How do you prevent competitors from obtaining patents that could block you from using your own innovative ideas in your products and services? Click on the link in the headline above to read the full article in IndustryWeek outlining the Pros and Cons of Patents, Trade Secrets, and Defensive Publications.

IBM has announced its plans to expand "defensive publishing" rather than patenting as a means to protect its intellectual property. A patent prevents others from practicing the specifics that are covered by the patent, but opens up a Pandora's box of potential work-arounds and litigation. Defensive Publishing is in essence placing IP into the public domain, rendering it thereby unpatentable by anyone, even the inventor.

Blawg Review #254 features links with information about International Women's Day, National Women's History Month and the 30th anniversary of the National Women's History Project.

Confidential business and trade secret information is more than the stuff of corporate espionage. It is the competitive edge of any business, regardless of size, and deserves protection. Set up the proper safeguards to protect you confidential and trade secret information and you’ll be able to pursue your legal remedies the way Home Depot recently did.

Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT") announced that it has released claim construction dictionaries authored by Dr. David Garrod (PUBPAT Senior Litigation Counsel) free of charge to the public.

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

Note: IPCom GmbH & Co KG is not to be confused with IP.com Inc., an unrelated corporation. Nokia Oyj, the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, withdrew an antitrust complaint at the European Commission after German patent licensing company IPCom GmbH & Co KG said it’s committed to licensing its technology under fair terms.Nokia said in a statement today that it has achieved its “main objective” in the complaint, which was to make sure that IPCom offers its mobile-phone patents under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

"Genius is the act of solving a problem in a way no one has solved it before. It has nothing to do with winning a Nobel prize in physics or certain levels of schooling," says Seth Godin. "It's about using human insight and initiative to find original solutions that matter."

The Fortune 500's use of blogs, online video, and podcasts continues to increase, but Twitter was the social media channel of choice in 2009, according to a study by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) and Financial Insite.

Discover a treasure trove of patent lithographs - discarded by the US Patent Office then rescued from destruction by Randy Rabin as he and Jackie Bassett uncover the secrets to innovation success behind the Wright Bros., Heddy Lamar, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, W.H. Carrier and others.

Inventors Eye, a new electronic publication by the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a bimonthly publication for the independent inventor community.

Jordan Furlong, hosting this week's Blawg Review on Stem's Law Firm Web Strategy blog, writes, "For a story that’s nearly 200 years old, Frankenstein feels powerfully modern, in part because it expresses the trepidation and occasionally the fear humanity still feels about the things it creates. From the cotton gin to Google Buzz, we marvel at the machines we invent and congratulate ourselves for our ingenuity. But lurking at the back of our minds is a deep uneasiness over whether we’re getting too good at building things simply because we can, and whether the next invention will be the one that gets away from us — whether next time, we’ll go too far." Read Blawg Review #252 at the link in the headline above to see the best of this week's legal blogs, including a link back to one of the posts on IP.com's blog, Securing Innovation.

"Who would have thought that an online community of patent researchers would even take off?" writes Oscar Bruce on the Patent Quality Review Blog. "For many people, patents are too dense to understand. They are filled with legal and technical jargon that no layman can probably digest. Yet, the diverse community of Article One Partners has grown tremendously since its launch in November 2008. What motivated all these Advisors to register on Article One?"

This Blawg Review comes to you from the Canadian Trademark Blog, resident in Vancouver, British Columbia – a blawg run by several of the talented trademark law practitioners at Clark Wilson LLP.

The theme of World Intellectual Property Day, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, is "Innovation - Linking the World."