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MOVE over, Thomas Edison. George Mueller and Ihor Lys have seen the future of lighting, and it has nothing to do with light bulbs. Mr. Mueller, who is 29, and […]

HOW loudly does Joseph Goldstein snore? Well, his wife likes to tell a story about their romantic vacation at a pricey hotel in the Caribbean, where the guests stay in […]

COMPANIES that are dreading possible Year 2000 computer problems may have one less thing to worry about. Last Tuesday, the United States Patents Commissioner took a first step toward revoking […]

In a rush to capitalize on millenniummania, Year 2000 trademark applications have been tumbling into the Patent and Trademark Office at a terrific rate. According to Alan Davidson, executive vice […]

How important will intellectual property be in the new economy? 'Excruciatingly important,' said Glover Ferguson, co-director of the electronic commerce program at Andersen Consulting. A case in point is the […]

How important will intellectual property be in the new economy? 'Excruciatingly important,' said Glover Ferguson, co-director of the electronic commerce program at Andersen Consulting. A case in point is the […]

GIVEN trepidations about the approaching millennium, much inventive effort has gone into wind-up radios, wood-heating stoves and other survivalist technology. But plenty of other inventors are still focused on making [...]

HY is it that one type of antidepressant can lift one patient's spirits while the same medication leaves his neighbor jittery and sleepless? Or that a certain asthma drug might [...]

WE may live in a disposable society, but is the world ready for throw-away cell phones? Randice-Lisa Altschul thinks so. Ms. Altschul, a full-time inventor in Cliffside Park, N.J., has […]

ALONG with the proliferation of new patents, it seems, comes a proliferation of new patents books. The one with perhaps the best shot at the business best-seller list is 'Rembrandts […]

SINCE it went into business in 1853, Steinway & Sons has introduced many design and mechanical innovations in its legendary pianos. Last week Steinway received its 122d patent -- a […]

WHEN it comes to eye-popping graphics, Prof. Jack Mostow acknowledges, 'commercial software has our pants beat.' So why does he think that his recently patented software, which is about as […]

WHAT if building a real house were as easy as snapping together Legos, those brightly colored plastic bricks that children use to build miniature structures? This is a thought that […]

IN the last two decades, the world has seen a resurgence in tuberculosis, a scourge that was previously thought -- like small pox and diphtheria -- to have been conquered [...]

ALAN GREENSPAN, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, estimated earlier this year that the financial derivatives market was worth some $80 trillion. But exactly how do you go about calculating […]

ELECTRONIC mail has become an indispensable mode of communication for many people these days. Not only is it speedy, but it is free for frugal souls in exchange for putting […]

ARCHITECTS often protect their work from being plagiarized in the same way that authors do: through copyright. Whether it is a mystery novel or an architectural plan, copyright protects against […]

AMERICAN inventors have been in pursuit of pyrotechnic perfection ever since fireworks were shot off in 1777 during the very first Fourth of July celebration in Philadelphia. Walt Disney resorts, […]

IN the last year, dozens of patents have been issued to hopeful inventors who dream that their new version of the old-fashioned board game will one day become the next […]

SINCE the first forceps were invented in the 17th century, childbirth has been a ripe field for innovation. In this century, pregnant women have been helped -- or, some have […]

WHEN Stephanie Kwolek went to work for the DuPont Company in 1946, it was the dawning of a synthetic era. Chemists were turning coal, castor oil and antifreeze into new […]

WITH this season's bumper crop of pollen, many allergy sufferers are turning to Claritin, a powerful antihistamine that subdues the sneezing and coughing and general misery of allergies without inducing […]

WITH the recent success of Viagra, the impotence drug for men, a number of companies are scurrying to develop sexual-dysfunction therapies aimed at an even larger market: women. A recent [...]

CHICKEN POX is a classic childhood ailment that can leave a kid housebound with a sore throat, fever, and itchy sores. After two weeks, the chicken pox symptoms usually have [...]

LAST week a tiny Manhattan company received a patent that it says covers many aspects of pay-per-view television as well as the integration of Internet content into television programming. This […]

THE number of United States patents issued last year reached a record, jumping 31.5 percent from 1997, according to statistics recently released by the Patent Office. This crush of new […]

MANY Web site developers were angered earlier this month when they learned that the Microsoft Corporation had received a patent covering a fundamental technology adopted by the World Wide Web […]

THE basic premise of Cybergold, an electronic commerce company in Berkeley, Calif., is that the best way to get consumers to read Internet advertisements is to pay them to do […]

CAN understanding how a cat pounces on a mouse help an air-traffic controller spot incoming planes? Or make a difference in the way a military pilot locates a ground target? […]

A WASHINGTON patent lawyer is challenging a fundamental patent issued last summer to Priceline.com Inc. The lawyer, Thomas Woolston, contends that he filed for a patent about 16 months before […]

The technologies may be new, but the debate that promises to dominate the patent industry this year dates from at least the days of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. […]

WEARABLE computers are considerably less geeky than they used to be. But the day when the average American wears one as nonchalantly as a Walkman CD player is still several […]

IMAGINE that, as you drive down the road, each billboard you pass instantly changes to advertise a product tailored to your specific tastes and needs. That might be impossible to […]

THREE years ago, the United States Patent Office published new guidelines that loosened its standards for granting certain medically related patents. The biotechnology industry, in particular, had sought such a […]

AS many as 80,000 infants in the United States are hospitalized annually for the treatment of jaundice -- a condition common among newborns and one known for the yellow cast [...]

BRUCE A. LEHMAN, who announced Friday that he would step down as Commissioner of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, is not a man many people feel lukewarm about. […]

DURING Victorian times, physicians tried to detect breast tumors by illuminating the breast with candlelight. The candlelight technique turned out to be less than successful. But now, more than a [...]

A 70-year-old retired sign painter, S. Newman Darby, might still be living in obscurity in Jacksonville, Fla., if an odd couple of sorts -- a windsurfing industrial engineer and an […]

FOUR years ago, Dr. Leonard Adleman raised the exciting possibility of DNA-powered supercomputers when he wrote in the journal Science that he had solved a computational problem essentially by stirring […]

SEARCHING the Internet is inevitably an exercise in information overload. Type in a single word and you are likely to get thousands of hits, only a handful of which are […]

TWENTY years ago, Honda imported into the United States for the first time an automobile with a galvanized body -- which meant that the car's steel frame had been coated […]

IMAGINE that Albert Einstein were alive today and that he were just now formulating his theory of relativity. Could he get a patent on E=mc2 ? Some patent experts contend […]

THE last big innovation in swimming fins -- those rubber appendages that give scuba divers and snorkelers more leg power -- came in 1965, with the introduction of vents. The […]

IN the 1960's television series 'The Prisoner,' the captors of a British spy known as No. 6 have omniscient knowledge of his whereabouts, thanks to large glowing spheres that guard […]

A STUDY published last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that many elderly people who are in pain do not receive adequate medication to ease their [...]

THIS year is the 50th anniversary of Scrabble, the classic spelling game thought up by Alfred M. Butts, an unemployed architect, as he sat in his fifth-floor walk-up apartment in […]

WITH the average wedding costing $10,000 to $12,000, matrimony is a lucrative business. And a number of inventors with new wedding-inspired patents are looking for a slice of the profits. […]

WITH so much money changing hands at casinos, cheating can be a big temptation. An unscrupulous blackjack dealer, for example, might tip off his hand to a confederate by scratching […]

JACOB RABINOW came up with his first invention at the age of 8, when he was growing up in Siberia during the Russian Revolution. It was a rock thrower that […]