Prioritizing the Inventions

• Author: Donald S. Rimai
• Profession: Recently retired from Eastman Kodak where he worked as a researcher and intellectual property manager in digital printing and adhesion science
• Pages: 77-89

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What Does Prioritizing Inventions Mean?

Isn’t the concept of prioritizing inventions oxymoronic? Aer all, doesn’t

an invention have to be novel and nonobvious? In short, in order to be

patentable, doesn’t the solution to the problem have to be unanticipated?

As such, how can you prioritize when you will have unanticipated results?

In fact, the process of prioritizing inventions is extremely important if

you are going to introduce your product on time that has all the critical

features at a price that customers would be willing to pay.

When prioritizing inventions, it is important to consider several factors.

First, how critical is it for the project that a specic problem be solved?

If the project cannot advance at all until a problem is solved, obtaining

the solution to that problem has to be given a top priority. As discussed

earlier in this book, the ability to completely transfer electrophotographic

prints, made using toner particles having diameters of approximately 3 μm,

from the photoreceptor to a receiver was absolutely crucial in order to use

this technology for photonishing applications. Being able to x the toner

image and obtain a gloss level that matched photographs, although criti-

cal to the project, did not have to be accomplished until aer a method of

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Prioritizing the Inventions