Week Four - Patents and Paper

Entrance to WVU Business Incubator

I continued my work with the social media project. This time, however, I searched the web for patents.  I looked at major social networking sites to see which patents they were listed under. For example, Twitter and WordPress are both listed under (42) Use of internet for engaging in internet publishing. I basically compiled a bunch to see where this network would fall.

It was really interesting looking through the giants of social media (Facebook, Twitter, WordPress). I sometimes forget that much of this information is public, and we can, free of charge, look up who has patents and what their use is.

Not only is this helpful with my internship, but this helps me elsewhere. Being a journalist, I am constantly scouring the internet for information, and this is yet another resource I'll have to file away to use when necessary.

When I was searching for all these patents, I had to print them out after I found ones that matched. Well, I sent about 20 documents to the printer. When I went over there, I realized only two printed, and Matt had to fix the printer for me.When I said everyone here wears many different hats, I wasn't joking. Matt = graphic designer, website designer, technology, printer fixer.

The other document I spent a lot of time on this week was a service agreement for one of their tenants: Scientific Arts. This is basically drafting a document the tenant can give to clients that says what the type of work will be, arrange payment and deadlines.

This is such a basic document that any business at some point needs. It's fantastic I am getting to work on these things. This new skill set is so diverse, and I've already worked with a number of different documents. I can't wait to try some more.

My photo is also now on their website. Yep, pretty embarrassing. But, I'm definitely a part of the group now.