Formal USPTO utility patent application (Serial No. 14/397,722) filed for the 'Inflatable Solar-Powered Light,' naming Anna Stork as co-inventor.
On October 25, 2012, the formal utility patent application underlying U.S. Patent No. 9,347,629 was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, receiving application serial number 14/397,722. The application, titled "Inflatable Solar-Powered Light," named Anna Stork as one of the inventors, alongside her co-founder Andrea Sreshta, formalizing years of design iteration into a comprehensive legal filing.
This filing followed the initial 2010 provisional patent and represented the detailed technical specification of the invention: a foldable, inflatable, waterproof enclosure housing a solar panel, battery, and LED light source, designed to be lightweight, portable, and rechargeable without electricity access — critical for disaster relief and off-grid environments.
USPTO records identify Stork explicitly as a co-founder of LuminAID Lab, LLC, reflecting how the patent application was tightly bound to the commercial entity she and Sreshta had built around their invention. This filing represents a pivotal step in the maturation of their company, moving from provisional protection toward an enforceable, examined patent that would eventually issue in 2016.
The application process, spanning several years from filing to grant, illustrates the lengthy and rigorous examination pathway inventors must navigate at the USPTO, especially for hardware inventions combining multiple novel elements like solar circuitry and inflatable structures.