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Thomas Campana (cycling)
Thomas J. Campana Jr. (January 26, 1947–June 8, 2004) was an inventor. He was awarded about 50 US patents in his 30-year career. His most significant contributions were in the field of push email. He invented and patented a number of new technologies that were later incorporated into Research in Motion's BlackBerry mobile email devices. In 2006, after a protracted legal battle, Research in Motion paid $612.5 million (equivalent to $ in ) to NTP Inc. to license the patents. Early life Thomas Campana was the son of a milkman and grew up in the southside of Chicago. Education and military service Thomas had an electrical engineering degree from University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, University of Illinois. He was a staff sergeant for the United States Air Force working with radio. Inventions Push Email In 1990 Campana invented a form of wireless push email and filed the first in a series of patent applications on it. The technology was evaluated by AT&T but later droppe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inventor
An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an idea is unique enough either as a stand-alone invention or as a significant improvement over the work of others, it can be patented. A patent, if granted, gives the inventor a proprietary interest in the patent over a specific period of time, which can be licensed for financial gain. An inventor creates or discovers an invention. The word ''inventor'' comes from the Latin verb ''invenire'', ''invent-'', to find. Although inventing is closely associated with science and engineering, inventors are not necessarily engineers or scientists. The ideation process may be augmented by the applications of algorithms and methods from the domain collectively known as artificial intelligence . Some inventions can be patented. The system of patents wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patent Holding Company
A patent holding company (PHC) exists to hold patents on behalf of one or more other companies but does not necessarily manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents held. Patent holding companies may exist for tax reasons. Patent holding companies may also operate patent pools in order to provide a single source for licensing a patented technology. However, patent holding companies that aggressively seek to enforce patent rights through litigation or threats of litigation are referred to as patent assertion entities (PAEs) or, more pejoratively, patent trolls. Patent trolling On June 4, 2013, in the United States, the National Economic Council and Council of Economic Advisers released a report entitled ''Patent Assertion and U.S. Innovation'' that found significant harm to the economy from patent assertion entities and made recommendations to address them. President Barack Obama also addressed the issue, criticizing companies that did not produce anything ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
T-Mobile US
T-Mobile US, Inc. is an American wireless network operator headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. Its majority shareholder and namesake is the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom. T-Mobile is the second largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 131 million subscribers as of March 31, 2025. The company was founded in 1994 by John W. Stanton of the Western Wireless Corporation as VoiceStream Wireless. Deutsche Telekom then gained plurality ownership in 2001 and renamed it after its global T-Mobile brand. , the German company holds a 51.4% stake in the company. T-Mobile US operates two main brands: T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile (acquired in a 2013 reverse takeover of MetroPCS that also led to T-Mobile's listing on the NASDAQ). In 2020, T-Mobile expanded through the acquisition of Sprint, which also made T-Mobile the operator of Assurance Wireless, a service subsidized by the federal Lifeline program. The company's growth continued in 2024 wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sprint Nextel
Sprint Corporation was an American telecommunications company. Before being Merger of Sprint Corporation and T-Mobile US, acquired by T-Mobile US on April 1, 2020, it was the fourth-largest mobile network operator in the United States, serving 54.3 million customers as of June 30, 2019. The company also offered wireless voice, messaging, and broadband services through its various subsidiaries under the Boost Mobile and Open Mobile brands and wholesale access to its wireless networks to mobile virtual network operators. In July 2013, majority ownership of the company was purchased by the Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank Group. Sprint used CDMA2000, CDMA, EvDO and 4G LTE networks, and formerly operated iDEN, WiMAX, and 5G NR networks. Sprint was incorporated in Kansas. Sprint traced its origins to the Brown Telephone Company, which was founded in 1899 to bring telephone service to the rural area around Abilene, Kansas, Abilene, Kansas. In 2006, Sprint left the local la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc. ( ), is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 146 million subscribers as of March 31, 2025. The company was formed in 1983 as Bell Atlantic as a result of the breakup of the Bell System into seven companies, each a Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC), commonly referred to as "Baby Bells." The company was originally headquartered in Philadelphia and operated in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. In 1997, Bell Atlantic expanded into New York and the New England states by merging with fellow Baby Bell NYNEX. While Bell Atlantic was the surviving company, the merged company moved its headquarters from Philadelphia to NYNEX's old headquarters in New York City. In 2000, Bell Atlantic acquired GTE, which oper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Board Of Patent Appeals And Interferences
