Invention upgrades human life and makes it more comfortable. As the patenting methods are getting easier day by day, many people are coming to patent their innovations. In the US, they register more than 2 million patents in a year. Patent officials say that almost everything is invented. This statement will be further proved when you will see the different Crazy patents done by companies. Some of these will delight you while some of them are completely useless.
In this article, we will be looking at some of the craziest patents done by companies. If you are in the process of ideating any innovation these patents will also fuel your imagination and help you make unique ideation. The patents have come from companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, and many other tech companies. These patents will help you think out of the box. So without any further ado, let me talk about the various patents by the companies.
Here are some of the smart to crazy patents. A lot of them will actually lead you to think in a completely different way. These patents if successful will revolutionize their particular sector.
Amazon has designed a special kind of blimp-based delivery system. They would use this blimp-like drone to distribute Amazon packages. This drone operates in a unique way. It has many mini drones within it. When the delivery spot arrives, a number of mini-drones will come out carrying the goods with them and delivering them to their place. They will directly deliver it to the customer in case they are delivering it at a great event like a football match. This is a unique innovation that will redefine logistics and the supply chain of Amazon.
Motorola Neck Tattoo
Motorola Neck Tattoo
Motorola has patented a neck-based tattoo by which you can communicate to your phone. This is a temporary tattoo through which you can do all the functions in the phone. It can also be used as a lie detector. The tattoo has a mic and has a power source attached to it.
Apple Smart bike
Apple is not only planning to design different iPhones and iPads. Apple has patented a smart bike. This smart bike has several features as it can communicate with other bikes. They can share things like speed, velocity distance traveled, heart rate, etc with the other bike.
Weather triggered ads by Google
Weather Triggered Ads by Google
Google in 2012 developed a unique technology called weather-triggered ads. In this Google will be able to detect the weather of a place and then go on to advertise suitable products immediately. This can be a great way to improve sales as they are selling those things which you need at that time.
Amazon Search Drone
Amazon Drone
Amazon has designed a special drone that can help search a child. This drone is voice-operated and acts as an aerial voice assistant. There are a series of special commands which help you to search for somebody. Apart from that, this has many other utilities as well. It can also be used by traffic police for recording details of any car.
Google Restaurant bill splitting software
Google Restaurant Bill Splitting
It is a shared experience that when you go to a restaurant, every other friend has an excuse for not paying the money. At the end of the day, you end up paying the bill thinking that the rest of them will pay the money back. But sometimes they forget to pay you. So Google has come up with an innovative restaurant bill splitting software that splits the bill amongst your friends.
Microsoft Augmented Reality Item finder
Microsoft AR Item Finder
Microsoft has devised an Augmented Reality item finder that can help you find any missing item. This device keeps a track of the things which you are using. If you have forgotten some item which you were using then this device will help you find it back. They use the Microsoft Holo lens in this device and it identifies and records the items you are using. It also somewhat tracks its movement. Next, you lost something, it will tell you where you put that thing last and will take you to this place.
Apple Spiral Glass Staircases
Apple Spiral Glass Staircase
Apple has designed and patented a glass staircase that can be used in any restaurant and hotel. This is a very common architecture structure but Apple has its own modifications in it. They patented their spiral form of the glass staircase in 2013. This was a more improved version of the previous patent. It was first put up in their Shanghai store.
Amazon Beehive like Tower
Amazon Beehive Tower
Amazon has patented a beehive-like Tower that can store and dispatch in a proper way. This is a very smart tower that can store items, sort strategically, and ship it. There are also drones that take the product and deliver them to their required destination.
Google Comic Patent for Social Media
Google has come up with comic-based social status sharing. In the olden days, we were sharing photos and videos of our present day. With the Google comic strip, we can share a cartoon that would tell about our current status. In this, the software would suggest an animation character that would be similar to the status you want to share. Now the user can also alter the comic and share it accordingly. Google patented this product in the year 2013.
