I got a patent! (sort of)
System and method for assessing an image sentiment
Growing up I wanted to be an inventor, which meant that obtaining a patent was the ultimate goal. I remember in 3rd grade I proposed a car that, at the push of a button, could transform into a boat or plane. Clearly, I was heavily influenced by Voltron. It should also be clear that I had not seen James Bond's Lotus from "The Spy Who Loved Me". I was just a kid with a dream.
A few years ago I helped support an internal investment - basically a small R & D effort - to take some customer experience data, apply analytics and then display everything in a dashboard. My role was more on the leadership side - staffing the UI team and putting together a notional hosting approach in AWS. I wrote some Lambda functions to process images and move them from one S3 bucket to another, but that was the extent of my technical contributions.
As the project wrapped it was determined that the company would seek a patent. I was skeptical that we'd be successful but also cautiously optimistic. I filled out some paperwork and waited. All the work was in the hands of the corporate legal team and the patent attorneys they work working with.
In the summer of 2020 we finally heard back from the US Patent and Trademark Office. They were not going to grant our original claim, instead requesting a review of our claim versus some existing patents. Due to attrition I was the senior most applicant left from the original team and so at this point I was more involved in the response. I reviewed the other patents, identifying differences in scope and applicability. I also sought to help clarify the term "sentiment" which is applied as a term of art on our application but was interpreted more literally as an emotional measure.
We wrapped up our response in the fall and a few weeks before Christmas got word that it was accepted. I was excited, though I knew I had to wait another couple of months before things would be finalized. On February 2 it was certified, US Patent 10,909,705, "System and method for assessing an image sentiment" was awarded and I was officially an inventor. I'm proud of what we accomplished as team and I'm believe 10 year-old me if too.