’s been the Director of the Utah Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP-Utah), serving primarily the 6,200 manufacturers in the state of Utah. MEP-Utah was selected to initiate and manage the NIST Information Technology Network for over 60 MEP Centers nationwide. Mr. Sorensen is also a BYU adjunct faculty member and the Associate Dean of Technology, Trades and Industry at Utah Valley State College. With a staff of 18, in one year MEP-Utah helped create or save 2,719 jobs in Utah, increased manufacturing sales by more than $121 million and increased employee payroll by more than $84 million.
He’s been the Chairman & CEO for Echo Solutions, a start-up software products and services company; Executive VP of Eyring Research Institute; General Manager of EG&G Services; Director of Engineering at EG&G Idaho Inc.; Manager of Architect Engineering and Construction at Aerojet Nuclear Company and Manager of Power Generation Equipment at Bunker Ramo. He also has experience with GE’s Nuclear Instrumentation as a Senior Applications Engineer, and in engineering positions at Kennecott Copper, Intermountain Industries, and F.C. Torkelson Engineers.
Michael Alder
Mike is Director of Technology Transfer at Brigham Young University, where his work has been nationally recognized by BusinessWeek and others for their success. Mike is also Chair of the Board for WestCAMP Inc. where he has also chaired the National Centers of Excellence (NCOE), a division of WestCAMP. Mike is formerly the CEO of the Biotechnology Association of Alabama. He was also a Venture Partner with Redmont Venture Partners, Inc. He has been heavily involved in the founding of Tranzyme, Inc.; Vaxin, Inc.; Folia, Inc.; Chlorogen, Inc.; Allvivo, Inc. and Cr3, Inc. All but one of these are biotechnology companies (Folia produces specialty biopolymers).
Mr. Alder has 30 years of experience in leading technology-based startup companies. He was previously CEO of Emerging Technology Partners in Birmingham, Alabama from 1997 to 2003. Prior to coming to Alabama in 1994 he co-founded the Grow Utah Fund that focused on creating technology-based businesses. In 1989 he was asked by the Utah Governor to head the State’s Office of Technology Development, which he did for 5 years as its Executive Director, helping bring Utah’s Centers of Excellence programs to national prominence. In 1973 he founded NPI, a plant biotechnology company in Salt Lake City, Utah and served as President, COO and Vice Chairman of that company for 15 years as it grew to over 700 employees.
Ken Horton
Ken Horton is a member of Kirton & McConkie‘s Intellectual Property Practice Section in Salt Lake City. His practice includes domestic and foreign patent prosecution, patent opinions, intellectual property litigation (including both state and federal court actions), domestic and foreign trademark prosecution, trademark opinions, copyrights, trade secrets, intellectual property evaluations and due diligence, as well as technology and intellectual property agreements. Mr. Horton has extensive experience in both pharmaceutical and semiconductor technologies. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of intellectual property law and strategy, speaking both at the 2007 and 2010 A.I.C.H.E. annual conferences and the 2009 A.C.S. annual conference. Additionally, Mr. Horton is an Associate Professor in these topics in the MBA Technology Management Program at the Gore School of Business of Westminster College.
Jonathan Lee
Jonathan Lee is a registered patent attorney and a member of the Utah State Bar practicing at ALG (AdvantEdge Law Group). His practice focuses on adding real-world value to companies, both large and small, by acquiring, securing, and protecting intellectual property rights.
Mr. Lee has prepared and successfully prosecuted hundreds of patent applications throughout his career, primarily in the electrical, electro-mechanical, and computer engineering fields. He currently helps a number of Fortune 1000 companies manage and develop their domestic and worldwide patent portfolios. He also regularly counsels clients in other aspects of intellectual property law, including litigation, licensing, and opinion work, as well as due diligence examinations, copyrights and trademarks, and patent reexamination proceedings.
Prior to joining ALG, Mr. Lee worked for nationally recognized law firms in Washington, D.C. and Salt Lake City, Utah.
Mr. Lee was recently selected as a Mountain States Rising Star by Super Lawyers, a peer-reviewed publication.
