Patent Ideas Brainstorming Eugene Li Eliot Sun Henry Hsue Justin Woo Team #3 IEOR 190G Patent Engineering Spring 2010

Students Eugene Li – Eugene is a graduate student pursuing an M.S. in Electrical Engineering Computer Sciences. Previously, he received a B.S. from UC Berkeley in 2009 in the same field. His M.S. project involves working with an aerial quadrotor platform called STARMAC and applying a tool called reachable sets to make certain safety guarantees for different aerial maneuvers. He will be working with Salesforce.com after graduation in Spring Eliot Sun – Eliot is a 4th year student at UC Berkeley majoring in Mathematics. He is interested in algorithm design and more generally, making people's lives easier and saving the world. He is currently working on a startup and has had previous experience in product management and consulting Henry Hsue – Henry is an undergraduate senior at UC Berkeley studying Industrial Engineering, Operations Research. He is interested in supply chain management and has interned at Accu-logistics, a third party logistics company. Also interested in healthcare, he is working on a project to improve the scheduling system at a local hospital. Justin Woo – Justin is a 4 th year undergraduate student majoring in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. His interests lie in the application of mathematical programming optimization techniques and design to both supply chain management and healthcare services.

Students Background Eugene was able to take classes that allowed him to have a solid understanding of a variety of computer science and electrical engineering concepts. As part of a group, he may be to contribute some ideas of how we can technically build some of our ideas. Eliot has a solid base in mathematics and a good understanding of the technology field. He has studied many business cases and has experience in strategic business decisions. Henry's studies revolve around manufacturing improvement, mathematical modeling, supply chain management, and simulations. He has taken several courses in Business Administration. Justin has experience with capacity and service operation improvement. His experience, which involves applied innovation, will aid the team in applying new thought processes to seemingly old ideas.

Area of Interest - Specific One area we have been thinking about is improving people's way of lives. One characteristic of this area is the potential to impact many people. From improving desks in a lecture hall to an auto-sorting refrigerator, we believe that these sort of ideas can help us achieve our goal. Some of our technological ideas for patent exploration GPS locators inside of bike handles for personal tracking and phone applications that automatically change settings according to a given schedule.

Area of Interest - General We hope to improve lifestyles by designing products that will simplify and ease the usage of existing commodities. Our belief is that by adding extra considerations, products can assist in performing a task faster, safer, and more ergonomically. We will try to combine our backgrounds in our math and engineering to describe and patent the design and manufacturing of an innovative product.

Challenges and limitations One potential challenge is the problem that others may have thought and patented our ideas already. We may be required to look through the USPTO site to see what ideas have not been submitted, or we may be required to tailor our ideas slightly to avoid infringing on another's patent. On a business level, we don't have the financial experience to project our worth or estimate how much funding we would require to get our idea off the ground.

Challenges and Limitations The scope of our design and patent idea may be a challenge; given that similar product ideas may exist, we will need to determine how detailed to make our end patent idea in order to ensure our idea is patentable. For example, our initial ideas regarding phones, refrigerators, bikes, and classroom seating may need narrow scopes or specific design implementations in order to be patented.