Category: Patents

Musings, Patents, Quantum

Quantum Optics Patent – Grant Approved!!

I have just received a letter from the Intellectual Property Office in Newport, South Wales.

They have decide to grant me a patent for my “cyfarpar i gynhyrchu parau ffoton” patent application!!

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This patent application I wrote myself; no expensive patent attorney used or required.

So, this is probably the only quantum optics patent granted without any lawyer input and almost certainly the only one written in our rural commune of ~1800 souls in Côtes d’Armor.

This means that I will have three granted patents in a few weeks’ time… two US and one UK.

So maybe there is a tiny bit of boffin juice left…

Dreams, Musings, Patents, personal, Quantum

cyfarpar i gynhyrchu parau ffoton

The subject of my patent application is entangled photon pairs and it seems to me that this is a metaphor for karmic entanglement with the past. My “pet theory” remains that because some people have unresolved karma pertaining to me, I experience karmic breakthrough at a distance of hundreds of kilometres. It is only a pet theory but why otherwise would people from the past continue to impinge unasked and without any conscious forethought into my dreams.

I will metaphorically piss myself laughing if, in the next few days, I get a letter from the Intellectual Property Office after my dream the other day.

There is a part of me tempted to call our local newspaper “Le Trégor” and let them know.

Boffin gallois ….

“Eccentric Welsh ex-scientist from a small village in Brittany gets quantum optics patent granted at the Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom.”

They were interested when a scouse teacher took the piss about football…

Hmnn…

Dreams, Patents

Thunder Cats – Patents – Dream 11-05-23

Here is last night’s dream it is another out of the blue.

The dream starts in a busy open office environment there are many people milling about. There is a lot of noise and the people are mostly “young guns” wearing grey business suits. It has a feel of the city of London, but it is not there. There is a lot of excitement.  

On a screen in the corner is a camera pointing at a stock board at the London Stock Exchange. One can see a blank board and it is before the exchange opens for the day. An initial public offering has been made by the company and everyone is waiting to see if the share price starts higher than that of the offering.

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I find myself in the midst of chaos. There has been a lot of investment and many people have been employed but I can see nobody who is going to get down and do the hands on work. There are too many suits. I shout out, “Do we need any more intellectual property? “No”, is the answer.

I ask who is in charge of patents. Amidst all the youngish British men a more mature tall and slim woman puts up her hand. “I am”, she says in a Californian accent. I say to her that we need to talk and could she find us a quiet place.

On the building opposite I can see the Thundercats logo projected. It pertains to the company and we and most especially I have this logo. In the dream I am slightly surprised on one level but not on another.

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The patent lady and I walk off out of the noise and struggle to find a quiet room to the side of the office. Once we are in, I say to her than we need more quiet spaces amongst the bedlam.  Which she agrees with. We sit down and she outlines that there is indeed need for further intellectual property which is more to do with applications and extensions. I ask her how come they recruited so many suits. She shrugs her shoulders and says that it was not her idea. I ask her to scope out in detail more of her ideas concerning applications.

A young man comes running to the door and knocks. “I am sorry to disturb you but there is a man at the front desk who keeps asking for you and he won’t go away.  He says that he knows you.” I say to the patent lady that I will be back and go with the young man to the front desk.

When I get there, it is Prof. TSJ. He says that can we go for a walk and have and “off the record” chat. He has come up with an application for the intellectual property and would like to discuss it. He has in mind, using it to buy some shares in the company and joining in. We walk off into an industrial estate and he outlines his ideas.

The dream ends.  

Musings, Patents

Revlimid in the news:

From Reuters:

Bristol Myers said on Thursday its revenues in the quarter were $11.34 billion, below analysts’ expectations of $11.49 billion, according to Refinitiv data.

CFO David Elkins said that revenue in the quarter grew by 10% if you exclude products like Revlimid that have lost their exclusivity as well as the impact of foreign exchange.