Conclusion
These were some of the crazy patents done by companies. Hope you enjoyed reading through these unconventional inventions. As you must have also noticed that every innovation is very simple but the impact is huge. Now if you are also ideating something, you can definitely improve on it by taking ideas from here. Hope you are happy with the information you got from the article.
FAQ
Which company has filed the most patents?
Sony, Qualcomm, Amazon and BOE Technology are some of the companies that have filed the most patents in 2020.
What is the most valuable patent of all time?
The patent for the telephone was the most valuable patent of all time.
Why are there so many weird tech patents?
Companies file for patents to keep your competitors from developing something more than a way to make sure that companies can develop the particular product.
Humans are amazing animals, I mean we are smart and can do almost anything. Be it flying, cooking, innovating, and even revolutionizing the whole world with unbelievable technology. Think about this, the first computer was built in 1822, by a smart human called Charles Babbage. It used to have vacuum tubes and large compartments for storage. We have grown from that time at a rapid scale and efficiency, we have seen multifold growth in technology.
So much so, that the computer that once occupied a whole room by itself, now sits in your hand. Moreover, it just sits on our palms for a long time now as our screen times jump.
The smartphone industry has grown and has become one of the biggest industries in the world. Right now, there is a smartphone user base in the billions. This growth has led to the establishment of smartphone giants. Behemoth organizations like Apple and Samsung.
We all have that friend who is an ardent fan of apple, and we all have got a friend too who is always in love with Samsung. This takes us back to the smartphone war that has continued since time immemorial. The android vs apple war. This disparity in demographics is a good indicator of the product market. The user market is much skewed in different directions.
This article is the dissection of the silent raging war between Apple and Samsung. Read on to discover stories and not many known facts about the tech hulks.
It’s not a necessity to introduce Apple. The reason is that it is already a brand, a valuable brand which has managed to make a place in the hearts of people all around the world. That also explains why the company has no ‘about us’ section on its website.
Apple is the brainchild of Steve Jobs. It is an American multinational company specializing in consumer products in the tech line. The company is the biggest technology company with its magnanimous revenues and the most valuable company in the world. That too started from a garage and managed to become the most recognizable company in the world. It has been revolutionizing personal tech for decades.
Apple Product Line
Apple 1 was the first computer handmade by Steve Wozniak (Apple co-founder) under the name Apple in 1976. It was a computer encased in a wooden block. Then followed by Apple 2 which was more successful than the predecessor. After the success, they faced good losses in the fall of Apple 3. It faced overheating issues.
After seeing such failure they started to work on innovating something new. To come out of this deep pit, Something that will hopefully revolutionize personal computing.
They began to work on the Macintosh. It was their first computer that supported GUI or Graphic user interface, which allows the user to communicate with the computer in graphical mode. Launched the Macintosh in 1980 and this began the winning strike for apple.
Steve Jobs with John Sculley
It was in 1983 when Steve Jobs famously asked Pepsi CEO John Sculley to be Apple’s next CEO or if he wanted to “sell sugared water for the rest of his life or change the world? ” The relationship went bad later.
To remove him, Steve initiated a move that backfired and ended up removing himself from the board. The company saw good growth under the leadership of Sculley until he was removed because of some failed products.
Later Apple bought ‘Next’ which was founded by Steve Jobs bringing him back as an advisor. He immediately trimmed most of the product density in Apple and made the company as slim as possible and launched new sleek products.
Steve Jobs with the First iPhone
He worked secretly on the first iPhone and launched it in 2007. It was an instant hit. Since then, iPhones have been the most popular phones in the world. A major part of Apple’s revenue comes from them.
The Samsung that we know today, wasn’t this when it started. It has gone through enormous shifts. Surprisingly, the company was not even in the technology business at its inception in 1938. It was a small company dealing in fried fish and noodles. In the 60s it entered the smartphone segment and today is the largest manufacturer of smartphones, televisions, and memory chips in the world.
