Friend needs resources!!!

[annon_17]

My friend has a topic and she has looked and looked and cannot find an inventor for stain removers. She has her mind set on using oxiclean and all she can find is who manufactures it. Any stain remover inventor would be helpful, but if you need the field narrowed down some she has been using OxiClean. Thanx a bunch

[scibudadmin]

I'm sorry your friend is having such trouble finding resources about her project idea. I did a quick search for "OxiClean, Inventor" and found the following links about their owner and manufacturer. If she contacts the manufacturer they should be able to help her with her questions.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... _106273642
http://www.greatcleaners.com/

Hopefully these will help her get started on her research.

Regards,
Melissa G.
Science Buddies Staff

[deleted-2574]

Thank you Melissa for your input. It leads to:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... 28748/pg_1
which names the manufacturer of OxiClean and their location. Looking up the company and location on switch board (http://switchboard.intelius.com/), you can get a phone number for the manufacturer.

Tracing the links further, one finds:

http://journals.aol.com/viviansullinwan ... nting/1982

which names the inventor of OxiClean. (An alternative would be to look up the patent for OxiClean, since OxiClean is listed as patent-pending on the sites above. I have not had much luck, however, in finding patent information online. The sites that do have copies of patent data seem to require large fees to access it. This is particularly cheeky, since the patent data is public domain (anyone have corrections to this? Also, I'm not sure if the online resources have data on only granted patents vs. patents-pending).

Note, the first link above lists the 2005 brand manager for OxiClean, who may be an additional resource if the inventor resource doesn't work out.

Good luck in pursuing your research!

[Louise]

The sites that do have copies of patent data seem to require large fees to access it. This is particularly cheeky, since the patent data is public domain (anyone have corrections to this? Also, I'm not sure if the online resources have data on only granted patents vs. patents-pending).

US patent office has a searchable database. It looks like a complete patent, but the figures did not render right for me (though that may be a browser issue). Note that you can by a .pdf or paper copy for only $3, if I am reading the fee table correctly. This is much cheaper than the commerical sites.
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

You can veiw the page as an image, instead of HTML, which should show the figures, but that absolutely failed with my browser. (click images in the patent you find from the first link)

Oxiclean does not appear to be in there. Pending patents seem to be called "Published Applications" as opposed to "Issued patents", but I did not see oxiclean. You may need to try other search terms.

Hope this helps.
Louise

[deleted-2574]

Louise, thanks for the US patent office reference. The relevant patent applications are 20050239675 and 20050008576, "Carrier foam to enhance liquid functional performance."

annon_17, the inventor on both these applications is listed as Munzer Makansi in Signal Mountain, Tennessee. Dr. Makansi may not be an Orange Glo employee, since he's not located in Colorado. Maybe contacting Orange Glo at their main Colorado will yield a pointer to him (see previous post). Otherwise you can try inputting "Dr. Munzer Makansi" to google and see if anything comes up.

Note on viewing patent illustrations: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/help/images.htm has instructions on how to view patent images. I don't know if the PC instructions work. I have a macintosh, and the application PatentDownloader handles the images quite well. I don't know if PatentDownloader or a similar application is available for PCs, but it's best first to try the US patent office PC instructions.