I know there are some long time members on this site who get a lot of their information by reviewing patents. I just wanted to pass along to all of you techies out there how easy this information is to access. The US Patent and Trademark Office has a superb interface for reviewing patents:
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/search/index.jsp
Select "Quick Search" (1976 and later)
Enter "Radar Detector" in Term1 Field
Select "All Fields"
Select "Search"
You will then see a list of the latest 50 patents (out of appx 500)
The Valentine patents are easy to locate because the principal engineer will always be Mike Valentine. Most of the important patents for ESCORT are registered under Steven Orr.
You will need a TIFF viewer to see these, but the USPTO provides a free link within their website with superb instructions
The details in these patents are amazing and you can really get an appreciation for the engineering that goes into designing and manufacturing a road worthy Radar Detector. Many of the functions for future uses of each invention have not been implemented yet, but the potential is clearly spelled out by both ESCORT and Valentine in their patent descriptions.
The easiest way to absorb this information is to copy and paste the patent into a Word document then print it and read it at your own pace. There are a lot of technical details in these patents. After reading through this information I get the feeling that any complaints I have regarding my RD's are minor These two manufacturers are doing everything possible to improve their products and both have an excellent understanding of the "Real World" we the users face in trying to detect true police radar. I applaud both ESCORT and Valentine for their outstanding efforts.
Note also that you can refine your searches using Term1 AND Term2. As an example you could use "Radar Detector" as Term1 and "GPS" as Term2 with logical operator options for both terms.
Have FUN
Bookmarks