Five Tips for CEOs on Innovation

In The Corner Office blog on BNET, William J. Holstein weighs in on all the big questions facing CEOs and boards. "An absolute ocean of ink has been spilled about innovation but–to save you countless hours of reading–I’m going to boil the best insights I’ve gleamed from years of reporting on the subject."
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Innovation and Surfing Big Waves

Beneath the surface, though, there is a different story here, one that contains important lessons for business executives.
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Licensing execs survey offers insights into deal-making, deal-breaking

The Licensing Foundation, a subsidiary of the Licensing Executives Society, has released a survey of U.S. and Canadian licensing activity in 2006 that offers insights not only into best practices in licensing, but also some of the key factors that cause deals to go sour. Here are a few highlights...Only 15 percent indicated that they had been proactively archiving prior art relevant to core technologies or key intellectual assets, 7% report participating in a joint defense agreement, and 5% have filed one or more re-examination requests on troll patents. Read more and download the survey via the link above.
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Peer to Patent Update

Since the Peer-to-Patent launch on June 15, there have been 213,564 page views from 37,741 unique viewers in 132 different countries/territories. 1,864 people have signed up to be reviewers and have cited 159 instances of prior art on 30 applications.
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Smartphones Patented... Just About Everyone Sued

This past Tuesday, the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent on "a mobile entertainment and communication device." Reading the patent, you realize it describes the quite common smartphone. It's a patent for a mobile phone with removable storage, an internet connection, a camera and the ability to download audio or video files. The patent holding firm who has the rights to this patent wasted no time at all. At 12:01am Tuesday morning, it filed three separate lawsuits against just about everyone you can think of, including Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, AT&T, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, Samsung and a bunch of others.
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Blawg Review #144

This week's Lord of the Rings inspired presentation of the popular review of law blogs is hosted by Kevin A. Thompson of Davis McGrath, who practices primarily in the area of domestic and international trademarks, copyrights, and internet law, and blogs at Cyberlaw Central.
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Patent Reform Bill, Prior Art and Disclosures

Under current U.S. law, a public disclosure of an invention, such as a public use, sale, or publication thereof, starts a one-year clock running in which an inventor must file a patent application or the invention is dedicated to the public domain. According to the present bills, and potentially contingent upon a reciprocal change to European and Japanese patent laws, disclosures will quality as prior art if they were made by 1) the inventor more than one year before the patent application’s filing date; or 2) a third party prior to the filing date and prior to the inventor’s disclosure.  Thus, an inventor would still be protected from losing a right to a patent by the inventor’s own disclosure. However, the grace period would not protect the inventor from an earlier disclosure of a third party.
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Patent Reform Bills Compared

John R. Thomas, Professor of Law at the George Washington University and visiting scholar for the Congressional Research Service (CRS), has prepared a CRS Report for Congress comparing the patent reform bills, titled Patent Reform in the 110th Congress: Innovation Issues. (Get the full report at the link above.)
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Senate Patent Reform Bill on Prior Art Grace Period

These amendments would, in essence, protect the patent positions of individuals who disclosed their inventions up to one year before they filed a patent application.
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Senate Patent Reform Bill on First-To-File

The 106-page draft report of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Patent Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1145) describes how Section 2 of the proposed bill will convert the United States’ patent system into a first-inventor-to-file system, giving priority to the earlier-filed application for a claimed invention. Interference proceedings would be replaced with a derivation proceeding to determine whether the applicant of an earlier-filed application was the proper applicant for the claimed invention. This section also provides for a grace period for inventors publicly disclosing the subject matter of the claimed invention, without losing priority, and repeals 35 U.S.C. §104 (Inventions Made Abroad).
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Second Life Artists Rightfully Upset Over "SLART" Trademark Registration

Outrage recently erupted among Second Life users, particularly those involved in the art scene, regarding the fact that artist Richard Minsky (Second Life’s ‘ArtWorld Market’) has registered the trademark “SLART” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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Internet As A Source Of Prior Art: European Patent Office's View

What Criteria Does An Internet Disclosure Have To Satisfy To Be Considered As Prior Art? A recent Decision1 of the European Patent Office’s (EPO) Technical Board of Appeal has addressed the criteria for establishing whether an Internet disclosure forms part of the state of the art.
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Here Comes Trouble: An Antidote to Software Patents

The $250 million Vonage burned through as a result of the patent lawsuit brought by Verizon et al provides yet another example of why patents for business processes implemented on computers (a.k.a. software patents) deserve to die. Verizon’s two successful “name translation” patents negate an open standard assembled by Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Intel and Vocaltec via the VoIP Forum during 1996. The threat of patent litigation cleared the landscape of independent VoIP companies the VoIP Forum sought to make possible. Vonage survived...
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China Intellectual Property - Challenges and Solutions: An Essential Business Guide

It is no secret that intellectual property protection in China is a challenge. This book explores the realities of protecting IP in this developing market through interviews and case studies with companies who've been through the gauntlet. It also gives practical checklists and suggestions for IP management to make the most of the opportunities of doing business with China.
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Article Looks at Effects of NPE Patents on Innovation

Different entities use the patent system in different ways, depending on their respective business models. A recent paper, titled "Don’t Feed The Trolls?", written by economists John Johnson, Gregory K. Leonard, Christine Meyer and Ken Serwin, acknowledged this dynamic breifly and looked at the propriety of reforming the patent system to combat "trolling" or promoting other goals.
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Google to host open source scientific data

Sources at Google have disclosed that the humble domain, http://research.google.com, will soon provide a home for terabytes of open-source scientific datasets. The storage will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all.
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Commerce Department Announces Steps to Improve Measurement of Innovation

Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez announced January 18 steps for the federal statistical agencies and others to work to explain and quantify one of the largest and most elusive drivers of the economy—innovation.
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Patent Reform: What Does First-To-File Mean To Me?

(2) Section 2 maintains a one-year grace period for U.S. applicants. Applicants’ own publication or disclosure that occurs within one year prior to filing will not act as prior art against their applications.

Similarly, disclosure by others during that time based on information obtained (directly or indirectly) from the inventor will not constitute prior art. This one-year grace period should continue to give U.S. applicants the time they need to prepare and file their applications.

(3) Prior art will be measured from the filing date of the application and will typically include all art that publicly exists prior to the filing date, other than disclosures by the inventor within one year of filing.

Prior art also will no longer have any geographic limitations; thus in section 102 the “in this country” limitation as applied to “public use” and “on sale” is removed, and the phrase “available to the public” is added to clarify the broad scope of relevant prior art, as well as to emphasize the fact that it must be publicly available. Prior art based on earlier-filed United States applications is maintained.
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A Lawyer's First Reader

Lawyers who read or write blogs will attest that their magic is no fairy tale. But a children's story could well be the way to reach lawyers who refuse to grow up about marketing and technology. That may be what motivated Wisconsin blogger Beverly Butula, law librarian at Davis & Kuelthau, to put her presentation about blawgs in the form of a children's story, Bella is Bewildered About Blogs.
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The Future of Ideas is now Free

"After a productive and valuable conversation with my publisher, Random House, they've agreed to permit The Future of Ideas to be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial license. You can download the book for free here, or above." ~Lessig
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Wii are not amused.

Engadget reported yesterday that the innovative Nintendo Wii motion-sensitive controller might not be quite as innovative as previously believed...
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Microsoft's latest innovation: a grocery cart?

Today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will announce a MacBook with a little somethin' somethin' wireless. We think. We guess. We have no idea. It'll change the world or something. Meanwhile, Microsoft has already announced its own game-changer: the ad-supported grocery cart.
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Draft Report on Senate Patent Reform Bill Circulated

As reported in today's issue of the IPO Daily News (an e-mail and online newsletter distributed by the Intellectual Property Owners Association), a draft of the Senate Judiciary Committee's report on the Patent Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1145) has begun to circulate on the internet.
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InvenioIP Database

The Maryland Technology Development Corp. (Tedco) has launched a new intellectual property database that streamlines the search process for innovation investors. The Web-based resource, InvenioIP, was developed at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and allows free access to technologies available for commercialization from academic institutions, federal research facilities and private companies in Maryland, D.C., and Virginia, Tedco officials said.
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Motorola Foundation Grants

In an effort to cultivate the skilled scientists and engineers needed to create tomorrow's breakthrough ideas, in 2008 the Motorola Foundation will provide $4 million in Innovation Generation Grants to organizations that engage U.S. K-12 students and teachers in innovation, science, technology, engineering and math.
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Will the innovation landscape become more fluid?

One of the single most important factors determining the future of business and society is the US legislative framework for innovation. US legislators shape the global patent landscape, due to the country’s dominant global role in both innovation and commercialization.
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CES Innovations 2008 Awards

Honorees have been announced for the Innovations Design and Engineering Awards program, which recognizes the most innovative consumer electronics (CE) products in the industry's hottest product categories.
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IP Law Conference

The American Bar Association (ABA) section of Intellectual Property Law will be holding the 23rd Annual Intellectual Property Law Conference on April 10-12, 2008 in Arlington, Virginia.
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Patent Pal Toolbar

Jay Wahlquist of Fogg & Powers offers Patent Pal, a web browser toolbar tuned to patent search and news. There are numerous patent search engines available in cascading drop-down menus, covering patent databases worldwide; as well, other databases of patent information oriented towards prosecutors. There's also a newsfeed for patent blogs. "Nice work, and definitely worth checking out," says The Patent Prospector.
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Blogging and the Culture of Innovation

It happens every once in a while, even at the best of companies. If you blog on company time, you've probably run into it too: the marketing freakout. This happens when someone from old school marketing comes across your blogs, sees all of the off the cuff commentary, technical experiments, and controversial positions and has a brain meltdown.
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IP Counsel Conference

The Annual IP Counsel Forum is the biggest IP event of the year promoted by ALM.  Designed for IP counsel and those who advise them, this two-day program provides key updates and new strategies for IP Counsel in today’s leading industries.
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Attorneys Sanctioned

Six attorneys involved in a Qualcomm video patent assertion fiasco against Broadcom were sanctioned for "monumental" discovery violations, and referred to the State Bar of California for possible discipline. Per the court order: "Given the volume and importance of the withheld documents, the number of involved Qualcomm employees, and the numerous warning flags, the Court finds it unbelievable that the retained attorneys did not know or suspect that Qualcomm had not conducted an adequate search for documents."
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Realized IP Strategy

How closely does your intellectual property track record mirror what you had planned to do? (Ok, this is for those companies which actually have an IP strategic plan.)
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