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- IDiyas Inventors Newsletter September 2, 2025
IDiyas Inventors Newsletter September 2, 2025
š½ļøJosephine Cochrane and the Dishwasher: A Socialiteās War on Dirty Dishes

For the Inventor. By the Inventor.
See this week's breakthrough USPTO patent grants!
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Table of Contents
This Week's Inventor and Patent News:
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š§ Rex Medical v. Intuitive Surgical. Rex Medical appealed a district courtās decision to reduce its $10 million damages award to just $1 in a patent infringement case involving surgical stapler technology. The court had excluded expert testimony on licensing value, prompting Rex to argue that its patent was central to the licensing deal and deserved a retrial.
āļø Sonos v. Google: Laches Revisited. The Federal Circuit partially reversed a lower court ruling, reviving Sonosā claims against Google. The court found that the district court misapplied the doctrine of prosecution laches, which had previously invalidated Sonosā media playback patents due to alleged delays in filing.
š AI Artist Challenges Copyright Denial. Jason M. Allen filed a motion in Colorado federal court to overturn the Copyright Officeās refusal to register his AI-generated artwork. The case could set precedent for how AI-assisted creations are treated under U.S. copyright law.
š¤ Unitree Robotics Sued in China. Unitree Robotics, known for its robotic dogs, was sued by a local chemical company in Hangzhou for alleged patent infringement. The lawsuit coincides with Unitreeās IPO preparations, raising stakes for the companyās public image and valuation.
New weekly USPTO Patents data have been added.
Entity Type / Patent Type | Large (> 500 Employees) | Small (⤠500 Employees) | Micro (Small Entity) |
Utility | 4,592 | 1,383 | 131 |
Design | 476 | 412 | 217 |
Plant | 5 | 0 | 0 |
*Where one patent can have more than one assignee, Entity data assignment as of August 26, 2025
š½ļøJosephine Cochrane and the Dishwasher: A Socialiteās War on Dirty Dishes
Josephine Cochrane: The Socialite Who Declared War on Dirty Dishes and WonIn the grand theater of 19th-century domestic life, few villains loomed larger than clumsy dishwashers, particularly the human variety. Josephine Cochrane, a wealthy Illinois socialite, had a problem: her prized fine china was under constant siege by well-meaning but heavy-handed servants. Rather than resign herself to a future of cracked porcelain and polite despair, Cochrane did what any brilliant mind would: she declared war on manual dishwashing. | ![]() |
In 1886, she patented the first practical automatic dishwasher, a machine that didnāt rely on careless human hands but instead used high-pressure water jets to do the job correctly. Unlike previous attempts at mechanized dishwashing, which were little more than elaborate rinsing stations, Cochranes design cleaned dishes efficiently. She famously remarked, If nobody else is going to invent a dishwashing machine, Iāll do it myself! which, in retrospect, sounds like the tagline to an action-packed inventor biopic.
At first, the world wasnāt quite ready to embrace her innovation. Home kitchens of the time lacked plumbing capable of handling such a machine, so the dishwasher initially found its niche in restaurants and hotels, where overworked staff saw it as nothing short of a miracle. Eventually, as households modernized, Cochraneās invention became a kitchen essential, sparing generations from the tyranny of dishpan hands.
Today, every post-dinner cleanup owes its convenience to a determined woman who refused to let dinnerware suffer at the hands of the uncoordinated. Josephine Cochrane didnāt just clean up a mess, she changed history.
Josephineās war on dirty plates gave us the dishwasher. What other forgotten inventors reshaped our daily lives? Thatās the kind of history we uncover every week. Subscribe now and never miss a story worth telling at your next dinner party.
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Trivia
šļø Which famous inventor came up with the idea for instant photography after his young daughter asked why she couldnāt immediately see the picture he had just taken?
A. George Eastman
B. Edwin Land
C. Thomas Edison
D. Ansel Adams
Please scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to find out.
Featured Inventor
Wayne Westerman: The Quiet Godfather of the Touchscreen Revolution
Wayne Westerman didnāt set out to change the way the world types, taps, and scrolls. He just wanted to give his wrists a break. Struggling with tendonitis as a grad student in the late 1990s, Westerman, along with his advisor, John Elias, began developing a solution that would let users gesture, type, and navigate computers with minimal strain. What emerged was FingerWorks, the first commercial multitouch typing and trackpad system. Funded partly by an NSF fellowship and partly by sheer ergonomic desperation, FingerWorks catered to RSI sufferers and power users with its futuristic interface, years before āpinch-to-zoomā became a cultural reflex. | ![]() |
In 2005, Apple quietly acquired FingerWorks, and Westermanās algorithms soon became the invisible backbone of modern life. iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, Magic Mice, and Apple TV remotes all owe their silky multitouch precision to his pioneering work. His teamās gestures, once niche and nerdy, are now second nature worldwide.
But Wayne didnāt stop with touch. During the pandemic, he pivoted again, this time to clean air. A passionate advocate for energy-efficient, DIY air purification, he helped unite engineering dads on Twitter into CleanAirKits, promoting Corsi-Rosenthal boxes built with PC fans and cardboard.
While Steve Jobs got the stage and the spotlight, Westerman remains the inventorās inventor, quietly brilliant, wrist-friendly, and very likely the reason your thumbs havenāt fallen off.
šļø So the next time you tap, thank Wayne, the multitouch messiah who just wanted to ease a little pain.
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Today in Patent History
š„š” Sonyās 1997 Patent on Picture Signal Encoding and Decoding Methods
On September 2, 1997, Sony was granted a U.S. Patent for a "Picture signal encoding method and apparatus and picture signal decoding method and apparatus." This innovation focused on simplifying the complex hardware behind digital video processing, making it possible to handle encoding and decoding with fewer resources. By reducing the scale of multipliers and using clever shift operations, Sonyās engineers streamlined how picture signals were processed, a behind-the-scenes improvement that quietly shaped the efficiency of digital video systems we now take for granted. | ![]() U.S. Patent No. 5,663,763 |
Introducing New Data Products and Enhancements
Centurion Patentors
Congratulations to last week's Centurion Patentors!
We are excited to welcome the following inventors into these prestigious patent clubs:

Trivia
Answer: B. Edwin Land š”
š In 1943, while on vacation, Landās 3-year-old daughter innocently asked why she couldnāt see a photo right away. That question sparked his imagination and led to the creation of the Polaroid instant camera, first sold in 1948. A childās curiosity turned into one of the most iconic innovations in photography.
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