Those who made it offer a unique and dynamic portrait of today's IP world. They combine raw brain power with hard work, canny legal skills and a talent for being in the right place at the right time.

Today, May 11th (coincidentally Mother’s Day) Whirlpool, the appliance maker that brings us products that make our everyday lives easier, kicks off the 4th annual Mother of Invention Grant competition.

John Cass, a marketer who writes about corporate blogging, PR, marketing, social media, and the Internet, developed a new chart for the Fortune 500 business blogging wiki.

Given the nascent stage in which corporate blogging is, it’s always good to share lessons learned so the next batch of corporate bloggers (wherever they are) can read and learn.

Green expertise to combat climate change needs to become Europe's competitive advantage - and the IP system should be one of the key drivers of that edge, Günter Verheugen, the Vice President of the European Commission, said Tuesday at the European Patent Forum in Ljubljana.

The now infamous case of the anonymous blogger known as Patent Troll Tracker and the lawyer who offered a reward to unmask him is an object lesson in the potential perils and pitfalls of legal blogging. As we all know, the blogger unmasked himself, revealing that he is Rick Frenkel, a lawyer at Cisco. But that was hardly the end of this blogosphere soap opera.

As a solution to the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) difficulties in recruiting and retaining high caliber patent examiners and other critical personnel to move to the Washington, DC area, the agency has embraced a telework policy that it intends to grow over the coming years. The telework programs allow people to live and work in cities throughout the US and commute back to DC for meeting and training.

Stephen Albainy-Jenei, at the popular Patent Baristas weblog, takes a good look at Eric Lane's Green Patent Blog, a site “dedicated to discussion and analysis of intellectual property issues in clean technology.”

In this series, "The ROI of Trust", Liz Strauss puts context around the issues of trust and control that concern companies as they consider blogging.

The Intellectual Property Prospector and the Beard Group Law and Business Publishers are hosting an audio briefing for identifying and evaluating patent investments on May 15, 2008. Philip Brooks' Patent Infringement Updates has the details.

Thomson Reuters recently published two issues of World IP Today, analyzing global patent activity and technology innovations for 2007. The first report, "World IP Today: A Thomson Reuters Report On Global Patent Activity in 2007" highlights patent output from the G8 countries (Canada, France, Germany,Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) plus China and South Korea. The findings are highlighted at Peter Zura's 271 Patent Blog, where there's a link to download the report.

In May 2008, Taylor Wessing, in association with Managing Intellectual Property, launched the results of its Global Intellectual Property (IP) Index. The Global IP Index presents a comprehensive statistical comparison of IP protection and enforcement in 22 of the world's leading economies, rating each jurisdiction for protecting and enforcing patents, trade marks and copyrights.

Adidas wins $305 million award for a three-stripe trademark violation against US company. A spokeswoman for Germany's Adidas AG, the world's second-largest sporting goods maker, said the company was happy with the verdict. Ya think?

Brad Smith, General Counsel for Microsoft, writing for InsideCounsel Magazine, shares some insight into the opportunities blogs and social media offer corporate heads.

It all rests on a question of administrative law: The Constitution says, for instance, that some government officials may be appointed only by the president, the courts or “heads of departments” like the attorney general or the secretary of commerce. But, writes Liptak, a 1999 law changed the way administrative patent judges are appointed, substituting the director of the PTO for the secretary of commerce. According to a PTO spokeswoman, 46 of the 74 judges on the patent court, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, were appointed under the new law. Duffy believes the new method of appointment is unconstitutional.

The New York Times has run a feature article about my colleague John Duffy, who has written a very influential paper on the appointment of patent judges. John's paper, Are Administrative Patent Judges Unconstitutional?, is available at SSRN.

DLA Piper's David Donoghue is hosting the Carnival of Trust at the Chicago IP Litigation Blog.

Can it be that twenty-five years has gone by since the Roger von Oech published a book that inspired a generation of personal computer innovators? I guess so because the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of A Whack on the Side of the Head is hitting bookstores now. Roger is a creativity guru based in Atherton, California. Guy Kawasaki caught up with him on the occasion of the release of the latest version of Whack. Read his exclusive interview in a guest blog post on Sun's Place for Small and Medium Businesses.

IP consultant Nancy Edwards Cronin has an interesting suggestion for the Eco-Patent Commons (see my previous post on this new initiative to share patents having environmental benefits). In her Strategic Thinking column on Greenbiz.com (which I found through this post on Securing Innovation), she recommends expanding the Commons beyond donated patents to include “enabled invention disclosures,” written descriptions of inventions having the same level of detail as patents, inventions which companies wish to practice but do not want to patent because of the expense of the procurement process...Whether or not you agree with her argument about issued patents, her idea of adding invention disclosures to the Commons would almost certainly benefit the initiative and its participants by increasing the value and utility of the available green technology.

On May 8, all 12 members of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will gather in Washington to hear a case that could reshape the entire legal landscape of just what's eligible to receive that ultimate business stamp of approval from the U.S. government--a patent.

Fortune Magazine's Jon Fortt sat down with Chief Technology Officer Sophie Vandebroek to talk about how she manages the tough trade-offs in Xerox’s technology development –- building versus buying, managing risk and partnering up with other companies.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office may have a major problem on its hands — the possibly unconstitutional appointment of nearly two-thirds of its patent appeals judges.

The ‘inequitable conduct doctrine’ — which allows federal judges to void patents upon a finding that a company deceived the PTO to get the patent — has led to a heated battle in Congress, pitting brand-name pharma companies against generic drug-makers and consumer groups.

Walter Hunt patented the safety pin almost exactly 160 years ago.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is initiating a pilot program in which, in certain art areas, applicants who comply with the requirements set forth in this notice will receive the results of a prior art search conducted by the examiner, via a condensed Pre-Interview Communication, and then be permitted to conduct an interview with the examiner to discuss the cited prior art references, before the examiner issues an Office action on the merits that sets forth the rejections.