More Time for POPQuiz #2. Because Vampires. And Social Media.

POPQUIZ #2: Now with more time!

Short version: you now have until Sunday August 25 11:59 AoE time to submit your answers to the latest POPQuiz.

And because so many of you seemed to prefer submitting your answers to us privately, we’ve added a SurveyMonkey link for submitting your examples to POPQuiz #2.

Don’t forget: if you want even more POPQuiz goodness, join us Bucharest, Romania for Patent Olympiad 2019.

Vampires!

Last week, we released our second POPQuiz challenge. Our theme was inspired by Romania’s connection to vampire lore, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and its inspiration, Wallachian prince and Romanian hero Vlad the Impaler, or Vlad Drăculea.

We have some great submissions already. We’ve also heard from some of you that you would like an extension, and rightly so, as we may have forgotten to send a notification or two. Since we would love to see more weird vampire patents, we are happy to oblige.

So you now have until Sunday August 25 11:59 AoE time to dig deep and uncover the most vampiric patent you can find.

Below is an excerpt from our original post; the challenge is the same in every way except we’ve added an option to respond via SurveyMonkey.

We are looking for Dracula-inspired patents that maximize a highly arbitrary score we’ll call the VI, also known as the Vlad Index, or Vampire Index.

In this challenge, we’re not looking for an answer we already think we know. Instead, we want to know what you can find.

The Search Parameters
1. We are interested in patent and patent documents that relate to the acquisition of vampire-like superpowers (non-limiting examples: shapeshifting, mind control, levitation, immortality or extraordinary longevity). You may find this compilation on Wikipedia a helpful reference.

2. We wish to find patents and patent documents on the subject that maximize the VI – that is, the document’s connection to the themes that inspired this challenge.

To see exactly what we’d like you to submit, please go to our original POPQuiz #2 post. We’ve updated that post with the SurveyMonkey link, too.

RECAP: The Vampire Index

We’re not looking for patent quality here (there are things like the Patent Quality Index for that); we’re looking for the document’s connection to Romania, Romanians, Transylvanians, bats, vampires, Dracula, Vlad Drăculea, vampire superpowers, and vampire lore. The stronger the vampire or Romanian connections of your submission, the higher the VI.

And because we’re completely making this index up, our method for judging the VI is non-rigourous and most certainly subject to challenge. We’ve got no stake in the actual results – but maybe you do.

(Apologies to the actual Romanians in our audience. We know there’s more to Romania than fictional demons and the possibly sparkly undead. We’ll get to that in PODIUM posts to come.)

Patent searchers and social media

We have another reason for granting an extension.

It turns out most patent searchers aren’t keen to post their search results on social media.

Huh.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised. We should have given you an alternative to direct emails and social media. We were bitten by a silly idea: our bad.

We’re now adding an easy way to submit your search results directly and privately, in keeping with those finely tuned professional habits.

And no, it’s not a totally new and private social media platform for dedicated lurkers. It’s just a good old SurveyMonkey link.

Submit your answers here.

And if you do feel comfortable sharing to social media, be sure to use the hashtags #POPquiz and #patentolympiad so we can see your posts. We love celebrating the run up to Patent Olympiad 2019 with your ideas and reactions.

Want to see what your colleagues have found?

We’ve posted some interim highlights in this post. There’s a lot of weird out there.