IEEE Boston Section

Entrepreneurs’ Network

DESIGN, PLANT, AND UTILITY PATENTS: PROTECTING YOUR STARTUP’S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Registration: 

ENET Member:  Free

General Public:  $10.00

The US Patent and Trademark Office issues at least three kinds of patents. Utility patents are generally well known. They protect novel products, systems, techniques, and processes. Two other kinds of patents issued by the USPTO may be relevant to startups. Design patents protect the ornamental aspects of things and can be hugely important as illustrated by the Apple v Samsung infringement litigation over certain aspects of phones and tablets. Plant patents are perhaps becoming more important. For example, 50 plant patents have been issued by the US Patent Office protecting many varieties of cannabis and hemp. Startups should also consider trademarks as an extension of their patent strategies. Now seems like a great time to review the kinds of patents and why patents and other forms of intellectual property matter.

Questions that our panel of experts will address include:

What are utility, provisional, design and plant patents?

What protections do each of these patents offer to a company, its investors, and shareholders?

What are the tradeoffs between investing in IP, product development, and getting to market?

What are the technology and market differences in the timing of investing in IP?

When do investors care about IP?

When and where should companies consider protecting IP in foreign countries?

This meeting’s presentations and discussion will cover the importance of IP to various people and aspects of startup companies, including, founders, investors, inventors, engineering, product development, and marketing.

A question and answer session will follow the panel discussion, and panelists will be available afterward for responses to individual questions.

Agenda:

7:00 – 7:10 PM – ENET Chairperson’s announcements

7:10 – 7:25 PM – eMinute Pitch – Up to 3 Startup companies’ presentations

7:25 – 8:10 PM – expert speakers on the night’s topic

8:10 – 8:30 PM – Moderator and Audience Q & A with the speakers

8:30 – 9:00 PM – Networking on Zoom (meet with speakers & moderator)

(All times are USA Eastern Daylight time; webinars will not be recorded)

Speakers:

David Burns, Partner at McCarter & English LLP

David Burns is a Partner at McCarter & English LLP’s Boston, MA office. For over 12 years David was an Electrical Engineer at Raytheon Company. While there, he worked in the areas of signal processing, radar system integration, and the development, design, and manufacture of the principal phased array antenna for the IRIDIUM constellation of communication satellites. David has almost 20 years’ experience in patent prosecution, trademark registration, due diligence, patentability, validity, infringement, and non-infringement matters for U.S. and international clients, which include startups, emerging growth companies, and Fortune 500 companies. His practice focuses on the strategic development, protection and management of patent portfolios. David manages and has managed many patent portfolios with some having over 400 issued U.S. and international patents. Lately, his practice has focused on securing patents related to cutting edge technologies involving AI, machine learning, cybersecurity, block chain, AR, and VR. Additionally, David works in the areas of medical device technology, including syringes, on body delivery systems, automatic injection devices, optical coherence tomography devices, and imaging devices. Also, David works in areas related to optical electronics, microprocessor architecture and circuitry, electromagnetics, engine control systems, biometrics, telecommunication architectures and devices, solar cells, analog devices, and semiconductor fabrication.

David Burns on LinkedIn

Peter Fasse, Principal at Fish & Richardson P.C.

Peter Fasse is a Principal in the Boston office of Fish & Richardson (Fish), and has been working at Fish since 1987. Peter has two B.S. degrees from MIT, in Life Sciences and Bioelectrical Engineering. His practice emphasizes client counseling, opinion work, and patent prosecution in a wide variety of technologies, with an emphasis on healthcare, Life Sciences, medical devices, and other biomedical fields plus various green technologies. Peter helps clients from start-ups to multinationals to develop competitive worldwide patent strategies and to establish solid and defensible patent portfolios. He performs competitive patent analyses, IP due diligence to support company acquisitions, identifies third-party patent risks, and provides patentability and freedom-to-operate opinions. Peter also has experience in opposing and defending patents in U.S. litigation and post-grant proceedings and before the European Patent Office. Peter has experience in various fields including medical therapeutics, diagnostics, devices, imaging, microfluidic systems, nucleic acid sequence analysis systems and software, molecular biology, complex biomedical systems, optics, machine tools, RNAi and CRISPR therapeutics, dendritic cell- and DNA- based vaccines, liquid biopsy, engineered AAV systems, next generation sequence analysis, nanoparticle and vector-based delivery, cell culturing and bioprocessing, optics, and lasers.