The Circuit of Innovation™
The Circuit of Innovation™ from Innovationedge
This image from Innovationedge is used in our book, Conquering Innovation Fatigue, to describe the relationship that needs to exist between intellectual assets and the marketing plan to complete the circuit that connects the power of the market to inventors. Leave out either a sound IA strategy (holistic or 360 IA™) or the marketing plan, and you’ve short-circuited your chances for success. Ideally, your intellectual assets are in synch with your marketing plan, meaning they reinforce the marketing story and tell a marketable story of their own, in harmony with the marketing plan. The strengths you sell to the market had better be reflected in some way in the intellectual assets (think more broadly than patents alone, of course). This will be part of our conversation tonight on Brian Fried’s hit radio show, GotInvention radio at GotInvention.com, broadcast at 7 pm Central Time.
Be sure to tune in next week on March 25 to hear Cheryl Perkins, CEO of Innovationedge, share more about what it takes to achieve innovation success.
Introduction to Defensive Publications
Here’s a brief Pixetell video presentation introducing some of the issues you should be considering in terms of defensive publications. Assistance with low-cost intellectual asset strategy is an important service Innovationedge offers for its clients. If you would like to know how we can help you save money and improve the results you’re getting with your IP budget, contact us and let us show you what we can do for you.
Don't Overlook the Power of Defensive Publications
One of the most important lessons I learned about intellectual asset strategy during my time as Corporate Patent Strategist at Kimberly-Clark Corporation was the value of aggressive defensive publications. IBM, one of the world’s leaders in extracting value from its patent estate, publishes about half of all its invention disclosures. John Cronin of ipCapital Group taught us some of the reasons for IBM’s aggressive publishing and some of the unexpected benefits of publishing. He was involved in IBM’s successful efforts in the 1990s to generate revenue by licensing its estate. One of their early efforts involved a patent for a technology (scanning tunnelling microscope) where the value of a patent estate ended up being reduced by about 90% due to a group of minor improvement patents on top of the foundational IBM patent. Many of the improvements were things that IBM had thought of but didn’t feel were worth the cost of additional patents. They realized that such improvements needed to be disclosed to create prior art that would stop others from getting patents for all those minor variations or minute improvements, thereby increasing the value of their own estate.
The IBM STM story is behind this passage from Richard Poynder’s 2001 article, “On the Defensive about Invention“:
As patenting strategies become more sophisticated, so the value of defensive publishing increases. It can, for instance, protect against picket-fencing – where competitors patent small incremental improvements in your patent in order to erode its value and enable them to license your technology on preferential terms.
In 1982, for instance, International Business Machines was granted a US patent for the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) capable of imaging atomic details as small as 1/25th the diameter of a typical atom.
At first IBM dominated the STM field. By 1989, however, it had been picket-fenced by competitors.
“If IBM had published disclosures of all of the incremental innovation around their pioneering technology, they could have prevented others from picket-fencing them,” says Tom Colson at IP.com. “They would, in effect, have taken full control of the technology without putting patent resources at risk.”
Such blocking tactics can also be achieved by patenting the incremental improvements, but defensive publishing is significantly cheaper. “It costs $109 ( £75) per document to publish on IP.com,” says Mr Colson. “This compares very favourably with the $20,000 it costs per patent application to file in key locations worldwide.”
The price at IP.com has come up since then, but it’s still an incredible bargain. For a very small fee, your document is almost instantly published and time stamped, archived, and made searchable by the PTO and other patent offices, providing a lasting and secure record that the information disclosed was part of the public domain at that time.
Some of you with corporate R&D or IP experience have faced the pain of seeing competitors get patents on things you had considered long ago but thought were too “obvious” or minor to be worth a patent. An important lesson from IP litigation is that even an invalid patent can still be a major headache, one that can cost millions. Much better to reduce the odds of such nuisance patents by creating a strong body of prior art that discloses bells and whistles as they come up and also discloses various combinations that competitors might be working on to reduce what they can patent in the fields important to you.
Publications need to be crafted for strategic purposes. There are quite a few issues to consider, such as how to get the internal review needed to avoid harmful disclosure, how to get them written, what kind of incentives to provide for inventors/authors, whether to publish anonymously or not, and what venues to use (IP.com is one of my favorite), etc. I’ll be discussing some of these issues in the future, but feel free to give me a call if you’d like to learn more.