In 1938, Lee Byung-Chul dropped out of college and founded a small business he named Samsung Trading Co. The initial corporate logo had three stars and was based on a graphical representation of the Korean Hanja word Samsung. It operated with the same Japanese culture as every corporate body, the employees did as they were told.
Soon with a good culture and with government assistance it entered domains like sugar refining, media, textiles, and insurance and became a success. So at this time, it was in good economic condition.
After the succession of third heir Kun-hee, the company saw an opportunity in technology and he invested heavily in semiconductor technologies and transformed Samsung from a manufacturer into a global technology powerhouse.
After Kun’s death, his easy-going son succeeded to the throne and began investing more in smartphones and more in tech. Later the company saw the most profits from smartphone sales. The most famous Samsung phones are Galaxy, after the first launch in 2009. During the third quarter of 2011, Samsung surged past Apple to the number one spot among phone manufacturers, based on shipments.
Samsung, as it saw handsome revenues in the smartphones segment, mocked Apple in many ways. You can still see those commercials on YouTube. So did Apple. They released commercials that defame other pioneer brands openly. This makes the rivalry public and leads to polarisation in the market. Let us discuss it in further detail.
The Rivalry Inception of Samsung and Apple
As the smartphone market and the hype around this continues to grow, smartphone leaders fight for greater dominance in this segment of the product. Behemoth organizations Samsung and Apple are the pioneers in this segment and one of the most famous rivals in the world. They not only fight for a greater market share but the main rivalry is a little off topic, it is a long legal battle into dark plagiarism.
Samsung not only competes with Apple in the notebook, tablets, and smartphones market, It also supplies Apple with crucial items for iPhones like OLED display and flash drive memory chip for storage. The Samsung we know today has not been constant as we consider its long history.
In the 80s the company was primarily focused on the semiconductor business. Apple was one of Samsung’s largest buyers, ordering billions of dollars of parts for electronic devices. Its CEO at that time did meet several times with Steve jobs for advice or negotiations. The two companies had friendly relations with each other. Until something happened.
In 2007 the first iPhone was unveiled to the world. Two years later, in 2009 Samsung came up with a touchscreen device for their market running on Google’s android system. Apple CEO Steve Jobs called Samsung a Copycat. ‘POOF’. Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung. The rivalry began.
According to Walter Issacson, Steve’s biographer, He wanted to start a thermonuclear war against Android in this case of plagiarism and copying apple’s authenticity. From that event, Samsung dared from being a supplier of technological equipment to a competitor in market share. It went from being an ally to a fierce enemy.
Apple was extremely infuriated with this and dragged the matter into court, showcasing that the company is super sensitive about this issue. It filed a lawsuit against Samsung in serious violations of patents and trademarks of Apple’s property rights.
However, the court case wasn’t the first guard of Apple against Samsung. Both the companies Apple and Samsung had a long history of cooperation, so Apple first thought of talking the matter out rather than taking the case to court.
Apple proposed a licensing deal for Samsung for the patents and trademarks. The document stated that Samsung will pay 30$ on selling every smartphone and 40$ on every tablet.
Samsung ofcourse declined the offer, stating that the company hasn’t done anything wrong and is not involved in copying Apple or violating any of the trademarks mentioned in the lawsuit. Not only this, Samsung reversed the licensing agreement onto Apple stating that they are the ones who are copying. This began the row of court cases by these tech hulks against each other.
The lawsuit filed by Apple was specific about the number of patents and the type of patents Samsung violated, let us discuss a little about the violations Apple mentioned.
The Billion Dollar Samsung Apple Lawsuit
The first lawsuit demanded 2.5 billion dollars in damages from Samsung. So we can assume it wasn’t a normal lawsuit. Apple was very serious about their smartphone launch and now with this case too. Samsung however seemed like it was ignoring Apple’s claims of plagiarism and trying to put the burden on Apple themselves.