Peter Fasse on LinkedIn

William E. Hilton, Partner at Gesmer Updegrove, LLP

Bill is a scientist at heart who concentrates on logical legal analyses.  With Bill’s B.S. in electrical engineering and B.A. in computer science, Bill can speak the language of any technology entrepreneur as well as provide sharp legal advice.  Bill’s clients appreciate his deep understanding of the scientific, technological and legal principles underlying their inventions, which provides them with invaluable assistance in their efforts to leverage and protect their intellectual property. Bill concentrates his practice in prosecuting electronic, electro-optic, and computer-related patent applications, along with technology licensing and trademark and copyright protection.  He also provides litigation-oriented services to enforce and protect the intellectual property rights of his clients and resolve their disputes.

Bill Hilton on LinkedIN

Moderator:  Bob Weber

Bob Weber is an intellectual property professional, inventor, serial entrepreneur, senior executive, and management consultant. Presently, he is Managing Director, Patent Kinetics, LLC, a company that helps entrepreneurs and patent owners build and monetize valuable patent portfolios. Weber is an inventor with 27 issued US patents and a number of foreign counterparts assigned to Intertrust Technologies where he served as SVP Business and Technology Strategy, 1996-1999.  The Intertrust portfolio was characterized in the Wall Street Journal as a “once in a generation billion-dollar licensing opportunity.”  Weber has also been a Principal Consultant at Northeast Consulting Resources, Inc.  At NCRI, his consulting practice focused on strategies for information creation, access and distribution; clients included Fortune 50 companies.  Weber divides his time between Silicon Valley and Boston.  He served on the Advisory Board of the IEEE Boston Entrepreneurs Network (“ENET”) at various times between 2004 until June, 2019.  Weber has been a member of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society since 2010 and presently serves on the chapter’s Board of Directors and Program Committee.

Bob Weber on LinkedIn

Co-organizers:

William R. Byrnes, Esq.

Bill is an attorney and senior executive with 25+ years of experience building value by commercializing information and technology. Bill’s focus involves a unique application of his legal and business management experience on the day‐to‐day management of all elements of the product, sales, and contract life cycles as the core of the business. The effect of this focus can convert expense into value driven to the bottom line with increased shareholder value as the results.

Attorney Mansfield is a patent attorney and is a lawyer in MA & NY; high bar exam scores allowed him to waive into the D.C. Circuit.  He won the CALI Award for perfect grades in an IP course, and he has passed the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam covering all types of engineering.  He assists clients with corporate and intellectual property law using trademarks, trade dress, copyrights, licensing, patents, trade secret protection, strategic partnerships, and succession planning. From 2004, he has worked on legal matters & he has counseled entrepreneurs/startups since 2009 thru Mansfield Law.  He has worked on patent prosecution, especially business method, business process, electrical, mechanical, telecommunications, and e-commerce patents.  He has filed for global IP protection and has a network of foreign IP professionals.

William Mansfield, Esq. on LinkedIn

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Digital Signal Processing (DSP) for Software Radio

Course Start Date:  Thursday, October 7, 2021, Videos released weekly 2×1.5 hours

Workshops:  Tuesdays, October 12, 19, 26, November 2, 9

IEEE Member Fee:  $190.00

Non-Member Fee:  $210.00

Decision to run/cancel course:  Thursday, September 30, 2021

Speaker:  Dan Boschen

New Format Combining Live Workshops with Pre-recorded Video

This is a hands-on course providing pre-recorded lectures that students can watch on their own schedule and an unlimited number of times prior to live Q&A/Workshop sessions with the instructor. Ten 1.5 hour videos released 2 per week while the course is in session will be available for up to two months after the conclusion of the course.

Course Summary

This course builds on the IEEE course “DSP for Wireless Communications” also taught by Dan Boschen, further detailing digital signal processing most applicable to practical real-world problems and applications in radio communication systems. Students need not have taken the prior course if they are familiar with fundamental DSP concepts such as the Laplace and Z transform and basic digital filter design principles.

