He has applied for a patent and is now hoping his design will attract offers from businesses keen to produce it.

BBC: Tonia Wells has a hereditary hand tremor in both hands.

The Department of Energy has applied for a patent on the technology, and Halstead's company has the right to an exclusive license.

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The company just applied for a patent on a camera whose images could selectively transition from opaque to transparent and back again, depending on how much privacy is called for.

ENGADGET: Apple patent application reveals a camera with built-in privacy filter

Far from a casual review, the standards for the grant of a patent are so stringent, and applied in such a careful manner, that in 2010 a decision was made to grant a patent for less than 63% of applications that had been completely examined.

FORBES: Keep the Current Standard for Invalidating a Patent

The existing criteria for a patent should be applied with greater vigour.

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Mervyn Jacobson read about Simons' bumpy journey and was smitten with the idea of finding value in junk DNA. In 1989 they formed GeneType and applied for their first patent covering noncoding regions and HLA. In 2000 GeneType pulled off a reverse merger with a publicly traded Australian shell company that formerly mined for gold.

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For a long time, software was considered by patent law as a form of applied math.

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