The Middle takes illogical tribal pride in others’ achievements

“See the Forest” appears to be a promotional project of a company called IP Vision. IP Vision says about itself:

IPVision develops and markets solutions that are core to dynamic intellectual property management, enabling our clients to easily identify valuable information in their own portfolios, in the portfolios of their competitors, and thoroughly analyze their strategic opportunities more quickly than with traditional approaches.

Okay. Now that we are all confused, let’s move on to the point of the post. I have no idea how I landed on IP Vision’s See the Forest website, but I have to bring it to people’s attention.

I think that as part of their service of investigating the intellectual property (i.e. patents) of companies, IP Vision diagrams the patents that may rely upon that patent for their existence. In See the Forest, they do the same with interesting inventions, inventors or companies and it just so happens that the three diagrams they currently have headlining the site all have strong Jewish connections.

Diagram one is “The Starbucks Coffee Cup Sleeve Patent.” Starbucks was founded in the ’70s by three individuals, one of whom was Zev Siegel. I can’t find any biographical info about Siegel other than his being a teacher, but with a name like Zev Siegel, I’d eat my hat if the dude wasn’t Jewish. Of course, Howard Schultz, who eventually bought the small company and made it into the ubiquitous international chain we know today, is Jewish. And apparently, under Schultz’s watch, Starbucks earned a patent for a coffee cup sleeve. Now click on the diagram and you can see the 81 patents that refer back to the Starbucks patent. Play around with that a little, it is fascinating.

Back to See the Forest, where the second diagram on display is “What Does a $255 Million Patent Look Like?” What does it look like? IP Vision tells us:

US Patent 4,237,224 “Process for producing biologically functional molecular chimeras”, which together with a patent for proteins produced using recombinant prokaryote DNA and a patent for proteins from recombinant eukaryote DNA defined the Recombinant DNA technique of modern molecular biology.

Fortunately, it also says, “This technology gave birth to the biotechnology industry.” Okay, so we don’t have to understand from recombinant prokaryote DNA to know that this patent is important. And, more importantly, we don’t need to look up molecular chimeras to figure out that this patent’s two inventors, Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer, include one member of the tribe. Nope, it ain’t Boyer. These two gentlemen apparently invented gene splicing and their work has been influential, to say the least. It has also, according to IP Vision, resulted in 260 patented inventions that refer back to the original and which have generated a quarter of a billion dollars in fees for Stanford, which owns the patent.

Finally, of the three diagrams offered by the inadvertently Jewlicious See the Forest, the third diagram offered to us on their home page is “The Patent Portfolio of a Multi-Millionaire Professor.” The professor in question is Robert S. Langer who is, as you can probably guess, Jewish. His wealth is truly irrelevant because this man’s biography is sick. He has 600 published or pending patents worldwide! I should point out that I have 600 published posts on Jewlicious, which makes me stand tall like an ant next to this giraffe of a man – 600 patents! Well, clicking on the accompanying diagram once again gives us a partial look at Langer’s work and influence. Again, completely amazing and fascinating.

I didn’t spend too much time searching, but I couldn’t locate the names of the principals or founders of this company on their website. If they happen to see this, thanks for the informative entertainment!