This course brings together core DSP concepts to address signal processing challenges encountered in radios and modems for modern wireless communications. Specific areas covered include carrier and timing recovery, equalization, automatic gain control, and considerations to mitigate the effects of RF and channel distortions such as multipath, phase noise and amplitude/phase offsets.

Dan builds an intuitive understanding of the underlying mathematics through the use of graphics, visual demonstrations, and real-world applications for mixed signal (analog/digital) modern transceivers. This course is applicable to DSP algorithm development with a focus on meeting practical hardware development challenges, rather than a tutorial on implementations with DSP processors.

Now with Jupyter Notebooks!

This long-running IEEE Course has been updated to

include Jupyter Notebooks which incorporates graphics together with Python simulation code to provide a “take-it-with-you” interactive user experience. No knowledge of Python is required but the notebooks will provide a basic framework for proceeding with further signal processing development using that tools for those that have interest in doing so.

This course will not be teaching Python, but using it for demonstration. A more detailed course on Python itself is covered in a separate IEEE Course routinely taught by Dan titled “Python Applications for Digital Design and Signal Processing”.

All set-up information for installation of all tools used will be provided prior to the start of class.

Target Audience:

All engineers involved in or interested in signal processing for wireless communications. Students should have either taken the earlier course “DSP for Wireless Communications” or have been sufficiently exposed to basic signal processing concepts such as Fourier, Laplace, and Z-transforms, Digital filter (FIR/IIR) structures, and representation of complex digital and analog signals in the time and frequency domains. Please contact Dan at boschen@loglin.com if you are uncertain about your background or if you would like more information on the course.

Benefits of Attending/ Goals of Course:

Attendees will gain a strong intuitive understanding of the practical and common signal processing implementations found in modern radio and modem architectures and be able to apply these concepts directly to communications system design.

Topics / Schedule:

Class 1: DSP Review, Radio Architectures, Digital Mapping, Pulse Shaping, Eye Diagrams

Class 2: ADC Receiver, CORDIC Rotator, Digital Down Converters, Numerically Controlled Oscillators

Class 3: Digital Control Loops; Output Power Control, Automatic Gain Control

Class 4: Digital Control Loops; Carrier and Timing Recovery, Sigma Delta Converters

Class 5: RF Signal Impairments, Equalization and Compensation, Linear Feedback Shift Registers

Speaker’s Bio:

Dan Boschen has a MS in Communications and Signal Processing from Northeastern University, with over 25 years of experience in system and hardware design for radio transceivers and modems. He has held various positions at Signal Technologies, MITRE, Airvana and Hittite Microwave designing and developing transceiver hardware from baseband to antenna for wireless communications systems and has taught courses on DSP to international audiences for over 15 years. Dan is a contributor to Signal Processing Stack Exchange https://dsp.stackexchange.com/, and is currently at Microchip (formerly Microsemi and Symmetricom) leading design efforts for advanced frequency and time solutions.

For more background information, please view Dan’s Linked-In page at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/danboschen

Antennas and Propagation Society – 9:00AM – Wednesday, November 3

From Engineering Electromagnetics to Electromagnetics Engineering:

Teaching/Training Next Generations

 Speaker:  Prof. Dr. Levent Sevgi – IEEE APS Distinguished Lecturer – IEEE Fellow

Location:  Wentworth Institute of Technology, MA – Beatty Hall 426

Please note:  COVID Restrictions and Guidelines for outside guests visiting Wentworth:  Guests strongly encouraged to have a vaccine, proof of negative test within 7 days, and mandatory masking indoors.

