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World IP Day 2026 — Recognized Innovator
Sean
Hsu
- CEO & Co-Founder
- Botrista Technology, Inc.
Recognized for founding leadership behind one of the most active beverage-automation patent programs in the United States. His engineering vision helped build the platform now pouring craft drinks across restaurants, campuses, hospitals, and other high-volume venues worldwide.
Certificate of Recognition
Top IP Innovator — Consumer Hydration Hardware · 2026
Botrista Patents (last 5 years)
0 +
First Botrista Patent Filed
2019
USPTO Art Unit Focus
3754 / 3761
Role
CEO & Co-Founder
Presented by InspireIP
World IP Day Recognition Series · 2026
Patents Filed by Botrista in Last 5 Years
0 +
Filed in 2024 alone
0
Recognition category
0 Beverage
The Recognition
Turning a 4-square-foot footprint into a craft-beverage platform
On World IP Day 2026, InspireIP recognizes Sean Hsu, co-founder and CEO of Botrista Technology, Inc., for the founding leadership behind one of the most active beverage-automation patent programs in the United States. Under his vision, Botrista has built a 27+ patent portfolio in five years. It covers automated dispensing, blending technology, algorithmic ingredient control, and the robotics that now power its DrinkBot platform inside restaurants, college campuses, hospitals, and theme parks worldwide.
This recognition celebrates the kind of founder-innovator contribution that builds entire categories. Sean is a serial inventor in his own right, recipient of the Red Dot Design Award, an MIT Innovation and Entrepreneurship first-place laureate, and an ex-Tesla manufacturing engineer with more than ten products brought to market.
The Botrista portfolio is the latest expression of that engineering DNA: precise, practical, and built to scale.
Patent Footprint
A portfolio shaped around real-world hospitality
2017
Sean co-founds Botrista (originally Flying Pig Technology), bringing together Tesla-grade manufacturing engineering and his award-winning product-design background to rethink how craft drinks are served.
2021
Botrista's first patent filing under its current name, marking the start of a deliberate IP strategy to protect the dispensing, blending, and control technologies behind the DrinkBot platform.
2022
DrinkBot Pro wins the National Restaurant Association's Kitchen Innovations Award — the industry validating what the patent strategy was already protecting.
2024–2025
A breakout filing year — 21 patents in 2024 followed by 5 more in 2025, expanding the portfolio across automated dispensing, blending architectures, fluid-control circuits, and beverage-machine industrial design.
Beverage Automation · Hospitality Robotics
A small-entity startup filing like a category leader
Patents in last 5 years
+
Peak year (2024)
Fillings
USPTO entity status
Small Entity
Art unit focus
3754 / 3761
"Leading an innovation programme is harder than inventing on your own. It means choosing what to file, who to credit, and where to invest, over and over, for years.
The leaders we recognize on World IP Day have done that consistently, and built something that compounds."
Sam Zellner
Founder, InspireIP · Inventor · Innovation Leader
About Botrista Technology
Built in San Francisco,
pouring drinks worldwide
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Francisco, Botrista designs and manufactures automated craft-beverage machines that fit into a 4-square-foot footprint and serve over 2,000 recipes across teas, coffees, smoothies, lemonades, mocktails, and more. The company’s DrinkBot platform is now deployed across major restaurant chains, college campuses, healthcare systems, theme parks, and family entertainment venues.
Botrista’s patented blending and algorithmic dispensing technology was honored with the National Restaurant Association’s Kitchen Innovations Award in 2022, and the company has been repeatedly cited for redefining what beverage service can look like in modern hospitality. The pace of filing shown above is what makes that kind of category leadership defensible.
IP Day 2027