Hello all,

My name is Viraj Thakur, and I'm a sophomore at UC Berkeley studying computer science. Some of my favorite hobbies and pastimes are binging Netflix, hiking, playing basketball, going to concerts, and hanging out with friends. Before I get into a potential project idea, I'd like to give you all a little more information about myself. Although I'm a CS major and my main interests definitely lie in the technical side of CS, some other topics I'm interested in are biology, entrepreneurship, and business. I think this class sits perfectly at the intersection of business and tech, as it covers intellectual property and patents from both a business and engineering perspective. I really liked how large parts of the class are committed towards understanding patent law and understanding how to use patents to create a sustainable and financially viable business. To that end, I'm sure I will enjoy taking this class and I look forward to learning skills that I hope to directly apply in the future. With that, I'll go on to talk a little bit about a potential project idea that I discussed with some other students last class.

The patent that our company idea was centered around was a patent for an early warning system of natural and man-made disasters. The claim specifically included a fire-alarm style system that would be installed in the home. It included a connection to local disaster networks, EEW (Earthquake Early Warning) systems, internet, etc. It would also have an audio/visual alarm of some kind, and include a processor that could provide specific warning information or instructions. Our company idea was essentially to produce and install these in the home, as well as to integrate them with smartphones and laptops. We can look to the example of earthquakes to see how valuable such technology would be. If there was an earthquake coming, EEW systems (these are not yet installed everywhere, but states are taking initiative - California has mandated their installation and is only lacking funding currently) can actually pick up the tremors at the fault line and predict the earthquake will be coming. These EEW systems would then transmit a message to the alarm system installed in the home, which would then blare like a fire alarm, warning anyone in the home of an impending earthquake. It could also then connect to the homeowner through a smartphone app or through email, to warn them of what would occur. In this way, we could have a safety mechanism similar to a fire alarm to keep people out of harm's way. This would not only warn someone in a home to head to safety seconds or minutes before disaster struck - it would also warn someone not at home of an impending disaster in their area. Such a product would, ideally, save lives and also be easy to market and sell.