Registration click here:  

The role of Electromagnetic (EM) fields in our lives has been increasing. Communication, remote sensing, integrated command/ control/surveillance systems, intelligent transportation systems, medicine, environment, education, marketing, defense are only a few areas where EM fields have critical importance. We have witnessed the transformation from Engineering Electromagnetics to Electromagnetic Engineering for the last few decades after being surrounded by EM waves everywhere. Among many others, EM engineering deals with broad range of problems from antenna design to EM scattering, indoor–outdoor radiowave propagation to wireless communication, radar systems to integrated surveillance, subsurface imaging to novel materials, EM compatibility to nano-systems, electroacoustic devices to electro-optical systems, etc. The range of the devices we use in our daily life has extended from DC up to Terahertz frequencies. We have had both large-scale (kilometers-wide) and small-scale (nanometers) EM systems. Large portion of these systems are broadband and digital, and have to operate in close proximity that results in severe EM interference problems. Engineers have to take EM issues into account from the earliest possible design stages. This necessitates establishing an intelligent balance between strong mathematical background (theory), engineering experience (practice), and modeling and numerical computations (simulation).

This keynote lecture aims at a broad-brush look at certain teaching / training challenges that confront wave-oriented EM engineering in the 21st century, in a complex computer and technology-driven world with rapidly shifting societal and technical priorities.

The lecture also discusses modeling and simulation strategies pertaining to complex EM problems and supplies several user-friendly virtual tools, most of which have been presented in the IEEE AP Magazine and which are very effective in teaching and training in lectures such as EM Wave Theory, Antennas and Radiowave Propagation, EM Scattering and Diffraction, Guided Wave Theory, Microstrip Circuit Design, Radar Cross Section Prediction, Transmission Lines, Metamaterials, etc.

 References

• Sevgi, Electromagnetic Modeling and Simulation, IEEE Press – John Wiley (EM Wave Series), NJ, Apr 2014.
• Sevgi, Complex Electromagnetic Problems and Numerical Simulation Approaches, IEEE Press – John Wiley & Sons, May 2003.
• Sevgi, A Practical Guide to EMC Engineering, ARTECH House, Norwood, MA, March 2017.
• Apaydın, L. Sevgi, Radiowave Propagation and Parabolic Equation Modeling, IEEE Press – John Wiley, NJ, Sep 2017.
• Apaydın, L. Sevgi, Electromagnetic Diffraction modeling and simulation with MATLAB, ARTECH House, Norwood, MA, Feb 2021.

 Prof. Dr. Levent Sevgi is a Fellow of the IEEE. He received his B. Eng., M. Eng., and PhD degrees in Electronic Engineering from Istanbul Technical University (ITU) in 1982, 1984 and 1990, respectively. In 1987, while working on his PhD, he was awarded a fellowship that allowed him to work with Prof. L. B. Felsen at Weber Research Institute / New York Polytechnic University York for two years. His work at the Polytechnic concerned the propagation phenomena in non-homogeneous open and closed waveguides.

He was with Istanbul Technical University (1991–1998), TUBITAK-MRC, Information Technologies Research Institute (1999–2000), Weber Research Institute / NY Polytechnic University (1988–1990), Scientific Research Group of Raytheon Systems Canada (1998 – 1999), Center for Defense Studies, ITUV-SAM (1993 –1998 and 2000–2002) and with University of Massachusetts, Lowell (UML) MA/USA as a full-time faculty (2012 – 2013) and with DOGUS University (2001-2014). Since Sep 2014, he has been with Istanbul OKAN University.

He has been an IEEE AP-S Distinguished Lecturer for the term 2020-2022. He served one-term in the IEEE AP-S AdCom (2013-2015) and one-term and as a member of IEEE AP-S Field Award Committee (2018-2019). He has been the writer/editor of the “Testing ourselves” Column in the IEEE AP Magazine (since Feb 2007), a member of the IEEE AP-S Education Committee (since 2006), He has also served in several editorial boards (EB) of other prestigious journals / magazines, such as the IEEE AP Magazine (since 2007), Wiley’s International Journal of RFMiCAE (2002-2018), and the IEEE Access (2017-2019 and 2020 – 2022). He is the founding chair of the EMC TURKIYE International Conferences (www.emcturkiye.org).

He has been involved with complex electromagnetic problems and complex communication and radar systems for nearly three decades. His research study has focused on propagation in complex environments; electromagnetic scattering and diffraction; RCS prediction and reduction; EMC/EMI modelling, simulation, tests and measurements; multi-sensor integrated wide area surveillance systems; surface wave HF radars; analytical and numerical methods in electromagnetics; FDTD, TLM, FEM, SSPE, and MoM techniques and their applications; bio-electromagnetics. He is also interested in novel approaches in engineering education, teaching electromagnetics via virtual tools. He also teaches popular science lectures such as Science, Technology and Society.

