U.S. Patent Number 10,022,002

Living on Two Continents, We Had No Choice But to Invent an Airplane Pillow Riser

The story of U.S. Patent Number 10,022,002.

 ROBERT & TIFFANY CHEN

• Name: Robert and Tiffany Chen
• Patent Number: 10,022,002
• Patent: "Extensible Z Accessorized Travel Headrest," an adjustable platform that sits on an airplane seat's tray table and extends in a Z shape to an ideal pillow height. Also incorporates a charging port and speakers.

THE ORIGIN OF THE PATENT

ROBERT: Tiffany is my daughter. She is a senior at Monta Vista High School here in Cupertino, California. Steven Jobs went to high school in Cupertino.

TIFFANY: That’s awesome. Six or seven years ago, my family and I would often travel back and forth from Beijing to here in California. Those trips were really long. So one trip, when I was around 12, my dad helped me prop my backpack on the food tray, and then I put a small pillow on top. That turned out to be one of the best plane naps I’ve taken.

ROBERT: Over the past four or five years we’ve been working on different patents. We internally call this one JetNap. We wanted to use a commercial-able name, like JetNap, but for the patent examiner you have to make it more descriptive of exactly what it does.

WHERE PATENT IDEAS COME FROM



ROBERT & TIFFANY CHEN

ROBERT: We lived in Beijing for seven or eight years. There was continuous back-and-forth. The patents Tiffany and I came up with were really functional devices like, for example, SinkUnclogger, because all the apartments we rented were clogged.

TIFFANY: Gross.

ROBERT: It was the experience of living overseas that led Tiffany and I to come up with some of these ideas.

THE NEXT GENERATION OF INVENTORS

TIFFANY: Last year I took a business class at my school, and my business teacher was really interested in my patents. We took a field trip down to San Jose’s U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and I helped give a presentation to all the other classmates who were interested in inventing something.

TIFFANY: A lot of my classmates, juniors and seniors, they were like, “I’ve had a couple ideas, too. How do I initiate this?” And it was interesting telling them about my process.

ROBERT: We started crafting the JetNap on paper, and then went to a sheet-metal company. It took about eight months from drafting the document to having finished prototypes. Then we contacted our patent attorney.

TIFFANY: Building different prototypes for these patents with my dad—that was the fun part.

ROBERT: If you look at patent applications, most of them are done by males. With Tiffany, I felt that I should keep encouraging her to have a mind of discovery, a mind to look into science and technology. I hope future generations encourage more girls and women to invent.


ROBERT & TIFFANY CHEN