SBIR Phase II: Adaptable Invention Disclosure System

Award ID: 1738540

This SBIR Phase II project continues previous development of an invention disclosure tool that allows users to draft a United States Patent and Trademark Office compliant patent applications by using an intuitive interface and game-based educational tools to draft patent applications. Inventors and small companies having no background in patent law and patent-application drafting strategies struggle with properly describing their inventions. Overcoming this lack of understanding on the part of the inventor requires a great deal of one-on-one educational training with a patent professional in order to draft a quality patent application. However, engaging a patent professional is costly and time consuming. This project expands the capacity of the invention disclosure software by allowing users to configure and customize the software for specific types of inventions and arts. Specifically, this project proposes a new customization tool for integration with the existing invention disclosure tool to allow for widespread adoption into varied technology arts. The customization tool comprises software modules that allow end users to identify and create narrative goals, design software interfaces by configuring display rules, design text output state configurations based on logical operators, design natural language output, design the natural language generated output that is desired for that product type and configure template text, token input, and grammar associations, and determine the position of natural language output into an overall document structure. This customization tool will allow for rapid, scalable distribution of the product to be driven by end users rather than through a traditional software development process, e.g., 1) researching, 2) market testing, and 3) designing and implementing each new version of a product for different technology arts.

NSF Program Director: Rajesh Mehta