IPO Education Foundation Honors Alex Kipman as Top Inventor of 2012

Microsoft Inventor Recognized for Breakthrough in Personal Entertainment

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation will present the 39th Annual National Inventor of the Year Award on December 10, 2012, in a ceremony at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, to Alex Kipman of Microsoft Corp. Kipman will be honored for his role on the team that invented Kinect, the motion sensing input device developed for the Xbox 360 video game system and Windows PCs.

According to an article in New York Times Magazine on May 31, 2012, Kinect set "a Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling consumer device ever," selling 8 million units in the first 60 days after its release. Kinect revolutionized personal entertainment with its ability to fully recognize and adapt a human's form and gestures into video game and other entertainment experiences, so that the user directs Xbox through body movements without the use of a controller. In Kipman's words, Kinect "makes technology disappear." Kinect has evolved beyond gaming technology, as medical researchers, retailers, and others experiment with innovative professional applications of the interface using Kinect for Windows.

Alex Kipman is the General Manager of Hardware Incubation for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. An innovator and a visionary, Kipman hand-selected and led the team that developed Kinect. Born in Brazil, he is the primary inventor of Kinect and is named on 60 patents directly related to Kinect. He graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a degree in software engineering. Among other honors, Kipman was named one of TIME Magazine's 2011 100 People of the Year.

The National Inventor of the Year Award fosters the spirit of American innovation and highlights the protection offered to inventors by the patent system. It is one of a number of programs of Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation, a non-profit subsidiary of Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), for educating the public on the importance of intellectual property rights to the economy. The award is the best known honor for recent American inventors, having gone previously to those responsible for the Jarvik Seven Artificial Heart, Bose speaker technology, Powercore® LED technology and other patented breakthrough inventions. 

Members of the media can arrange to attend the December 10 ceremony by contacting Morgan Goodale at 202-507-4504. To find out more about IPO Education Foundation programs visit www.ipoef.org or call 202/507-4500.

SOURCE Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation