This page is intended to provide information to newer information professionals with an interest in patent information and who are considering making patent information a major part of their career. More info at the link above.

For both startups and well-established businesses, intellectual property is a core asset that drives both innovation and brand development. "As a result, it is crucial to preemptively protective one’s resources from potential challenges by outside firms whose sole business practice is instigating litigation against operating companies," writes guest blogger Maya Richard on Patent Baristas.

Michael Elkon at Trading Secrets reports that on November 21, 2008, Judge Kenneth Karas of the Southern District of New York published his November 7, 2008 Amended Opinion and Order granting IBM’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction against former IBM executive Mark Papermaster ... In evaluating the legal merits of IBM’s Motion, Judge Karas engages in an analysis of whether Papermaster would inevitably disclose the IBM trade secrets known to him.

Bill Patry eulogizes Sir Hugh Laddie, one of the world's leading intellectual property lawyers, who will be sadly missed.

Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet.

Click on the link above to check out IP Think Tank’s weekly selection of top Pharma & Biotech intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and internet.

"More and more schemes that will be completely unsuccessful at dealing with the perceived problem of patent trolls are being hatched," writes Gene Quinn on the Practising Law Institute's Patent Briefs blog, where he discusses the recent launch of Article One Partners and RPX Corp.

Professor Dennis Crouch at Patently-O says, "Another way of interpreting the Egyptian Goddess test is that the scope of infringement varies inversely with the scope of prior art. When a patented design is in a field crowded with similar prior designs, the only infringing designs will be those that are strikingly similar to the patented design yet different from the prior art. Alternatively, when the patented design stands alone as a breakthrough design, the potential variety of infringing activity actually increases."

US Patent Attorney Gene Quinn at IP Watchdog says, "While there are many reasons for not finding prior art, just because you do not find prior art does not mean that there is no prior art that needs to be considered. In fact, it would be extremely rare (if not completely impossible) for there to be an invention that does not have any relevant prior art."

Professor Rob Merges (Berkeley), Professor John Duffy (George Washington), and Professor Doug Lichtman (UCLA), recently recorded a one-hour audio podcast about the In re Bilski decision. The participants are prominent patent academics and have interesting perspectives on the case. Indeed, Professor Duffy was one of the four lawyers invited to present oral argument in Bilski. The podcast is freely available on the Internet and can be picked up via the link above.

China and India are catching up quickly with Western nations in providing homegrown talent as well as heavy investment in R&D.

Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet.

Click on the link above to check out IP Think Tank’s weekly selection of top Pharma & Biotech intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and internet.

"Today we were allowed into the once ‘super-secretive’ headquarters of Procter & Gamble to learn about their famous and much lauded Connect & Develop programme," writes Gordie at The Innovation Diaries.

Stephen Albainy-Jenei at the Patent Baristas blog has a review of a new patent search site. Stephen reports, "There are a number of patent search sites available today. A new one is a semantic patent search — searching by meaning or interpretation of terms — called Setrue Semantic Patent Search Engine by Transformer. Setrue touts itself as an answer to the growing need of patent search market to a search engine with semantic capabilities that will enhance the precision of search results as contrast to the current FTS engines (full text search engine)." More at the link above.

"Trust" is the new version of "Control". When using applications or services in the Cloud and you incorporated them in your business processes you already made the decision that control isn't everything anymore and trust is more important. The decision of putting trust above control (or perhaps even instead of control) will be one of the big decision to be made in 2009. The matter of control on solutions was something that was probably vital some years ago, however in the last few years it is not control that is important, it is trust that matters.

Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet.

Click on the link above to check out IP Think Tank’s weekly selection of top Pharma & Biotech intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and internet.

In an interview with CIO Insight, Robert Scoble, who took corporate blogging mainstream, explains the potential for Web 2.0 tools in the enterprise, and why too many companies haven't figured them out. Catch the interview at the link.

Many CEOs use social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter personally, but few use them to communicate with stakeholders. And while 29% say social media can be a very or extremely effective way for companies to communicate, just as many find it ineffective. These are some of the findings of a September survey of 200 chief executives by public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and PRWeek. More at the link above.

There is speculation that companies in countries like India and China will take the lead in terms of green innovation.

At the link above there's a video and summary from Chris O’Brien of “The Media Business: New Approaches.” panel at the Web 2.o summit, which was moderated by Ken Auletta of the New Yorker and included Evan Williams of Twitter and Joel Hyatt of Current TV.

Henry Ford is credited with saying something along the lines of “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they’d have said ‘faster horses’ “. That particular quotation gets trotted out fairly religiously every time the issue of the innovator’s dilemma comes up, helping to point out the apparent perils of listening to the customer. -- JP Rangaswami at Confused of Calcutta has more, at the link above.

It's comforting to think that we and our competitors can just hunker down to ride out this economic tsunami and land roughly where we were when it began. But as everyone struggles just to stay above water, now is exactly the time to redistribute your resources to develop unique products that deliver a new consumer experience and create a franchise capable of long-term, significant growth. -- Barry Curewitz in Advertising Age.

Chandra Shekar Kakal at the Infosys-Oracle Blog writes, "The global business scenario has changed dramatically in the last year. Rising costs continue to put pressure on margins; globalization and the power of emerging economies are increasing the complexity of the business environment, and customer expectations from vendors and service providers has multiplied exponentially. The economic slowdown, collapse of the housing market and unexpected exchange rate fluctuations have made the business environment even more difficult. C-Level executives can no longer rely on conventional approaches to create a competitive advantage and have to look at innovation through collaboration to steer their organizations through turbulent times." Read the blog post and view a slide presentation at the link above.