When Innovationedge helps a company strengthen their innovation strategy or IP strategy, defensive publications are usually one of the key topics we address. We find very few companies do anything serious in this effort, and many Legal Departments seem inherently geared to overlook the benefits that can be obtained with creative publications. That’s understandable. The IP attorneys are all about IP, and publications don’t fall into the “P” area of property. They are intellectual assets, however, that must not be neglected for cost-effective IP strategy.
25 innovative companies by patent ranking
Not too long ago Businessweek published a list of the 25 most innovative companies in the world. Check out the slideshow to see who made the list. This particular ranking was compiled by Ocean Tomo an intellectual-property consulting firm. The firm sorted through U.S. patents granted to the world’s 1,000 biggest companies in the past four years. Ocean Tomo then assessed the patents’ value by tallying, among other things, patent filing trends, litigation rates, and how many times each was cited by other applicants or in scientific and technical journals.
Patents: Valuable Tools for Advancing the Public Good
Many of our readers understand how a sound patent system can advance the public good. The US patent system, for example, is based on a social compact between inventors and the public in which inventors are asked to teach the world their secrets in exchange for a limited monopoly on the invention. For a few years, the inventors can control the rights to what they have invented, and then the patent expires, making it available to all. Meanwhile, by teaching how to practice the invention, knowledge is advanced and everyone’s boat is lifted. Take away the respect for intellectual property rights inherent in the patent system, and inventors would be more likely to protect their invention through secrecy, limiting the advance of knowledge and taking us a step back toward the so-called Dark Ages when much practical knowledge was kept secret in the minds of a few masters and guilds. Chances are you already understand that.
Interestingly, even for those who do not want to profit from their inventions but wish to turn them over to the public, patents can still be useful tools to advance the public good. This is true when there is a need to protect and maintain the quality of the invention for the public good. A great example of this principle comes from the story behind the foundation of one of the world’s most successful technology transfer organizations, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, known as WARF. Here is an excerpt from the history of the founding of WARF:
WARF’s creation traces back to UW-Madison biochemistry professor Harry Steenbock, who demonstrated in late 1923 that irradiation with ultraviolet light increased the vitamin D content of foods and other materials. Steenbock knew his invention held the potential to eliminate rickets, a crippling bone disease of children caused by vitamin D deficiency. He also knew that without proper management his advance might never reach this potential.
Thirty years earlier, one of Steenbock’s predecessors in the biochemistry department, Stephen Babcock, developed a novel test for determining the butter fat content of milk. Babcock consciously chose not to patent the advance, instead giving it “freely to the world.”
But Babcock quickly learned that without patent protection he had no way to control the accuracy and reliability of the “Babcock tests” developed by companies. In the rush to meet the demands of dairies clamoring for the test, many manufacturers produced sub-standard testing equipment and supplies, resulting in Babcock tests that often failed to work. The situation eventually grew so serious that state legislators had to intervene with regulations for standardizing the test. Although the invention was eventually accepted worldwide, Babcock reportedly regretted his decision not to patent the technique.
Determined not to repeat Babcock’s experience, Steenbock moved quickly to file a patent application with $300 of his own money when he discovered that irradiating rodent chow with ultraviolet light cured rickets in laboratory rats. Soon afterward, Steenbock was approached by the Quaker Oats Company, which offered him a deal worth nearly one-million dollars for the exclusive rights to his invention.
But rather than sell his discovery to a commercial concern for his own profit, Steenbock strongly believed that any monetary gains resulting from his work should return to the UW-Madison to support scientific research.
Steenbock went on to form WARF to provide a means for patents from the university to benefit the university and further advance the public good. Today revenues from the patents coming from the University of Wisconsin provide many millions of dollars to advance research in many areas, further raising the water level in the sea of knowledge and further advancing the public good.
By protecting a health care invention with a patent, Steenbock was able to ensure that the invention was applied properly and used to advance health appropriately. The control that the patent provided was critical for the success of the technology that went on to advance the quality of life of people all over the globe.