IDiyas Inventors Newsletter November 11, 2025

🧠 Innovation by Frustration💡 Both inventions began with irritation:•Zamboni was tired of manually scraping ice ⛸️.•Field was frustrated by design software that felt slow and clunky 🎨.👉 They solved their own pain points, then revolutionized entire industries.

November 11, 2025

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See this week's breakthrough USPTO patent grants!

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This Week's Patent News:

  1. 🕹️ USPTO Orders Rare Reexamination of Nintendo Patent. The USPTO initiated a rare Director-initiated ex parte reexamination of a Nintendo patent, following media scrutiny from gaming outlets. This move is unusual and signals heightened sensitivity to public discourse around patent grants.

  2. ⚖️ Federal Circuit Upholds Discretionary Denials in IPR Policy Challenge. The CAFC rejected petitions from Motorola, Google, and SAP America challenging the USPTO’s discretionary denial policy in inter partes review (IPR) cases. This decision reinforces the agency’s authority to decline reviews based on parallel litigation.

  3. 🧠 Getty Wins Narrow Trademark Case Against AI Developer. Getty Images secured a limited victory in a trademark case involving AI-generated content. While broader copyright issues remain unresolved, the ruling sends a warning to AI developers about brand misuse and model training practices.

  4. 🚀 USPTO Launches Streamlined Patent Application Program. The USPTO introduced a new pilot program to accelerate examination of applications with simplified claim sets. The initiative aims to reduce backlog and improve efficiency for applicants with straightforward inventions.

  5. 🏛️ Interview with UPC Judge Camille Lignières on Judicial Dynamics. Judge Lignières discussed the collaborative nature of decision-making at the Unified Patent Court and the pivotal role of the third judge in panel deliberations. The interview sheds light on the court’s early jurisprudence and procedural philosophy.

New weekly USPTO Patents data have been added.

7,142 Patents  
Utility: 6,399
Design: 736
Plant: 7

Top Companies:

  1. Samsung Electronics - 158

  2. Qualcomm - 96

  3. Dell - 74

  4. TSMC - 73

  5. Toyota - 71

  6. Huawei - 70

  7. Canon - 59

  1. LG Electronics - 58

  2. Samsung Display - 52

  3. Google - 45

  4. Beijing BOE - 45

  5. Apple - 41

  6. IBM - 41

  7. Microsoft - 37

  8. Intel - 36

🏒 The Man Who Smoothed the Ice: Frank Zamboni’s Cool Invention

In the 1940s, Frank J. Zamboni, a tinkerer from Eureka, Utah, found himself facing an unexpected problem bumpy ice. Having built an ice rink in Paramount, California, with his brother Lawrence, Zamboni spent countless hours maintaining the surface. Back then, it took a crew of five people over an hour to scrape, wash, and refreeze the ice after each skating session. For a man who hated inefficiency, that was unacceptable.

Zamboni, who already held patents for refrigeration equipment, set out to build a machine that could do it all shave the ice, collect the snow, wash the surface, and lay down a thin layer of fresh water in a single pass. After years of trial and error, in 1949, he unveiled his prototype, cobbled together from Jeep parts and a washing machine motor. The result? Smooth, glistening ice in just 10 minutes.

The invention revolutionized skating rinks around the world. Zamboni patented his creation in 1953 (U.S. Patent No. 2,642,679), and soon, Zamboni became synonymous with ice resurfacing so much so that it became a household name, like Kleenex or Band-Aid.

But Zamboni never set out to make history he just wanted to make better ice for his customers. His simple idea transformed a tedious chore into a single elegant motion, forever changing hockey, figure skating, and every rink that followed.

From one man’s obsession with perfection came a machine that made the world’s coldest sport a little smoother.

Frank J. Zamboni passed away on July 27, 1988, in Paramount, California, at the age of 87.

However, his legacy lives on through the Zamboni Company, which is still family-owned and continues to manufacture ice-resurfacing machines at its headquarters in Paramount, California. The company has also expanded globally, with manufacturing facilities in Canada and partnerships worldwide.

Today, Zamboni remains both a brand and a verb a testament to how completely Frank Zamboni’s name became synonymous with smooth ice.

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Trivia

Guess which one was patented first, and consider how it changed the world. Ready? Let’s go! 🧠 Velcro vs. Post-it Notes

Please scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to find out.

Dylan Field: Designing the Future, One Vector at a Time

Dylan Field looks less like a tech mogul and more like the guy who’d help you debug your Figma prototype at 2 a.m., which, in fairness, he probably would. As the co-founder and CEO of Figma, Field didn’t just build a design tool; he reimagined how design should feel in the cloud age: fast, multiplayer, and strangely addictive.

Field dropped out of Brown University in 2012, thanks to a Thiel Fellowship, a move that screamed “I’m betting on myself” louder than a VC pitch deck. Together with co-founder Evan Wallace, he tinkered for years before launching Figma in 2016. Designers flocked to it like moths to a well-lit artboard. Suddenly, collaboration wasn’t just possible, it was fun.

In 2022 Adobe announced that it would acquire Figma for a jaw-dropping $20 billion. However, the deal did not finalize. In December 2023 the companies mutually agreed to terminate the acquisition due to regulatory issues.

Field isn’t your typical Silicon Valley founder. He’s awkwardly earnest, disarmingly thoughtful, and just nerdy enough to get excited about font rendering. His product philosophy? Power in simplicity. And it shows, Figma is so intuitive, even product managers can use it (kidding... sort of).

Today in Patent History

🧠 You Know Einstein for E=mc²… But Did You Know He Patented a Fridge?

On this day in 1930, a patent was issued to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd, for their invention known as the Einstein refrigerator, a cooling system that required no electricity and had no moving parts. It operated on a heat source, such as a gas flame, using an innovative absorption process. The motivation came after Einstein read about a family killed by toxic fumes from a leaking refrigerator. Disturbed by the tragedy, he and Szilárd sought to design a safer, more reliable refrigeration system. Though it was never commercialized widely, their work remains a fascinating blend of physics, compassion, and engineering ingenuity.

U.S. Patent No. 1781541

Introducing New Data Products and Enhancements

💡From INVENT to INVEST — Just One Letter (and One Vault) Away

INVENT and INVEST are nearly identical. Swap the N for an S, and you turn ideas into impact.

And bridging the gap is the UpFront Research Reports Vault, your toolkit to transform invention into opportunity.

Medical robots are used to assist doctors in performing precise surgeries, deliver medications, and support rehabilitation. They enhance accuracy, reduce recovery time, and improve patient outcomes through automation and minimally invasive procedures. This UpFront Research report summarizes patent use cases, and prolific inventors. LG Electronics of South Korea is the leading researcher by patents.

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Centurion Patentors

Congratulations to last week's Centurion Patentors!

The Centurion Patentors are 0.185% of ALL Inventors worldwide who hold more than one hundred U.S. patents. They are the Navy SEALs of innovation. They don’t just have good ideas once; they’ve built a discipline, a repeatable process for turning thought into impact.

We are excited to welcome the following inventors into these prestigious patent clubs:

Trivia

Answer: âś… First patented: Velcro

George de Mestral patented Velcro in 1955, inspired by burrs on his dog’s fur.

Post-it Notes weren’t patented until 1974 by Spencer Silver and Arthur Fry.

📌 Fun Fact: Post-it Notes began as a “failed” superglue. Velcro, meanwhile, was used on astronaut suits before it found your sneakers.

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