Trade Dress
It is a visual form of patent, that deals with the visual and overall look of a product. Sometimes companies copy some famous brand’s product look and hope to generate sales. As people tend no not to look about details of a product, rather they just pick up based on the appearance of something. It instills confusion in consumers. Samsung Galaxy phone was the first touchscreen phone in the Samsung product line and it looked mostly the same as the newly launched iPhone.
Trademark Infringement
Apple Samsung Design Similarity
While Samsung could argue on the physical appearance being similar with iPhone but another thing the lawsuit included was trademark infringement. The icons on the iPhone were strikingly similar to those in Samsung’s phone. This turns the eyebrows up for Samsung. As there can be thousands of ways of designing icons and GUI effects, Samsung chose in most cases icons similar to that of the iPhone.
Other than these the lawsuit also concluded the methods of copying of the home screen, the design of the front button, and the outlook of the app’s menu. All these were some specific irks for Samsung.
The case began in 2011 and went on to go worldwide. By July 2012, the two companies were still tangled in more than 50 lawsuits around the globe, with billions of dollars in damages claimed between them.
Hearing both sides, the law court ruled in the favour of Apple. The basis was their legitimate concerns about their product being copied in the open market. Samsung paid $1 billion in compensation to the iPhone designer.
“I am talking to you on a phone right now that Apple just copied,” said Brian Wallace, Samsung’s former vice president for strategic marketing. “It’s a giant phone that Steve Jobs made fun of. Who was right? Samsung was right.”
After this and all the cases in between this first court case, Samsung didn’t stay shut. It widely talked against Apple and filed lawsuits claiming infringements of their company policies and patents. These behemoths fought each other like wild animals. Suffering millions on each side, Tore each other apart in claims.
Conclusion
Apple claimed that Samsung had copied the iPhone, leading to a long-running series of lawsuits that were only finally resolved in 2018, with Apple being awarded US$539 million. Issues between the two companies continue. They are now perhaps best described as ‘frenemies’.
While tech hulks like these two fight for global dominance and the crown of the most innovative technology pioneer, it is sure that smartphones are a hot topic. It seems like everyone wants the latest phone to set a trend. From the latest Samsung foldable phone to the iPhones sold as a jewel. This market kind of seems like a fashion innovation.
Apple and Samsung will most probably rule until someone innovates in between. Whatever it will be, humans are fascinated and the future is exciting.
FAQ
Who won the Samsung Apple lawsuit?
Apple won the patent dispute against Samsung and was awarded $1.049 billion in damages for 6 of the 7 patents brought to bear.
Why did Apple sue Samsung?
Apple initially sued Samsung on grounds of patent infringement.
Who launched first smartphone Apple or Samsung?
Apple iPhone was launched in 2007 and two years later, in 2009, Samsung released their first Galaxy phone on the same date.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by the organization it is based on.
Alphabet, Inc. is a holding company, which engages in the business of acquisition and operation of different companies. It operates through the Google and Other Bets segments. The Google segment includes its main Internet products such as ads, Android, Chrome, hardware, Google Cloud, Google Maps, Google Play, Search, and YouTube.
The Other Bets segment consists of businesses such as Access, Calico, CapitalG, GV, Verily, Waymo, and X. The company was founded by Lawrence E. Page and Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin on October 2, 2015 and is headquartered in Mountain View, CA.
Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries. The two co-founders of Google remained as controlling shareholders, board members, and employees at Alphabet. Alphabet is the world’s fourth-largest technology company by revenue and one of the world’s most valuable companies.
The establishment of Alphabet Inc. was prompted by a desire to make the core Google business “cleaner and more accountable” while allowing greater autonomy to group companies that operate in businesses other than Internet services. Page and Brin announced their resignation from their executive posts in December 2019, with the CEO role to be filled by Sundar Pichai, also the CEO of Google. Page and Brin remain co-founders, employees, board members, and controlling shareholders of Alphabet Inc.
