Apple co-founder Steve Jobs filed more than 300 technology patents in his 56 years and more than a few of them were culture- and world-changing.

The Smithsonian, which late last year rebranded itself with the Jobs-like tagline “Seriously Amazing,” is preparing to spread out the patents and trademarks of Jobs, who died last year due to complications from pancreatic cancer, for all to see starting May 11 and running through mid-July at the organization’s Ripley Center, the Associated Press reports.

The exhibition will include “a 1985 Apple Macintosh computer, mouse and keyboard; a 2005 NeXT computer; a 2010 Apple iPod; and copies of 312 documents,” the AP notes. According to a press release from the Smithsonian, the exhibit — a partnership with the USPTO — will be a series of 30 4-by-8-foot panels that all look like iPhones and each holds the front pages of patents issued to Jobs.Continue reading...

Tattoos are far more socially acceptable now than they were a few decades ago and some brilliant mind at Nokia saw this as an opportunity for the company: Why not tap into the vast body-art marketplace out there with some cool technology?

The idea is that the tattoo and a user’s phone could communicate with each other so that when the person gets a call, text, email, or whatever, he or she could feel a little buzz in the tattoo.

Nokia (according to CNET) filed for a patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last September to use magnetic waves to create the effect, which could also produce an invisible tattoo, apparently, if the person wasn’t interested in sticking Mom on his or her shoulder or a scene from “Where the Wild Things Are” across his or her back.Continue reading...

Jeff Bezos may be the founder, president, CEO, chairman of the board, and owner of 20% of Amazon, but he’s also an incredibly creative, brilliant thinker. After all, this is the guy who started up the human-spaceflight company, Blue Origin, back in 2004.

New evidence of the Bezos brainpower has become public in the form of a patent filed in February (along with Amazon VP Greg Heart, to give credit to another Amazonian) to create tiny airbags that would protect a falling phone, according to TheRegister.com.

The technology would use a “phone's accelerometer to detect when it is falling, and deploying tiny airbags to cushion the impact,” the site reports. Who knew your phone has a cat-like "accelerometer"? Jeff Bezos, that's who!Continue reading...

On May 26, The L.A. Times quoted a Disney spokesman reasoning that "Out of deference to the Navy's application for these trademarks, we have withdrawn ours." It was the end of the weeks-long outrage over Disney's move to trademark "Seal Team 6" just two days after that unit was reported to have killed Osama Bin Laden. In those weeks, the Navy itself had moved to trademark "Navy Seals."

One positive outcome of Disney's bold move was that it appears to have lit a flame under the butt of the Department of the Navy. On May 25th, the day before Disney's withdrawal, the Navy made its latest application to trademark both "Marine Ops: The Crucible" and "Marine Ops."Continue reading...

Just two days after a team of Navy Seals shot Osama bin Laden in the face, another of the world's most feared special ops teams, Disney's lawyers, sprang into action. On May 3, two days after the Al Qaeda leader's death was announced by President Obama, Disney applied to the US Patent and Trademark Office for ownership of the mark "Seal Team 6."

Online commenters, uncharacteristically, were outraged. One wrote "How low can Disney Corp go? I think the answer is very very exceptionally very low."

The application included designation for Christmas products, which has led to some interesting speculation. As the Seal Team's "bulletproof dog" begins to get more and more attention, it's not hard to imagine Disney developing that avenue.

But what hasn't been mentioned is that somebody beat Disney to trademarking "Seal Team 6." Twice.Continue reading...