Students went to the engineering building Thursday evening seeking legal advice and aeronautical knowledge.

Patent attorney Leland D. Schultz framed the lecture through the story of the Wright brothers’ invention and patenting of the airplane.

Wilbur and Orville Wrights’ first patent in 1906 was not actually for an airplane, but a development in dynamic control, according to Schultz. Schultz displayed a picture of their original patent, which did not even include an engine.

He then mentioned that computing pioneer Howard Aiken told the Wright brothers not to be concerned with protecting their inventions.

Shultz displayed a quote from Aiken: “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original you will have to ram it down their throats.”

However, Glen Hammond Curtis and other members of the Aerial Experiment Association soon began to experiment using the Wright brothers’ innovations, refusing to pay the 20% royalties demanded by the Wrights, who then somewhat successfully sued Hammond.

Schultz said there are three types of processes that can lead to patent worthy inventions: methodical, flash of genius and serendipitous.

“The Wright brothers are the epitome of methodical,” Schultz said.

Schultz also said that certain types of innovations and inventions cannot be patented, including mathematical formulas, mental processes, perpetual motion machines and especially anything illegal.

Some students approached Schultz after the lecture with questions about patenting their own inventions.

Alex Hantman, president of engineering honor’s society and a senior majoring in bioengineering, is working with Timothy Miller, a senior majoring in bioengineering, on developing a way to turn food waste into fuel.

“We basically figured out that turning food waste into biomass briquettes similar to charcoal or woodchips is an interesting possibility,” Hantman said. “At the current stage we are working with the [New York State Department of Environmental Conservation] to understand what the regulatory environment associated with food waste would be because that’s not a typical fuel.”

Hantman and Miller’s work is currently part of their senior design project, but they want to make it a company after graduation and think patenting is going to be critical.

“When you’re trying to commercialize a company often intellectual property comes to mind,” Hintman said. “If you are going to do something who else could do it? How can we stop them from doing it? We talked about the possibility of patenting our concept of a food waste briquette, because it’s unique according to the legal definition food waste. Basically our briquette would not be composed of food waste. It would be composed of some custom thing you could patent.”

Schultz said that their idea appears to be potentially patentable.

“In order to determine that you have to do the prior research, and occasionally when you do that you find that someone has patented almost identical things to what you do,” Schultz said. “Sometimes you find that they did not do the same thing but something close.”

Schultz, who previously worked at Lockheed Martin, said that the military was interested in developing a similar process that would turn food waste into solid fuel. The military does not like transporting liquid fuel to foreign military bases because it can become a hot target for enemies.

“If you can make your own fuel in the base and dispose of your waste at the same time that’s of potential interest,” Schultz said. “As mundane as it might seem, that might save lives.”