Alphabet – Logo and its Meaning
The Alphabet logo uses the language of visual symbols to explain the differences between the companies, Google and itself. In comparison with the Google logo, it looks more serious, like a grown-up in comparison with a teenager.
Logo of Alphabet
Alphabet – Founder and History
Founders of Alphabet
On August 10, 2015, Google Inc. announced plans to create a new public holding company, Alphabet Inc. Google CEO Larry Page and Sergey Brin made this announcement in a blog post on Google’s official blog. Alphabet would be created to restructure Google by moving subsidiaries from Google to Alphabet, narrowing Google’s scope.
In his announcement, Page described the planned holding company as follows:
Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main internet products contained in Alphabet instead. Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related.
Page says the motivation behind the reorganization is to make Google “cleaner and more accountable and better”. He also said he wanted to improve “the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing”, and to allow greater control of unrelated companies.
Alphabet still keeps Google’s stock price history and trades under its former ticker symbols. Its website domain is abc.xyz (xyz was introduced in 2014). When asked about the new name, CEO Larry Page said that it was chosen because the alphabet is the building block of language, one of the most important innovations. He also said that it is the core of how the firm indexes with Google Search.
On December 3, 2019, Page and Brin jointly announced that they would step down from their respective roles, remaining as employees and still the majority vote on the board of directors. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, is to assume the CEO role at Alphabet while retaining the same at Google.
Alphabet – Mission
Alphabet’s mission statement says, “Empowering great entrepreneurs and companies to flourish. Investing at the scale of the opportunities and resources we see. Improving the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing. Making Google even better through greater focus.“
David Drummond – Senior Vice President of Corporate Development
Eric Schmidt – Executive Chairman
Barnaby James – Principal Software Engineer
Alphabet – Subsidiaries
Few of the main subsidiaries of Alphabet are Google, X, Sidewalks Lab, Waymo, Calico, Verily, Fitbit, Deepmind, Wing and Firebase.
Alphabet – Business Model
Alphabet, Inc. is a holding company for Google and several other firms formerly owned by Google. The corporation operates two reportable business segments:
Google – Consists of various Internet products, including Search, YouTube, Maps, Commerce, Ads, Android, Cloud, Apps, Chrome, and Google Play, as well as hardware products such as Chromebooks, Chromecast, and Nexus. This segment accounts for the vast majority of Alphabet’s revenues.
Other Bets – Consists of various operating segments that the company deems “not individually material” (do not meet certain quantitative thresholds). These include the companies Access/Google Fiber, Google Capital, Calico, Verily, Next, GV, and X, and other initiatives.
Alphabet has one primary revenue stream, online advertising from third parties. It is divided into two main categories:
Performance Advertising – Creates relevant ads that users click, resulting in direct connection with advertisers. Most of the third parties pay Alphabet when a user engages in the ads.
Brand Advertising – Increases users’ awareness of advertisers’ offerings through video, images, text, and interactive ads that play across different devices. Alphabet helps third parties display digital videos and other ad types to specific audience groups for their marketing campaigns.
Alphabet revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2020 was $171.704B, a 10.74% increase year-over-year. Rest of the years’ trends are :
Year
Amount
Percentage Change From Last Year
2019
$161.857B
+18.3%
2018
$136.819B
+23.42%
2017
$110.855B
+22.8%
Alphabet – Investments
Alphabet has made 11 investments. Their most recent investment was on Jul 15, 2020, when Cityblock Health raised $53.5M.
