Professional Activities
Fitch Even Sponsors National Inventors Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
June 2, 2014
As in past years, Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery LLP was proud to serve as a sponsor of the 42nd Annual National Inventors Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony honoring the 2014 inductees. The induction ceremony took place on May 21, 2014, at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia.
In attendance were Fitch Even partners Edward W. Gray, Jr., who is Past Chair of the National Inventors Hall of Fame Board of Directors, Kendrew H. Colton, Karl R. Fink, Thomas F. Lebens, John M. Naber, and Nicholas T. Peters, along with Bonita Lewis Bell, VP and Deputy General Counsel at Terex Corp., and York Eggleston, CEO of Semantic Labs. Also attending were Paul R. Michel, Chief Circuit Judge (Retired); Pauline Newman, Circuit Judge; and James D. Smith, Chief Judge, Patent Trial and Appeal Board.This year's 15 inductees included Frances Arnold for her work with directed evolution of enzymes, which led to a wide range of applications including new ways of making pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and biofuels; the late William Bowerman, whose athletic shoe innovations formed the basis of Nike athletic shoes; the late Otis Boykin, who invented precision resistors that were ultimately used in electronic devices from televisions to pacemakers to missiles; Mildred Dresselhaus, whose work with superlattice structure led to the basis for lithium-ion batteries; and Charles Hull, the inventor of stereolithography, commonly known as 3D printing.
Additional honorees who were inducted posthumously included actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil, who together developed a “secret communication system,” a frequency-hopping communication system that would reduce the danger of detection or jamming for radio-controlled torpedoes.
The complete list of 2014 honorees can be found on the Invent Now website.
The National Inventors Hall of Fame, a subsidiary of Invent Now, is a nonprofit organization established in 1973 in partnership between the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The Hall of Fame honors individuals holding U.S. patents whose extraordinary innovations and creations have made significant contributions to our nation’s welfare and to the advancement of science and the useful arts. The Hall of Fame currently has more than 500 esteemed members.
