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Ferris State's library is a key resource for inventors
By Katie Pearsall

   “Everything that can be invented has been invented,” said Charles H. Duell the commissioner of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1899, arguing why his office was obsolete and should be eliminated.
   More than a century later, the USPTO receives more than 340,000 applications for patents every year. People who wish to patent their product must search through the millions of already granted patents before anteing up the $385 application fee. They can hire a patent attorney to do the search for them, which would cost an average of $800, or they can just head over to the Ferris Library for Information, Technology and Education.

Patent Searching Takes FLITE
   Ferris State has one of only three patent and trademark libraries in Michigan and 85 in the entire country. The Ferris State Patent and Trademark Depository Library, located on the second floor of FLITE, serves about three quarters of the geographical area of Michigan, but gets questions from all over the world. Ferris was designated by the Patent and Trademark Office as a PTDL in 1991 and became operational in 1992.
   “We have had more than 1,500 people come to Ferris to learn how to do a patent search,” says Ray Dickinson, government document specialist and trademark depository library coordinator. Dickinson is not allowed by the University or the USPTO to do patent searches for inventors. His job is to facilitate people in learning to do their own.
   “It takes about two hours to train inventors to do their own searches,” says Dickinson. An in-depth search may take months. The most basic part of Dickinson’s job is to teach inventors what a patent is and what it does for you. “A patent allows the holder to exclude others from profiting from his invention.”
   “I call it the ‘wacky world of patents’,” says Dickinson about many people’s opinion that patents are dull and boring. Dickinson gives presentations on unusual patents that have been granted over the years, including a religious soap (“wash away your sins”), a doll maternity dress (“the dress is pregnant, not the doll”) and a hat shaped like a cheese grater (“for opponents of the Green Bay Packers”).
   Shortly after the library became a PTDL, Dickinson had a student come to him wondering if it would be possible to trademark the alphabet. He wanted people to pay him for using letters. Once Dickinson told him that it would cost a couple hundred dollars per letter, he was quickly dissuaded. However, other students have used Ferris’ PTDL very effectively.
   Casey Danford, a sophomore kicker on the Ferris State football team, used Ferris’ PTDL to perform his patent search.
   “Ray showed me how to search through the USPTO Web site and conduct my own search,” says Danford. “He truly was a lot of help.” When the patent search turned up no results, Danford knew he was onto something unique.
Danford now has a patent pending on an invention he calls Aromasands.
   “Aromasands is a decorative sand impregnated with a scent,” Danford explains. “I currently have nine different colors of sand, each having its own scent. It works great as an additive for candles, under decorative plants or as an air freshener anywhere.”
   The idea for Danford’s creation came as an epiphany while he was sitting in the Tampa International Airport. Genius struck as Danford watched a man change the sand in the public ashtrays. As the man walked past with the foul smelling sand, Aromasands was born.
   Danford, busy with his college courses and football practice, managed to sandwich in his application for a patent during Christmas break. “With the knowledge I picked up from Ray, I went on the USPTO site and found the forms I needed. I then looked up how patent lawyers worded their filings,” says Danford.
   Now, with patent pending, Danford is able to sell Aromasands online at his own Web site, as well as at Cadillac area stores and craft shows, even as he works on finishing his degree and perfecting his field goals.

Patenting Professors
   Many professors at Ferris also hold patents. Ian Mathison, dean of the College of Pharmacy, currently holds 36 patents from all over the world including the United States, France, Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Canada and Mexico.
   “My patents describe the discovery and use of new drug molecules to be used for hypertension and arrhythmias. In the drug patent area, it is important to show utility. So, you can obtain a patent on the useful agent itself as well as the process for making that drug molecule,” says Mathison. “The award of a patent validates and protects the successful development of original ideas.”
   The company that sponsored Mathison’s work wanted the patent for other reasons: to protect their investment. “The company sponsor wanted the patents so that the work they were sponsoring had some potential to repay them,” says Mathison.
   That’s also why Mathison has patents all over the world. A patent in the U.S. doesn’t grant protection anywhere else, and many countries don’t have a patent system like the U.S. Here, if you can prove you were the first to invent something, you receive the patent. Other countries have a “first-to-patent” system, where the person who is first to patent something receives all rights to it.
   The granting of a patent is a long and arduous process. “Doing the research in the lab took between three and five years, depending on the patent,” says Mathison. And don’t count on the work to be over once the application is submitted.
   “It’s a very back and forth process. The U.S. Patent Office appoints examiners to your application and they ask questions and may require additional proof of invention. Sometimes, the application process requires you to do more research,” Mathison adds.

Becoming Obsessive
   But hard work doesn’t dissuade a true inventor. Just ask the people locked in the patent room at the Ferris PTDL searching through millions of files. Though their eyes are bleary from staring at computer screens and their fingers smudged from looking through volumes and volumes of dusty books, they won’t give up until the search is over. Dickinson believes in order to succeed you have to be obsessed with your invention, but he’ll ease the process as much as he can.
   Dickinson wants the inventors who come to Ferris’ PTDL to feel good about their search and about Ferris in general.
   “At many patent and trademark depository libraries, the librarian will show the inventor to a computer, give him a handbook and say, ‘Let me know if you have any questions,’ but most people don’t even know what questions they should be asking.” At Ferris, Dickinson spends time with the inventor, goes through the training course and helps throughout the entire process.
   And, who knows, he might be helping the next Thomas Edison, or maybe the next Rick Hartman, inventor of the motorized ice cream cone, right here at Ferris.