The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) was an administrative law body of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) which decided issues of patentability. Under the America Invents Act, the BPAI was replaced with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), effective September 16, 2012. Structure The BPAI was primarily made up of an Appeals Division and a Trial Division. The Appeals Division, with over 100 Administrative Patent Judges, handled appeals of patent examiner rejections, with sections adjudicating different technology areas. The Trial Division, with 11 Administrative Patent Judges as of 2008, handled contested cases or interference proceedings. The BPAI was headed by a Chief Administrative Patent Judge with a Vice Chief. As of mid-2013, the Chief Administrative Patent Judge was James Donald Smith. Procedures An applicant could appeal the examiner's decision to the BPAI. The appeal procedure was described in chapter 1200 of the U.S. Manual of Pat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prior Art
Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria for patentability. In most systems of patent law, prior art is generally defined as anything that is made available, or disclosed, to the public that might be relevant to a patent's claim before the effective filing date of a patent application for an invention. However, notable differences exist in how prior art is specifically defined under different national, regional, and international patent systems. The prior art is evaluated by patent offices as part of the patent granting process in what is called "substantive examination" of a patent application in order to determine whether an invention claimed in the patent application meets the novelty and inventive step or non-obviousness criteria for patentability. It may also be considered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patent Examiner
A patent examiner (or, historically, a patent clerk) is an employee, usually a civil service, civil servant with a scientific or engineering background, working at a patent office. Duties Due to a long-standing and incessantly growing backlog of unexamined patent applications, examiners have a very limited amount of time to determine patentability of disclosed inventions. Ill-defined "tenure rules", as well as pressure to work overtime to meet the "production quotas", result in very high (over 50% within 4 years after hiring, mostly involuntary) attrition rates among patent examiners, especially at the USPTO. The attrition (mostly involuntary) of patent examiners is so severe that "in some years the USPTO loses more examiners than it hires". Some patent applications are easy for an examiner to assess, but others require considerably more time. This has given rise to controversy: on April 13, 2007, a "Coalition of Patent Examiner Representatives" expressed concern that Offices ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Patent And Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency in the United States Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexandria, Virginia, after a 2005 move from the Crystal City, Virginia, Crystal City area of neighboring Arlington County, Virginia, Arlington, Virginia. The USPTO is "unique among federal agencies because it operates solely on fees collected by its users, and not on taxpayer dollars". Its "operating structure is like a business in that it receives requests for services—applications for patents and trademark registrations—and charges fees projected to cover the cost of performing the services [it] provide[s]". The office is headed by the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and directo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reexamination
In United States patent law, a reexamination is a process whereby anyone—third party or inventor—can have a U.S. patent reexamined by a patent examiner to verify that the subject matter it claims is patentable. To have a patent reexamined, an interested party must submit prior art, in the form of patents or printed publications, that raises a "substantial new question of patentability". The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act makes substantial changes to the U.S. patent system, including new mechanisms for challenging patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. One of the new mechanisms is a post-grant review proceeding, which will provide patent challengers expanded bases on which to attack patents. Process A request for a reexamination can be filed by anyone at any time during the period of enforceability of a patent. To request a reexamination, one must submit a "request for reexamination" which includes (1) a statement pointing out each "substantial new question of pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consumer Electronics Show
CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typically hosts presentations of new products and technologies in the consumer electronics industry. History The first CES was held in June 1967 in New York City. It was a spin-off of the Chicago Music Show which, until then, had served as the main event for exhibiting consumer electronics. The event had 17,500 attendees and over 100 exhibitors; the kickoff speaker was Motorola chairman Bob Galvin. From 1978 to 1994, CES was held twice each year: once in January in Las Vegas as the ''Winter Consumer Electronics Show'' (WCES) and once in June in Chicago as the ''Summer Consumer Electronics Show'' (SCES). The winter show was held in Las Vegas in 1995 as planned. However, since the summer Chicago shows were beginning to lose popularity, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
License
A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreement between those parties. In the case of a license issued by a government, the license is obtained by applying for it. In the case of a private party, it is by a specific agreement, usually in writing (such as a lease or other contract). The simplest definition is "A license is a promise not to sue", because a license usually either permits the licensed party to engage in an illegal activity, and subject to prosecution, without the license (e.g. Fishing license, fishing, Driver's license, driving an automobile, or operating a Broadcast license, broadcast radio or television station), or it permits the licensed party to do something that would violate the rights of the licensing party (e.g. make copie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
