MVS Celebrates World Intellectual Property Day 2022April 26, 2022

McKee, Voorhees & Sease, PLC is excited to support World Intellectual Property Day on April 26, 2022. This day celebrates the role intellectual property rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity and the many inspiring inventors and creators around the world who are working to provide for a better tomorrow.

The theme for this year’s World IP Day is “IP and Youth: Innovating for a Better Future” to highlight and promote youth-led innovation and creativity. Across the globe, young people are stepping up to innovation challenges, using their energy and ingenuity, their curiosity and creativity to steer a course towards a better future. MVS is a strong advocate of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) initiatives for our youth. For example, until the program’s end in 2016, MVS sponsored the Vision of Inventiveness program at the University of Iowa Belin-Blank Center. The mission of the Belin-Blank Center is to empower and serve the international gifted community through exemplary leadership in programs, research, and advocacy. Children in the program were challenged to imagine and illustrate an invention. Their illustrations were then judged and awarded by creativity. Our holiday card displayed the winners of the Vision of Inventiveness program. We are currently the sponsors and presenters for the University of Iowa, Belin-Blank Center’s, Invent Iowa competition that brings together school-aged children to invent something they feel would benefit others. Winners in each of the categories move on to the national competition in Washington, D.C. at the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a chance to win a patent filing for their invention.

MVS worked with a Girl Scout troop, named The Flying Monkeys, from Ames, Iowa who developed a prosthetic hand, called the Bob-1, to help a 3-year-old toddler without fingers to write. We donated  time working with the Troop to develop their idea into a patented invention. Their invention won the $20,000 First Lego League Global Innovation Award from the X Prize Foundation. In addition, their invention was first featured on ABC World News and it also appeared in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MSNBC, Yahoo, ABC News 13 in Iowa and many other news outlets. We also brought in speakers to teach the girls about business formation, licensing and commercialization. Our efforts helped the young girls develop a love of STEM and taught them how this knowledge can be applied in the real world.

MVS has represented a company which developed and marketed sports training equipment. The 12-year-old son of the company president invented a Nerf basketball hoop. We worked with the boy on successfully obtaining a design patent for this basketball hoop that had a breakaway rim (i.e., spring based), similar to those used in college and professional basketball. The 12-year-old also learned about the patent process and what was involved in bringing an invention to market. This invention is still sold in stores across the country.

We are proud to support World Intellectual Property Day, and we acknowledge and encourage the innovators, creators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow to find out how IP rights can support their goals, help transform their ideas into realities and make a positive impact on the world. Never stop dreaming, creating and inventing.

Richard Marsolais is the Business Development Director at McKee, Voorhees & Sease, PLC. To learn more, visit our MVS website , or contact Richard directly via email.