Bob Ambrogi, on Legal Blog Watch, notes: By way of news-for-nerds blog Slashdot comes word that IBM is seeking to patent a tool for identifying areas within industries in which little patenting activity is taking place -- thus allowing businesses to step in and fill that IP void. IBM, it appears, abhors an IP vacuum.

Patent Attorney Stephen M. Nipper at The Invent Blog takes a look and concludes the answer, as usual, "it depends."

Blawg Review celebrates inventiveness on a regular basis, not just by covering the best intellectual property-related legal blogging but also by showcasing the creativity of its hosts. Blawg Review #179, hosted by the proprietors of the Securing Innovation blog, manages to achieve both in high style.

Stephen Albainy-Jenei, on the Patent Baristas law blog, writes: It’s not often that a fiction thriller comes along featuring a patent attorney as the lead character so I was anxious to see such a combination in Paul Goldstein’s novel “A Patent Lie.” Labeled as “Owning the truth is a matter of life and death,” the book melds technology, ethics and law.

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.

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

As the financial crisis is on the mind of virtually everyone in Congress, on September 24, 2008, Senator Jon Kyl (R, AZ) introduced a new patent reform bill into the Senate. Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) President and CEO Jim Greenwood released a statement regarding the patent reform legislation and Gene Quinn has the commentary on his IP Watchdog blog at the link above.

A 2007 patent filing by Google (published just yesterday) sheds light on how Google aims to take over the wireless world - shaking from grounds up the wireless industry business model. It appears the Android OS was just a small part of Google's plan for a wireless revolution.

It's perhaps not surprising that Peter Black was scheduled to host Blawg Review on this day. Today is also One Web Day.

"The proprietors of the Securing Innovation blog host next week's Blawg Review, no doubt using a method which will make Twittering seem as quaint as calligraphy," muses Colin Samuels, three-time winner of the Blawg Review of the Year Award. Colin has no idea how prescient that prognostication will prove to be.

Despite the fact that 39% of the Inc. 500 are blogging, Debbie Weil found only a tiny handful* of folks at the Inc. 5000 conference (speakers or entrepreneur-attendees) who are actively engaged in using social media.

It's not about your number of Twitter followers or Facebook friends, Seth Godin told Debbie Weil yesterday at the Inc. 5000 conference in Washington DC. Seth kindly agreed to a one-minute interview yesterday after his mainstage appearance with Tom Peters, moderated by AmEx OPEN president Susan Sinnott. Watch a YouTube video of Seth talking with Debbie at the link above.

"If you're not blogging, you're an idiot," Tom Peters told hundreds of attendees at the Inc. 5000 conference yesterday. "No single thing in the last 15 years has been more important to me professionally than blogging... It's changed my thinking, it’s changed my outlook… it’s the best damn marketing tool and it’s free."

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

Creating and maintaining an authentic organisational culture is a critical business issue today. How does Intellectual Property Strategy fit into this?

Patent Hawk fisks the latest press release from the Peer-to-Patent project. His line that really caught our attention: "Anyone who thinks that examiners don't have good prior art databases knows nothing about the USPTO." Read his snarky point-by-point commentary at the link above.

For a few years now, there's been a push to open up the patent process to peer review using a system called Peer-To-Patent. It launched a couple years ago, and the Associated Press is running an article suggesting that it can help fix many of the patent system's problems. Mike Masnick at Techdirt says, "While I'm not against the idea of Peer-to-Patent, it appears that supporters of the system are overplaying it, while downplaying the many weaknesses of the program."

In recent months Myhrvold’s firm, the eight-year old Intellectual Ventures — which is known, alternatively, but not necessarily inconsistently, as a patent troll and a hothouse of innovation — has secured payments in the range of $200 million to $400 million from companies such as Verizon and Cisco.

"Continuing the recent media focus on universities and patents, Forbes has a great article on IP cash cows, and which universities are 'bottling the most milk' from their patent portfolios," notes Peter Zura on his patent blog.

Gartner annually releases a Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. "Take the hype cycle construct with a grain of salt, if you will. But I love the chart," says Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book. The 2008 hype cycle report illustrates that corporate blogging is now on the upward slope of "enlightenment" heading towards mainstream adoption.