Sales of Revlimid, which began facing generic competition last year, fell to $1.75 billion in the quarter, down 37% from $2.8 billion last year.

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From Bristol Myers web site

—- Bristol Myers Squibb posted first quarter revenues of $11.3 billion, a decrease of 3%, due to Revlimid generic erosion and foreign exchange impacts, partially offset by in-line products (primarily Opdivo and Eliquis) and our new product portfolio (primarily Opdualag, Abecma and Reblozyl). When adjusted for foreign exchange, revenues decreased 1%. Our revenues for in-line products and new product portfolio increased 8% to $9.3 billion, or 10% when adjusted for foreign exchange impacts.

— U.S. revenues increased 4% to $8.0 billion in the quarter primarily due to Eliquis, Opdivo and our new product portfolio, partially offset by Revlimid generic erosion. International revenues decreased 16% to $3.3 billion in the quarter. When adjusted for foreign exchange impacts, international revenues decreased 11%, primarily due to Revlimid and Eliquis generic erosion, partially offset by Opdivo and our new product portfolio.

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This means as high quality generics become available at a lower price more people will be able to have life saving Lenalidomide now that the patent has expired.

I maintain that UK pharma is missing a big pile of cash by not investing in and chasing the lucrative generics market.

Musings, Patents, personal, Quantum, Quotations

Of previous good character…

“The defendant, of Abertillery Road, was arrested and later pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The court heard he was of previous good character.”

WalesOnline

The above quotation is not unusual when it comes to reporting on criminal cases at the various county courts in the UK.

They also often comment that the perpetrator was an unpopular loner and did not mix well, whereas the victim is usually a great person, sociable and very well liked.

It is a moot point if anyone could bear witness as to whether or not I am/was of good character. For the last four years we have not had any face to face interaction other than supermarket, pharmacy, DIY store and medical. There are no contemporary witnesses.

I have sent my response of to the Intellectual Property Office {IPO} this morning and the application will now be examined {probably} which will lead to grant or refusal. I could possibly appeal in the case of the latter.

If granted it tickles me that a UK patent would be granted to an application written in rural Brittany, in a farming commune of ~1800 souls. This is like someone applying from deepest, darkest Pembrokeshire {assuming that the thought police allow us to make such a statement}. I’ll wager that it is the only quantum optics patent applied for in our communal postcode.

If it is granted it is unlikely to bother the Richter scale with its earth shaking impact. Most likely it will remain a curio, in the published literature. One day someone like me trawling through patents might stumble upon it. If their curiosity is piqued, they might type the name of the commune into Google maps. They might then think “odd” and carry on with whatever it is they were doing.

There is a feeling of “tidying up”. The germ of the idea, amongst others, arose before we left the UK. I have not bothered developing any of the other ideas, one of which was using molecular symmetry in Quantum computation.

The patent if granted will have cost me time and around a few hundred quid, not the ten grand or so one might spend with a patent attorney. All along the IPO noted that grant for those applying without a professional is much less likely. It seems like a “jobs for the boys” orientation.

‘Tis done.

In the realms of extremely unlikely someone might want to buy the patent off me.

Subject to grant or not, I have to decide whether to pay the fee, the patent can be re-instated subsequently, I understand.

It is possible that people have made all kinds of stories up about me over the decades and these perhaps without having made my contemporaneous acquaintance. I know people are prone to bullshit and extrapolate, checking facts is less popular, hearsay is more attractive.

I may not be “of previous good character”.

This office is now re-decorated and I will probably get rid of this 2007 vintage desk. I bought it to fit the cottage I moved into. There is a bit more finishing off to do and some serious wiping down.

Today we went to some places selling second hand goods, there were quite a few people looking to buy, perhaps due to the economic situation. There are some other things which we might put up for sale, we have reserved a stand.

There was a weird juxtaposition, ultrahigh technology before lunch and second hand clothes and nick-nacks in the afternoon…

Far out…

Musings, paradigm, Patents, Quantum

Patent Fun With Alice & Bob

The patent examiner has suggested that the above US patent application contains “prior art” but from the tone of his last letter he seems to have accepted my {semi-extensive} arguments against this.

He suggests that I replace “non-optical electric field”, which I added to the claims in the latest iteration, with “static direct current field” which is implicit and explicit in the description. I am not allowed to use non-optical field as this “extends” my claim.

It does differentiate explicitly between a three photon induced process and a four photon one!

This seems fair enough.

I am not allowed to use “non-resonant three photon process via the third order non-linear susceptibility”, this phrase actually removes generality and decreases the scope of the claim, rather than extending it. It fixes spontaneity into the description and does not allow for optical absorption and hence finite lifetime “states”. It has resonance without field “depletion” by any photon absorption. The maths covers this in the description.

It does not look as though we are too far apart. I probably need to sleep on it and use my AM fresh morning brain to respond.

The letter is not too divergent….hmnn

It would be good to get this off my desk so that I can get back into the garden…

Musings, Patents, personal

Obsolete

Briggs & Stratton have very helpful web site with high quality repair videos and a section where you can download engine manuals. I got the sit-on mower down into the garage and cleaned off where they had stamped the engine model number. The engine was manufactured in 2006 and the nice shiny web site does not have a downloadable manual for this now obsolete motor. So, I had to use a little guesswork.

“Obsolete:  not in use any more, having been replaced by something newer and better or more fashionable.”

I have found a wonderful French company called, in translation, “planned obsolescence”. This company specialises in keeping spares for archaic and arcane machinery. Together with Amazon and this company I ordered some spares for the engine.

Losing only a small amount of skin from my hand in the process and with not too much bad language, I have changed the spark plugs, the air and oil filters and given the engine a flush through with oil and a fresh top up. The petrol filter which I bought did not fit the tubing exactly. {A petrol leak near a hot engine is not a good thing.} Some small variation in manufacturing tolerance perhaps. So, I have kept the old fuel filter. I have done my first ever sit on lawn mower service and saved around a hundred euros.

It started! I manged to cut one long stripe with it this afternoon. It should now be good to go.

A roughly similar mower new is around 4-5000 euros. If I can keep this obsolete model going for as while that will be good.

We had an obsolete {unfashionable} being {me} working on an obsolete motor.

I have a deadline for my Patent Application response of 11th April. I had hoped to finish the decoration of this room and then get around it to it.

It may come down to priority, finish decorating the room or reply to the Intellectual Property office concerning my quantum optics patent application…

There is a part of me that wants to see what happens if I miss the deadline…

First guess is that they will examine the patent anyway, as is. Which according to the tone of the most recent letter will lead to failure to grant, something which I may or may not be able to challenge.

I doubt there will be any more correspondence…

If they are doing customer follow up feedback, which they have been doing so far, they may ask me what is going on and I might even tell them.

Anyway, having repaired the “obsolete” motor, there is a nice feeling of having tried something new.

Musings, Patents, personal, Start Ups

Self-promoting or Entrepreneurial?

I have mentioned previously that classical Buddhism does not believe in promoting self, in showing off or in saying “look at me”. 

Although introverted I am not in the least bit “shy”. If there is a purpose I will step far into the unknown.

For example, over twenty years ago, I got some tickets to Semicon East in Tokyo, the biggest semiconductor event of the year in the East. I booked flights and reserved a classy but not expensive hotel near the Imperial Palace. I arrived ordered a bento box and a couple of Asahi beers and looked through the programme for the trade exhibitors.

The next day I went to the show.

The big players like Nikon, Canon, ASML, Cymer, Gigaphoton and Tokyo Electron all had very fancy stands with professional meet and greet front of house. They also had well provisioned hospitality rooms behind the stand. Bold as brass I walked up to the stand at Canon and started to speak to them. I said that we had a working EUV prototype and that I would like to talk to someone senior about this. The young man looked down his contact list and found a number and rang through. In a few minutes I was talking to a vice-president from the United States. Despite being American he spoke very good English. I explained to him where we were at and that we were looking to work with lithography tool manufacturers.  He took details of my hotel in Tokyo and back home in London. He had to talk to one of his superiors. I said that we would be happy to come back to Tokyo to give a presentation in due course. They rang through to my hotel, they arranged a follow up meeting at the show for the next day, which led to a big meeting in Tokyo subsequently. We had opened the portals.