Date
Organization Name
Round
Amount
Jul 15, 2020
Cityblock Health
Series B
$53.5M
Jun 26, 2020
Oscar Health
Venture Round
$225M
May 7, 2020
Lime
Venture Round
$170M
May 7, 2020
Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners
Series A
$400M
Mar 2, 2020
Waymo
Venture Round
$2.3B
Aug 14, 2018
Oscar Health
Corporate Round
$375M
Jul 9, 2018
Lime
Series C
$335M
Jun 14, 2018
SpinLaunch
Series A
$40M
Jan 24, 2018
XtalPi
Series B
$15M
Nov 15, 2017
UnitedMasters
Series A
$70M
Alphabet – Acquisitions
An analysis of the company’s investments in 2017 suggested that it was the most active investor in that period, outdoing the capital arm of Intel and also its own best customer. Alphabet, Inc. acquired seven of its own capital-backed startups in the 2017 financial year, with Cisco second having acquired six of the company’s previous investments.
Flatiron Health, a startup founded by two former Google employees and backed by Alphabet, Inc., announced that it was to be acquired by health conglomerate Hoffmann-La Roche for $1.8 billion. The company provides electronic medical records and analysis to identify improved treatments for oncology patients
Growing Regulatory Risks – Alphabet formally acknowledged the government’s antitrust probe earlier this year, but it isn’t just U.S. federal law enforcement officials taking a harder look at Alphabet’s business practices. In addition to FTC and DOJ investigations, a coalition of state attorneys general are participating in an antitrust probe of the company. In Europe, Alphabet has faced record fines in recent years for antitrust violations, and the European Commission, the EU’s antitrust regulatory body, recently opened an investigation into Google’s data collection practices, and may include data related to local search services, advertising, ad targeting, login services, web browsers, and others, according to Reuters.
A recent Wall Street Journal investigation found that contrary to some of the company’s claims, it routinely intervenes in search results, even favouring the results generated by big businesses such as eBay over smaller ones. Any such activity is likely to draw the attention of regulators, as well.
Shoring Up Growth, Profits – For the third quarter, Alphabet posted a mixed earnings report that revealed better-than-expected revenue, but a hit to its earnings — earnings per share came in at $10.12 versus estimates of $12.42. One reason for that miss, as noted by RealMoney’s tech columnist Eric Jhonsa, was accelerating operating expense growth, along with spending on R&D, sales and marketing and other expenses. It also recorded a net loss in its equity investments last quarter, posting a loss of $1.53B loss versus a $1.38B gain in the third quarter of last year.
Alphabet’s reputation for secrecy often works against it when its updates to investors are mixed. After its first quarter earnings call, for example, Alphabet’s stock hit the skids for weeks — partly owing to management’s lack of clarity in explaining its missed quarterly revenue and how it might have been affected by changes to its ad products. Meanwhile, investors have expressed frustrations that Alphabet doesn’t break out YouTube revenue, although it’s been long presumed to be a top driver of ad revenue growth for Google.
Sceptical Employees – Alphabet is still one of the most sought-after employers in Silicon Valley. But a vocal contingent of its workers disagree with the company’s policies and direction. For instance, Pichai navigated Google through a worker revolt last year over Project Maven, a contract with the military to analyse drone footage. (Google did not renew the contract.)
Alphabet Inc., the parent company for the search engine Google, will look to become just the third US-listed company to enter the $1 trillion market cap club in 2020. The stock will need to rise by about 8% between now and the end of 2020 to join this exclusive club. It isn’t going to be an easy task for the equity, especially if earnings growth slows as analysts project.
The company has already made some interesting pivots heading into 2020. Most notably is at the very top, with Sundar Pichai the CEO of Google also becoming the CEO of Alphabet, taking over the position for co-founder Larry Page.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai says the company has offered a competitive platform that has lowered prices advertisers, giving consumers more choice, according to prepared remarks the executive made ahead of Wednesday’s hearing before the House Antitrust Subcommittee.
“A competitive digital ad marketplace gives publishers and advertisers, and therefore consumers, an enormous amount of choice,” Pichai stated. “For example, competition in ads — from Twitter, Instagram, Comcast and others — has helped lower online advertising costs by 40% over the last 10 years, with these saving passed down to consumers through lower prices.”
