Multi stopwatch app patent finally filed
Two days before Christmas, the patent application for the timing method at the core of Herotime is on file. Here is what it protects — and the surprise feature the delay paid for.
Yay! Just today — two days before Christmas — the patent application for the stopwatch core of Herotime smart stopwatch was finally filed, after quite a few more months and quite a bit more work than anticipated. My thanks go to the patent attorneys Maikowski & Ninnemann in Berlin for a job (hopefully!) well done.
What the application protects
It feels good to secure some rights on the hard work that went into conceiving and prototyping the simplest way to time multiple athletes — or, really, entities of any kind — with just one digital stopwatch. That includes the hard cases: athletes starting in complex configurations of multiple groups, one after the other, the way real training sessions and real meets actually unfold.
No worries if your sessions are simpler than that. The resulting stopwatch app will serve you better than any existing sports stopwatch even if you are timing just one or two athletes — not least because every timing session lands in a reviewable history you can share instantly with anyone interested, including, of course, the person being timed.
Timing many athletes with one stopwatch — even when they start in complex configurations of multiple groups. The invention, in one sentence
The silver lining of a slow patent
The extra months on the patent had an unplanned upside: more time to build. Functionality that I never expected to make the first version is already in — most notably a fully functional cadence module. Anyone who has ever taken occasional stride or stroke rates with a handheld counter and painfully noted them down on paper, split by split, should love this one: Herotime records the rate right alongside each split, digitally, where it belongs.
Of course, added functionality also means added potential for leftover bugs, which is exactly what the next phase is for.
What's next
Now it's time to finalize a first complete version of the app and put it through serious testing with real coaches and timekeepers before it reaches the App Store. Filing the patent closes one long chapter; shipping the stopwatch opens the one I've actually been waiting for.
Merry Christmas — and here's to a well-timed 2016.