social entrepreneurs

About 1 year ago, some colleagues from graduate school and I had the privelage to work with DataDyne for our final project for our studies. We had the opportunity to work with Dr. Joel Selanikio, the co-founder, and evaluate user adoption of DataDyne's EpiSurveyor in Kenya.

If you are not familiar with EpiSurveyor, I won't hesitate to say that you should be. EpiSurveyor is one of DataDyne's key products and has won a number of acolades and awards over the past few years (including the 2008 Tech Museum Award for Health, the 2009 Wall Street Journal Innovation Award, and the MIT-Lemelson award for Sustainability).

The basic premise is that a user can download the software from the web and create forms for data collection. Data can then be collected regardless of internet or mobile connection, as the mobile phone acts as a database. Once the user has a signal, they can send that data to be aggregated at a central loctaion.

With Google Patents you can search roughly 7 million patents that have been granted since 1790! And in case you were wondering, there is already a patent for a "device for cooling an infant's brain".

Because Google Patents is just for the US (see note below) make sure you check out the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Guide to International Property World Wide, a great resource that allows you to search for patent information in other countries.

Please note that: "All patents available through Google Patent Search come from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Patents issued in the United States are public domain government information, and images of the entire database of U.S. patents are readily available online via the USPTO website."

Quick disclaimer #2: I am not a lawyer so I can't give you legal advice regarding intellectual property issues but I can forward you some of the information that specialists have developed.