He has given dozens of seminars, invited/keynote talks, organized/presented several tutorials, training sessions and short courses from half-day to three-days in universities/institutes all around the World. He has published more than a dozen special issues / sections in many journals as a guest editor and/or a co-guest editor.

His recent keynote talks are: (i) From Engineering Electromagnetics towards Electromagnetic Engineering: Teaching, Training Next Generations in MMS’2018 Mediterranean Microwave Symposium, Istanbul / Turkey, and in EuCAP 2019 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation, Krakow / Poland, (ii) Radiowave Propagation Modeling and Simulation in APCAP 2019 Asia-Pasific Conference on Antennas and Propagation, Incheon / S. Korea, and (iii) From Design to Market: EMC Engineering in InCAP 2018 Indian Conference on Antennas and Propagation, Hyderabad / India.

He has published many books/book chapters in English and Turkish, over 180 journal/magazine papers/tutorials and attended nearly 100 international conferences/symposiums. His three books Complex Electromagnetic Problems and Numerical Simulation Approaches, Electromagnetic Modeling and Simulation and Radiowave Propagation and Parabolic Equation Modeling were published by the IEEE Press – WILEY in 2003, 2014, and 2017, respectively. His fourth and fifth books, A Practical Guide to EMC Engineering (Sep 2017) and Diffraction Modeling and Simulation with MATLAB (Feb 2021) were published by ARTECH HOUSE.

His h-index is 35, with a record of more than 4100 citations (source: Google Scholar, July 2021).

Microwave Theory and Techniques Society

SILICON-BASED MILLIMETER-WAVE PHASED ARRAYS FOR 5G: FUNDAMENTALS TO FUTURE TRENDS

Speaker:  Dr. Bodhisatwa Sadhu

Registration click here: 

5G cellular communications use millimeter-wave phased arrays to achieve high data rates and low latency. The majority of the 5G millimeter-wave infrastructure will be partially or completely based on silicon technology. This talk will discuss key aspects of silicon-based millimeter-wave phased-array module design and characterization. It will cover fundamentals of phased arrays, provide an overview of phased array antenna modules using silicon technology, and take a deep dive into an example 5G phased array antenna module. The talk will end with a peek into the future of 5G directional communications.

Bio: Bodhisatwa Sadhu received the B.E. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS-Pilani, India in 2007, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in 2012. He is currently a Research Staff Member with the RF/mm-wave Communication Circuits & Systems Group at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University, NY. At IBM, he has led the design and demonstration of the world’s first reported silicon-based 5G phased array IC, a low power 60GHz CMOS transceiver IC for 802.11ad communications, and a software-defined phased array radio. He has authored and co-authored 50+ peer-reviewed papers, the book Cognitive Radio Receiver Front-Ends-RF/Analog Circuit Techniques (Springer, 2014), and several book chapters. He also holds 60+ issued U.S. patents. Dr. Sadhu currently serves as an IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Microwave Lecturer, the RFIC Systems & Applications sub-committee Chair and a Steering Committee Member of the IEEE RFIC Symposium, TPC member of the Wireless Subcommittee at IEEE ISSCC, and has served as Guest Editor of IEEE TMTT in 2021 and IEEE JSSC in 2017.

Dr. Sadhu is the recipient of the 2017 ISSCC Lewis Winner Award for Outstanding Paper (best paper award), the 2017 JSSC Best Paper Award, the 2017 Pat Goldberg Memorial Award for the best paper in computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics published by IBM Research, four IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards, twelve IBM Patent Plateau Awards, the University of Minnesota Graduate School Fellowship in 2007, 3M Science and Technology Fellowship in 2009, the University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in 2011, the BITS Pilani Silver Medal in 2007, and stood 2^nd in India in the Indian School Certificate (ISC) examination in 2003. He was recognized as an IBM Master Inventor in 2017, and was selected by the National Academy of Engineering for its Frontiers of Engineering Symposium in 2020.

Registration:  https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/283808

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