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

"While the bill seems directed towards protecting big content provides, press release specifically mentions 'the piracy of American films, the counterfeiting of American-designed products and other violations,' the bill would cover U.S. copyrights, trademarks, patents, and even unpatented product designs," says Stephen Albainy-Jenei at Patent Baristas.

Trade secrets play an important and growing role in American business. With the teaching aid of YouTube video clips, professor Deven Desai discusses Coca-Cola's trade secrets and KFC's secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices.

The European Patent Office gets more patent applications for fuel cells and wind power technologies than any other category in the new energy market, said Victor Veefkind and Thomas Maxisch, two patent examiners for the EPO during a presentation at Copenmind, a three-day conference aiming to link up investors with university researchers.

When the World Business Council on Sustainable Development in January 2008 launched the Eco-Patents Commons in partnership with IBM, Sony, Nokia and Pitney-Bowes, it was an unprecedented step in the development of clean technologies. Here were leading companies -- and, in IBM's case, the U.S. company with the most patents, year after year -- giving away ideas so that other companies could either apply to their own operations or work from to develop their own, new and patentable inventions. Now, just nine months after the launch of the Commons, three more companies have joined, and have more than doubled the total number of eco-patents available with their new commitments. Together, Xerox, Dupont and Bosch, along with new patents from Sony, have committed 53 new patents to the 31 currently on the list.

Blawg Review #176 is hosted this week on Legal Literacy, the personal blog of Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, Associate General Counsel and national counsel for trademark enforcement for a Fortune 500 company. "But my favorite posting this week," says Hanna, "comes from Securing Innovation on how the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Believes Children Are Our Future. It’s a story about how the USPTO and the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame Foundation are encouraging kids to invent stuff and unleash their creative genius."

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

A new patent database/IP exchange portal called Patents.com has just launched. Patents.com is the brainchild of Robert Monster, a hi-tech venture capitalist, authority on market research and former product developer for Procter and Gamble, and Paul Ratcliffe, a patent attorney and founder of PatentMonkey.com, a patent search site that operated from early 2006 to January 2008.

Down Under, in Delnorth v Dura-Post, Gyles J had to decide whether or not innovation patents were valid and infringed. "Much of the judgment concerns (fairly) routine questions of interpretation. On the question of validity, however, his Honour had to confront, so far as I’m aware really for the first time, the quality that comprises an innovative step," says Warwick at ipwars.com.

Here's something that you really should read if you're interested in the business of intellectual property.

The Harvard Business Review’s David Silverman looked up companies founded during the Great Depression, as part of a post on economic downturns and innovation.

The industrious Peter Kim recently compiled a list of 159 social media marketing examples. Debbie Weil, the leading social media consultant for corporates and author of The Corporate Blogging Book, added to this 35+ examples of corporate social media posted to Mashable by Aaron Uhrmacher. She looked at the members list over at the Blog Council. Perused the invaluable NewPR Wiki list of corporate blogs. And cross referenced the 58 entries on the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki.

The point here is that not everyone wants to blog or get involved with social media, and that companies should not leave "organizational communication," to chance, yes a company might strike lucky, but in today's world a company has to plan for "the organization's official engagement."

The American Conference Institute’s 10th Advanced Forum on Biotech Patents: Analysis, Insights and Strategies for New Challenges in Biotech Patent Practices will be held at the Royal Sonesta Hotel, Boston, MA, on September 15-16. Read more about the conference in a post on the Patent Baristas blog by clicking on the link above.

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

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has announced that it is adopting new rules relating to a variety of issues that impact who can engage in representation of clients before the PTO, both on the patent and the trademark side of the Office. "These new rules, which will go into effect on September 15, 2008, will end the reign of terror brought to us by unscrupulous invention submission companies and other invention scams. Three cheers for the Patent Office!" says Gene Quinn at IP Watchdog.

The analyst who is conducting the search should not limit his mind to identifying prior art references but he can also identify other facts that can contribute towards invalidation.