It started out innocently enough, when a meeting in my office diverged into a conversation about why innovation has been slow in the DMC industry. At AlliedPRA New Orleans, we have always made leading investments in technology to give our clients the most up to date tools to understand the destination. But what about operational value?
I am not even sure how it came up, but somebody suggested an app where our transportation staff and our clients can view all of the vehicles on their program in real time. As most transportation companies don’t allow their drivers to make phone calls while driving any longer, we had lost some communication, especially with respect to VIP locations. This seemed like a great value add for our clients, and we set out to find a company that provides this technology. Alas, and surprisingly, there wasn’t one. Many transportation suppliers have the ability give you an app for their company, but if a DMC is running a program with multiple transportation suppliers, one would have to download multiple apps and then know which company had the VIP you are looking for, something our client’s wouldn’t have time for. So I set out to develop this technology myself.
We ultimately created a system to do exactly that, and added features like giving clients the ability to receive a text message when selected VIP’s are 10 minutes from arrival. Clients loved it!
I have a friend who is a patent attorney, and over a beer I mentioned to him that we had developed this technology, couldn’t find anything similar in the marketplace, and wondered if it was worth pursuing a patent on it. Like any good sales professional would, he thought it was a great idea!
And that is when the fun begins. The process of applying for and being awarded a United States Patent is an arduous one, to say the least. But, that is what makes it so valuable. It begins with a patent search where you have to review dozens of related “prior art”, and explain why your invention is different. There is a lot of technological and legal mumbo jumbo in these docs, enough to make you dizzy and darn confused! But once we determined that we were indeed unique, we delved into the documentation of the process and why it was eligible for a patent. It takes up to 18 months to even get in front of a patent reviewer, and the first time our patent was reviewed is was sent back because there was conflicting prior art that had been patented by – get this – APPLE! No way we can fight the most valuable company in the world, right? Well, our great attorneys at Intellectual Property Consulting took them on and showed why our application was indeed different from Apple’s (theirs turned out to be a single provider solution, which was actually easy enough to differentiate).
Two and a half years after that beer discussion, I have been awarded United States Patent number 9,483,942 B2! Our clients are thrilled with the technology, and now I have something to compete with my engineer father on. I don’t know how many DMC folks have patents, but can’t be many!