When I approached Nikon. It was much more Japanese. I spent more time talking around the subject and giving over my university and start-up business cards. Again I suggested that it would be a great honour for us to work with a company like Nikon. I gave then my room number and telephone number at the hotel. They praised my choice of hotel and said that someone would contact me before I flew back to London. I waited and waited. About a day and a half later they came to meet me in the hotel. I asked front desk for a quiet table off the lobby and to have some drinks brought over. I met with a vice-vice-president and a very technological type. We exchanged cards and they said that it was auspicious for us to meet on neutral territory in Tokyo for a first meet. We had a very technical conversation the tech guy and I. I was being observed, watched. We met again formally at their facilities some months later, so I passed the test.

What I did not know was that vice-vice president was in the act of being given the whole Nikon EUV brief. Hence, they were keen to delay just a little until their internal process was sorted.

I had been exposed to Japanese martial arts on and off for many years. While I was there, I had to get some obscure Iaido film footage for my then sensei. This martial arts exposure helped me a great deal with Nikon. The martial arts shops in Tokyo were ultra-helpful to me in my quest for Iaido video.

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I am the kind of guy that will fly to the other side of the planet on the off chance of securing a meeting with some serious Japanese dudes as the cost of around £4k. {2000 AD prices.}

I brought together our ideas for an EUV source and their desire to have one, for mutual exploration. This willingness to explore has not left me.

I have written to a Thai Buddhist centre in the UK to talk about my dreams and even visited it. I spoke with a monk who had cared for Christmas Humpreys and also had a brief email exchange with an abbot of a Tibetan retreat centre.

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To my notion these are exploration, entrepreneurial, rather than self-promotion.

A part of the motivation for coming here was an “on the off chance” notion that I might write a patent application and explore a start up at the local photonics cluster.

I don’t think I am promoting myself… I do like to explore and try to solve mysteries…

Anyway, one more day of painting and I am good to go on tiling the wall behind this desk…

I am pretty fluid….

Musings, Patents, Quantum, Quotations

Wot no Chips?

I have received an invite for an online meeting which I might just register for and observe. It sounds kind of “out there”.

“Quantum Chips in the Chips Act, European Commission expert workshop,

The planned European Commission workshop is a preliminary step towards defining specific actions for answering Europe’s ambitions in quantum chips, in particular from the industry point of view, and bringing forward specific actions. It will cover the following three topics: Pilot lines, Supply chain, Private funding. The establishment of an EU quantum chips value chain from early lab prototyping to a professional level of design, testing, fabrication, integration, and production, similar to that of the semiconductor industry and photonics, will be discussed during the workshop. As a result, a list of possible actions for short-, medium-, and long-term implementations will be prepared in order to support the industrialisation and scaling up of quantum chips in the EU under the Chips for Europe Initiative. Participation is open to representatives of industry and academic research from the EU specifically involved in the development and industrialisation of quantum chips.”

The EU has started  the Chips Act {no Cod or Pollack required}. It seems like a good idea to have a homegrown ecosystem. The biggest high end lithography tool maker is ASML in Holland, though Intel, Samsung and TSMC all have a decent sized shareholding. As you can see for the 5nm node it gets damn expensive to build a fab – about 20 billion dollars…

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Where will the great British Chippie get its chips from?

It will have to outsource…

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It looks like the EU is thinking about deep pockets and long arms. Some serious funding may be possible.

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What would the implications be for me registering to a EU event, by residency I am ok…they have an option to use “private individual” as organisation , which is a nice change as I am not institutionalised.