A Patent for Achievement

It’s really no surprise that the city where Thomas Edison

wintered would eventually become home to inventors who have turned their ideas

into income. Out of the dozens in Southwest Florida who are actively creating

new products, we found three area inventors who are following Edison’s

profitable formula: Take an unshakable belief in an idea and mix it with

industry knowledge, access to materials and a dose of creativity and business

savvy.

A Strike for Innovation

Patrick Ciniello became a bowling fanatic when he was 12. He

carried his love of the game into high school, college and the military, bowling

competitively. After his military career ended in 1970, he decided to make

bowling a profession, working for several companies, including as a

subcontractor for AMF Bowling Inc., a leading owner of bowling centers that

also manufactures and sells bowling scoring machines. When Ciniello heard in

1994 about an automatic scoring machine being developed in Italy that

overshadowed any installed in the United States, he took a trip overseas to see

the system.

AMF machines projected a manually taken score on a screen

above the lanes. The Italian machines took scoring a step further, tabulating

automatically so bowlers could spend more time bowling and less time

score-taking. Ciniello was so impressed that he became a distributor of the

system; and in 1996, he and the creators in Bologna, Italy, formed a United

States affiliate, Qubica USA, in Bonita Springs. The U.S. and international

arms merged last year and the company intends to go public in 2003 or 2004.

Now, as president and chief executive officer of the U.S. division, Ciniello is

a shareholder in Qubica Worldwide. The company also operates in Asia and

Australia and works with other distributors throughout the world.style="mso-spacerun: yes">

Ciniello, who owns five bowling centers in Southwest Florida

and one in the Cayman Islands in a separate business, continues to expand his

product line by using technology to enhance the challenge of the game. The

Q-Flash, which he invented in 1997, adds a twist to scoring by giving bonus

points to bowlers who score at the same time a light flashes. Q-Flash uses a

laser beam to pinpoint spots of light in a predetermined location. The spots of

light move across the lane while the ball rolls toward the standing pins. A

sensor determines when the ball reaches the predetermined location and then a

processor adds extra points to the score. Ciniello’s laser scoring device,

which he received a patent for in June 2000, is currently in nearly 1,000

centers worldwide.

Ciniello and his researchers are now working on a way to

provide interactive bowling over the Internet so players can bowl with other

people in centers throughout the world. “I’ve been looking for innovation and

change in the market for years,” Ciniello says. “My dream is to be on the

leading edge of technology in our own industry.”

An Enviro-Friendly Discovery

Growing up in small-town Ravenna, Ohio, Paul Jennings was

appalled to watch oil and grease seep into the ground after being removed from

concrete by pressure washers. “Outside the city limits there are no sewers,

only ditches,” Jennings says. “As I watched the water drain into the ditch I

thought to myself, ‘This has to be contaminating the ground water.’”

That image stuck with him for years. After a career as a

bass player in various rock ’n’ roll bands, Jennings decided in the late 1980s

that it was time to invent a method to clean concrete without wasting water or

polluting. Dabbling with different chemical formulas, Jennings discovered a

substance that would clean concrete without waste. The powder compound worked

simply by being spread on greasy spots and brushed away. While still living in

Ohio, Jennings started a company called Cleansweep to manufacture the

substance. “Power-washing uses approximately six gallons of water per

minute,” Jennings says. “If it takes 90

minutes to power-wash the drive-thru of a bank and you think about the

thousands and thousands of locations using pressure washing, we lose billions

of gallons of water just to clean concrete.”

When he and his wife moved to Cape Coral seven years ago,

Jennings reformulated his product and created Pave-Clean, a biodegradable

powder that looks like flour and is applied to the entire pavement area and

brushed off. “It can be spread without water and it is faster, looks better and

does a better job than power-washing,” he says.

The product’s popularity helped his company, Southern Palm

International Inc., grow, but Jennings wanted to focus on manufacturing and

creating products. So he sought out a reliable contractor, Harold Mazza, to

take over the service end, which quickly grew to 450 accounts. Now Jennings’

company operates in 24 states through service contractors, distributors and

agents for Pave-Clean and other products. The company also takes orders through

its Web site.

Jennings next plans to take the product to the retail level.

A member of the Edison Inventors Association (a Fort Myers organization founded

in 1992 to provide business expertise and networking opportunities), Jennings

has two patents pending and three more products in development.

A Quest for Independence

If necessity is the mother of invention, no one better

exemplifies this than Joe Ivko. He lost both arms after 7,200 volts surged

through his body while working as a journeyman lineman in Indiana in 1966. “I

was fitted with prosthetic arms and they weren’t very functional,” he says. “I

searched to find what else might be available to make life easier and there

just wasn’t anything. I was told to hang in there because technology is moving

so quickly someone will come up with something.”

Ivko decided that he

would be the one to invent products to help paraplegics and himself. Using his

engineering background, Ivko has put his ideas to work. He applied for his

first patent on Sept. 17, 1967, for a device called a humeral rotator unit that

allows users to put a workload on prosthetic arms when pushing or pulling. He

received his patent four years later.

Next, Ivko took on the stainless steel cables that make

prosthetic arms move. The cables often rubbed against a Teflon liner encased in

the arm’s housing, eventually wearing the Teflon out and making the arm

immobile. (The cables also were expensive, lasting only six to eight weeks and

costing up to $80. “I was going broke buying cables,” he says.) Ivko, who moved

to Southwest Florida in 1972, developed a ball guide made from a plastic

material, which extended the life of the cable to one-and-a-half years and

increased lifting ability. Ivko received the patent for his cable system in

1981.

Later Ivko came up with an instant bidet, which allows him

to go to the bathroom unassisted. Although bidets have been around for many

years, Ivko’s product is portable and can be installed on any toilet within 15

minutes.

The prolific inventor also has developed a

supinator-pronator that allows a prosthetic arm’s turntable device to switch

from one side to the other. That allows him to drive and helps particularly

when eating. “If you take a fork and lift it to your mouth it will be facing

the other way,” he says. “This way you can turn the turntable device to face

your mouth and feed yourself. You can also lock or unlock the arm depending on

the task.” His latest invention is the Body Shower, which lets him take showers

on his own, giving caregivers a break.

Ivko’s Sarasota-based company, Rimjet Corp., subcontracts

with machine shops to keep a small inventory of its prosthetic component parts

for upper-extremity prostheses. But his biggest challenge is gaining

credibility in an industry where the demand for upper-extremity devices isn’t

as great as for other prosthetic products, he says. Ivko does act as a

consultant for a few prosthetic shops, where he teaches and guides the

installation of his devices. A member of the Edison Inventors Association’s

board of directors, he anticipates that a fall speaking engagement at the

American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association in Chicago will lead to more

business.

Ivko is proud that he’s been able to help, and points to

testimonials from customers in Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Canada. “In

helping myself I’ve been able to help others,” he says.