Museum of Intellectual Property

Eric E. Johnson, a guest blogger at PrawfsBlawg, writes, "Perhaps more than any other field of law, intellectual property calls for illustration. The landmark cases of IP law have facts that beg to be seen, as well as read. That’s why I’ve begun a project called The Museum of Intellectual Property. The aim of the museum is to serve as a resource for teachers, students, and scholars of IP law."
Tags:

Don't call me a patent troll

Nathan Myhrvold was chief technology officer of Microsoft, but since 2000 has been building a portfolio of inventions (patents) at Intellectual Ventures.
Tags:

An Overview of Trade Secrets

A trade secret is a form of intellectual property that applies to business secrets. If a company or other organization creates or compiles information that gives it an economic advantage over its competitors, it can protect that information as a trade secret -- in a sense becoming the "owner" of the trade secret.
Tags:

C5's Advanced Forum on Intellectual Asset Mangement for High Tech Industries

As the number of patent applications related to computer implemented business methods and technologies grows, so does the complexity of managing high tech IP portfolios. Against this backdrop, strategy focused companies are responding by taking the necessary steps to avoid risk and maintain a competitive edge within the market by reassessing their intellectual asset management policies.
Tags:

2008 Creativity and Innovation Management Community Meeting

This international conference will explore the idea of "integrating inquiry and action" through paper presentations by business leaders and recognized thought leaders in the fields of creativity and innovation. The Creativity and Innovation Management Journal will sponsor it in conjunction with the International Center for Studies in Creativity, Buffalo State College.
Tags:

Memorial Day Blawg Review

Stephen Albainy-Jenei at Patent Baristas writes, "On Memorial Day we honor our war dead and one of the greatest ways we can show our respect is to pledge to uphold our own constitution and laws, to pledge that there will never be wars for erroneous and misleading reasons; to pledge no more killing except for the ultimate defense of our country and our freedoms. Thus, it is appropriate that a group of lawyers should hold this day special. With great humility, I have to admit that I cannot hope to meet the standards set by previous Memorial Day Blawg Reviews (Crime & Federalism, Blawg Review and Biker Law) but I will pledge to uphold the respect the day deserves."
Tags:

Kissing trademark rights goodbye?

"Get it? You’re making stuff that officially, permissively, persuasively says HERSHEY’S on it and the usually IP-crazy nuts over Hershey’s have no idea what on God’s green earth you’re putting out there with their name on it!" remarks IP maven Ron Coleman at Likelihood of Confusion.
Tags:

IP Think Tank Global Week in Review - 23 May 2008

Here is Duncan Bucknell’s weekly selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and internet.
Tags:

How to learn to read Chinese

The hardest part of learning Chinese is mastering the thousands of characters that are necessary for full literacy. The spoken language, in contrast, is relatively easy to acquire.
Tags:

John Chambers on Innovation

John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, stated his case for innovation in a thought-provoking keynote address at Forrester IT Forum.
Tags:

The hidden dangers of litigating patents in China

The number of patent applications being submitted to China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) is already the third highest in the world. And SIPO is due to overtake the annual amount received by the USPTO by 2012 if current growth rates continue...
Tags:

China's New Translation Tool Makes Patent Searches Easier

Asian patent power is nearly at its peak – with Japan, Korea and China among the top ten countries in terms of number of patent applications filed last year under the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). In fact, China has become the fifth largest patent office in the world.
Tags:

Transparency and Making Choices

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz blogs, "Over the past few days, the world has watched an earthquake in China lead to the death and dislocation of countless thousands. The San Francisco Bay Area, where Sun is headquartered, has felt the impact deeply - beyond co-workers, friends and family, we've suffered our own traumas with earthquakes. A cyclone in Myanmar triggered similar thoughts among those of us effected by hurricanes in New Orleans, Louisiana. But the world's an increasingly transparent place. And any help, from $1 to $1m, multiplied over the world, makes a difference."
Tags:

No Time For Blogging

This, in fact, seems to be one of the main reasons a lot of executives don’t take up blogging. There are a lot of legitimate reasons a CEO or other senior executive might choose to not blog. Lack of time isn’t one of them.
Tags:

Branding Is Big Business

Brands and branding are big business. A handful have clearly understood this truth all along. Now another respected voice is saying the same thing, in this from Brands in the Boardroom: Key branding issues for senior executives, a publication of Intellectual Asset Management Magazine.
Tags:

Japan Announces the Launch of Peer to Patent

The new system adopted by the JPO is called “Community Patent Review.” It covers disclosed patent applications chosen by IBM Japan or other companies after 18 months have passed since they were filed. The JPO will recruit several hundred participants, including university researchers, to have them express their opinions about the trends for the latest papers presented at overseas academic conferences, the existence or absence of prior literature, and other issues, and it will make use of those opinions for patent examinations.
Tags:

BlackBerry fund looks to startups for innovation

RIM is putting its money and brand behind an initiative to look for innovation in the entrepreneurial world of startups, helping fund new companies that will create and develop innovative technologies and products.RIM is Canada’s largest company by market value and is now one of the 10 most valuable companies on Nasdaq—a list headed by Microsoft and Google in the top two positions. With its size and resources, it could have pursued any approach to innovation that it wanted, and it chose to put its support behind startups.
Tags:

China earthquake: mourning online

China begins three days of mourning for the victims of last week's earthquake with many of the most moving tributes being made online.
Tags:

The new standard for meetings and conferences

If you think a great conference is one where the presenters read a script while showing the audience bullet points, you're wrong. Or if you leave little time for attendees to engage with others, or worse, if you don't provide the levers to make it more likely that others will engage with each other, you're wrong as well.
Tags:

See the Global Reach of Biotechnology at BIO 2008

Not a small, intimate affair with attendance at more than 22,000 in 2007, with representatives from 68 countries — international attendance now makes up more than 30% of the attendees. The convention features more than 175 breakout sessions along with over 220,000 square feet of exhibition space... "If you’d like to meet up during the conference, drop me a note and we’ll schedule some time to have coffee together. It looks like the Securing Innovation guys along with the Patent Docs will be there — maybe there can be an IP blawger get-together on the USS Midway?" says Stephen Albainy-Jenei at Patent Baristas.
Tags:

Audi wins European Inventor of the Year Award

The European Patent Office awarded Audi as its third inventor of the year for its innovative new products that are helping Europe excel in the global market. The product worthy of such an award is Audi's aluminum space frame, which underpins the Audi A8, TT, R8, and Lamborghini Gallardo.
Tags:

Fisker Seeks Arbitration to Settle Trade Secrets Suit

Tesla sued Fisker Automotive and its chief executive, Henrik Fisker, as well as Fisker's auto design business and his business partner, alleging theft of trade secrets... Fisker, a noted auto designer for both BMW and Aston Martin, announced his plans for a plug-in hybrid sports coupe, the Fisker Karma, to launch late in 2009, shortly after his relationship with Tesla ended.
Tags:

Can I Register My Domain Name As A Trademark?

Yes, if you use it as a trademark, in addition to using it as a domain name.
Tags:

Lunch with Commissioner Doll

Patent attorney Kevin E. Noonan, blogging on Patent Docs, reports at great length on a luncheon seminar with John Doll, Commissioner for Patents of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. What caught our attention was this: "Commissioner Doll was particularly hopeful about the economies of scale that could be achieved by having available to the U.S. Office results of a Japanese Patent Office search of Japanese patents and applications (which are rarely a major part of the prior art considered during U.S. prosecution), and envisioned a 'common' prior art database that could be used by all offices."
Tags:

Congress Requests Answers From The USPTO; Rough Times Ahead?

On April 29, Howard Berman, Chairman, Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property shot off a letter to USPTO Director Jon Dudas, asking some rather pointed questions on USPTO management and practice. "What is apparent from the letter is that someone (or some group) has gotten the ear of Congress and is publicly unleashing some pent-up grievances held by practitioners against the PTO," says Peter Zura on his 271 Patent Blog.
Tags:

IBM Attorney to Moderate Panel on Peer Reviewed Patent Examination

At the American Intellectual Property Law Association's Spring meeting being held in Houston, Texas, IBM's Associate General Council of Intellectual Property Law, Manny Schecter, will moderate a panel on the Peer-to-Patent project; a historic effort to improve patent quality by opening the examination process to community review.
Tags:

"Patent Trolls" -- with them or against them?

Reporter Joe Mullin writes on The Prior Art blog: "Folks are choosing sides—first Howrey LLP (against), and now a veteran IP executive (against). Hat tip to Joff WIld's IAM blog for this one. Dan McCurdy's new company, PatentFreedom, is an online community for companies to get and share intelligence about the non-practicing entities some critics call “patent trolls.” Membership is limited to “operating companies” with over $100 million of revenue that’s not from licensing, enforcing, or selling patents or other intellectual property."
Tags:

Coca-Cola Trade Secrets Case

In the case of United States v. Williams, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions of two individuals who had received a 96 month and 60 month sentence for a violation of 18 U.S.C. s 1832, the theft of trade secret statute. The defendants in this case were accused of trying to sell trade secrets of Coca-Cola to Pepsi. Pepsi notified Coca-Cola of the attempt to sell them trade secrets and Coca-Cola then brought in the FBI, who used an undercover agent to secure the evidence obtained in this case.
Tags:

Top 50 IP People Under 45

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.
Tags:

Grants for Mothers of Invention

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.
Tags:

Better Than Average Rating For Blogging Fortune 500 Companies

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.
Tags:

5 things EMC learnt via Corporate Blogging

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.
Tags:

Patents to save the planet?

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.
Tags:

Was Troll Tracker a Journalist?

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.
Tags:

USPTO Virtual Workforce

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.
Tags:

Patents Going Green

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.”
Tags:

Blogging Is about Relationships

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.
Tags:

Evaluating Patent Investments

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.
Tags:

Thomson Reuters Publishes New Study on Patents and Innovation

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.
Tags:

Global Intellectual Property Index

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.
Tags:

Three stripes, yer out!

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?
Tags:

Corporate blogs offer opportunities & challenges : Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith

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

Patently Unconstitutional?

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.
Tags:

Are Administrative Patent Judges 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.
Tags:

May 2008 Carnival of Trust

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

Guy Kawasaki on Innovation

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.
Tags:

More on Gratis Greentech: A Proposal for Expanding the Eco-Patent Commons

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.
Tags:

Rethinking The Patent Universe

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.
Tags: