We announced a milestone this week in a news release: Embodee’s process for creating and modeling 3D digital images of apparel has been awarded a U.S. government patent. Here’s an excerpt:
“Many previous patented innovations in garment digitization focused on providing more cost-effective development and manufacturing of garments from raw materials. Embodee’s invention enables the reverse: taking existing garments from the real world and creating cost-effective yet vivid digital reproductions in any number of variations from just a single sample.”
As many entrepreneurs and inventors know, obtaining a U.S. patent can be a long, complex, and expensive slog. The system is overburdened—last month nearly 600,000 applications had yet to get their first look. It’s also overrun with lawsuits thanks to patent trolls. Calls for congressional reform are frequent.
Challenges aside, the legal and financial protections that a patent provides are critical, especially now when technology innovation is accelerating in the apparel industry. The government’s stamp of uniqueness on what we’ve developed is also a mantle of credibility in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Of course the most important credibility is bestowed not by the government but by the customers you sign and retain, something we began earning before arrival of the very welcome news of Patent No. 8,364,561.