Blawg Review hosts an inspirational reading of the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July, and next week Jonathan Frieden hosts a special presentation on E-Commerce Law blog in honor of this occasion.

"In our research we realised there was a need for a central repository of green technology and innovation and a venue was required to attract investors and their intellectual property as well as the venture capitalists, corporations and governments with the means to implement them," said Ron Barenburg, chief operations officer at LynxStreet.com.

Legal experts say the rapid rise in Chinese patent filings, which have been growing at a rate of more than 20 per cent a year, reflects a profound change in cultural attitudes to property, and intellectual property in particular – even if the Chinese system for protecting IP rights still has many deficiencies.

Congratulations to the organizers of Peer-to-Patent, which is carrying off one of the most audacious experiments in Internet activism in our day," says Andy Oram at O"Reilly Radar. "A lot of ink has been spilled about Barack Obama's application of social networking techniques to presidential campaigning (and to Ron Paul's successful fund-raising before that) but Peer-to-Patent makes those achievements seem entirely run-of-the-mill."

Toyota boils down the ingredients of innovation into the 3 C’s: creativity, challenge, and courage. Creativity is a necessary part of innovation, but not sufficient. Creativity that is revolutionary can be impressive, but sometimes a combination of revolutionary as well as evolutionary ideas are needed to make something succeed in the real world. Challenge is the opportunity to be heroes - the chance to achieve greatness. Courage is needed to accept the impossible challenge and be willing to sacrifice blood, sweat, and tears to turn a dream into reality.

Joel West says, "My hunch (which I cannot yet prove) is that the best solution will be to reform the patent system to eliminate obvious patents, those that reflect prior art, and perhaps some of the incremental patents that are implied by prior art."

About eight years ago, Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft exec started Intellectual Ventures, a company that amasses patents that it can then license. Several tech giants, including Nokia, Intel, Apple and Sony, invest money in the holding company’s war chest. Now, several big tech companies are banding together in a slightly different patent-related venture. As the WSJ’s Amol Sharma reports, Verizon, Google and Cisco are among a group of companies joining up to defend themselves against patent-infringement suits by buying up patents before the so-called patent trolls get their hands on them.

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

"I think if you’re in a business where talking to your customers is important, blogging is a great way to do that. "— Matt Mullenweg, WordCampDallas 2008

Eklavya Gupte writes in Managing Intellectual Property that the USPTO's peer-to-patent project has led to a big increase in prior art submissions but has failed to bring in fresh patent applications in its first year, according to a report.

Innovation has climbed up the corporate ladder out pacing management processes like TQM and Six Sigma. Still, few people know how to define it or even recognize it. The clearest definition I've seen comes from the folks at the Innovation Network: "Implementing new ideas to create value."

The idea of an energy-generating bra isn't as crazy as it might sound. A company called Triumph International Japan recently unveiled a solar-powered bra that supposedly will generate enough energy to power an iPod.

Innovative lawyers, law firms, and legal professionals know they need to monitor the blogopshere as part of the their strategic intelligence efforts. Subscribing to an RSS feed of Google blog searches of their names, competitor's names, subjects of litigation and transactional work, expert witnesses, and keywords relating to their practice niche is now routine.

Here is IP Think Tank’s weekly selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and internet, compiled by Duncan Bucknell.

Andrew Torrance at BioLaw says, "the perception of risk to patent rights may already be changing intellectual property strategy in biotechnology. As patent rights lose some of their lustre, there may be increased reliance on trade secret protection."

So, what is raining on biotechnology's parade? Three clouds have come up repeatedly in a variety of panels and plenaries: (1) risks of weakening patent protection, (2) a drastic deceleration in Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") drug approvals, and (3) the credit crisis.

There can be only one dog cloning operation, or so says Lou Hawthorne, the CEO of BioArts, a biotech company based in California.

BioLaw will be reporting live all week from the Biotechnology Industry Organization International Conference ("BIO 2008").

Stephen Albainy-Jenei at Patent Baristas says, "It’ll be fun to see an up-to-the-minute review of some of the sights and sounds at BIO’s gathering of professionals with over 20,000 attendees and 2200 exhibitors, from over 70 countries."

Meet Dad. He is a businessman. He works really hard, and he also has many hobbies. He plays baseball and reads. He is even the family lifeguard when the kids are swimming. His favorite thing of all, though, is being a dad.

Emily Berger at the EFF says, "It’s not news that there are patents out there that never should have been granted. Whether it’s the “invention” of entertaining a cat with a laser pointer, combining two well-known car features in a manner that offers no unexpected new outcome, or selling CDs of a live concert immediately after the show, the patent office allows some bad patents."

Here is IP Think Tank’s weekly selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and internet, compiled by Duncan Bucknell.

Philip Brooks, quoting from a new publication available from Research and Markets Ltd. in Dublin: "The business landscape is littered with intellectual property landmines. Microsoft, Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, Medtronic, Research in Motion and Nintendo are just a few of the companies that have settled patent infringement disputes for hundreds of millions of dollars. Toshiba paid a $425 million judgment to Lexar for violating trade secrets. Pfizer's patents for Viagra were ruled invalid in China and Microsoft faces similar concerns over its Office product in South Korea. In the battle of protecting intellectual property, the IP lawyer is on the front lines."

Corporate blogging is so "last year" to the "experts" but still gaining traction with companies.

Before initiating the process of procuring a patent in the United States, it is important to understand the steps and the time frame of the process. Some of the major milestones in the life of a utility patent application and a general overview of what an inventor should expect are summarized at the link above.