The biggest problem is identifying useful prior art in books in the first place. Since they're not in electronic form, there's obviously no way to perform an automated search on them. An examiner has to first have a strong suspicion that there's something useful in a particular book before they're going to seek it out. Usually this happens when the book has been cited in other relevant prior art.
Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet.
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.
"All of the content in the IPLB print edition will now be available online: free and freely linkable," says Joe Mullin on his blog, The Prior Art.
Twitter (or something like it) will define almost every live, public interaction we have in business in the near future. In some businesses, this is already happening," writes Jeffrey Blackwell at Trade Show Feed.
In a conference on March 24, CNSI launched a “technology incubator” – the first of its kind for UC – in conjunction with UCLA’s Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research (OIP-ISR). The event, held in the CNSI auditorium, brought together faculty entrepreneurs, representatives of industry startups and venture capital firms.
Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry unveiling the "Sixth Sense". It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some.
Gartner released a report today that highlights the different ways that companies are adopting Twitter for business use.
Several new e-readers, including Amazon's Kindle and Sony's eReader, use electronic-paper technology that is easier to read than conventional displays. But e-paper still suffers in comparison to conventional liquid crystal displays in terms of refresh speed and vividness of color. Electronics manufacturer Fujitsu says it is shipping an LCD-based electronic reader called FLEPia in Japan next month that displays vivid color, a first in the industry... Fujitsu opted to use a technology it licensed in 2005 from a company called Kent Displays. The technology, branded Reflex LCD, looks and acts significantly different from most LCDs, explains Asad Khan, vice president of technology at Kent. Like E Ink's e-paper, it reflects ambient light instead of shining a light from within. "It's dramatically different from traditional LCDs," says Khan. "It's really stripped down to its bare essentials." This means that the Reflex LCD display doesn't use a power-hungry backlight, and it doesn't have the series of optical layers that most LCDs have.
The public sector including universities and research councils are crucial sources of innovation and national economic development. The Bayh Dole Act in the USA has undoubtedly facilitated and catalytically incentivized the translation of research into essential goods and services, and elsewhere similar legislative instruments and/or university policy and practice modeled along Bayh Dole is likely to have major transformative effects on local economies. While largely beneficial, in some cases this may come at a cost.
Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet.
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.
One of the more interesting of these is an effort conceived at New York Law School by Beth Noveck, a professor there and director of the Institute for Information Law & Policy. This effort, called Peer-to-Patent is run in cooperation with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). Its target is a system that, if not broken, is certainly buckling under the strain of growing demand and limited resources — the global patent system.
USPTO announced that it once again seeking nominations for potential recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (NMTI), presented by the President of the United States each year to select individuals for their technological achievements.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced the opening of the National Inventors Hall of Fame in the museum of its Alexandria, Va., campus. The Hall of Fame honors and encourages the men and women responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible. The Hall of Fame opening is being celebrated with a new exhibit about the inductees, “Inventive Links.”
"I wonder what the Copyright experts are going to say about this one. Obviously, if Kutiman has gotten permission from all of the various owners of these YouTube videos, there's no problem. Based on the description quoted by the JPost, I'm betting that's not the case—Which could open up some really interesting new questions headaches for fair use mavens everywhere." - Brian C. Ledbetter
Many critics of Red Hat's approach generally argue that defensive patents are undesirable because they impose encumbrances on technology and serve to validate the system. Another point that is often is raised is that defensive patents are largely useless for protecting against litigation from patent-holding companies that don't have any reason to need cross-licensing agreements. Instead of filing for patents on certain technologies in order prevent others from doing so, critics say, open source software companies should simply document and publish all of their innovations so that the material can be used as prior art to block future patent litigation.
Red Hat's application for a patent for an approach to routing messages over a middleware bus has disturbed some who are wondering why Red Hat didn't simply publish. If, as Red Hat claim, this is simply a defensive patent they could instead have published the proposal to establish prior art.
Things which are different in order simply to be different are seldom better, but that which is made to be better is almost always different ” Dieter Rams (1993)
While the patent conversation on Twitter is growing (both in quantity and substance), it certainly could use a little help. To that end, I thought it would be great to recruit the Patent and Trademark Office into the mix. The Office is doing some wonderful things with technology and community involvement (the webcast of the recent roundtable discussion on deferred examination is a prime example), but has yet to undertake any social/new media efforts. Twitter seems like a logical way for the Office to get started in this arena. At a minimum, the Office could use Twitter to post news items and links from its news page. This simple use of the system would provide another avenue to distribute critical information to Office stakeholders. There’s so much more that could be done, though.
Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet.
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.
The judge, Mr Justice Floyd, said: "Dr Kelly directed the project to a successful conclusion on a modest research spend and under considerable pressure to produce results. Dr Chiu made monumental efforts in how own sphere of responsibility." Law firm McDermott Wills & Amery said: "This case is highly significant as it is the first time that the UK courts have awarded compensation to employee inventors under this law, even though it has been in force since 1977.
InnovationQ - Patent Management Tool -- IP.com has introduced new intellectual property management software (InnovationQ). The InnovationQ 3.2 features a new graphical user interface plus two new modules. In addition, several new features are incorporated into this release.
Joe Mullin, a reporter at IP Law & Business, looks at the issue of copying and other popular misconceptions about patent lawsuits in his January IPLB story, "The Inventor's Tale." The story has now been published on Law.com as well, with a different title: "How Juror Misconceptions Affect Patent Trials." At the link above, he follows up with a post on his blog, The Prior Art.
Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet.
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.
In a nutshell, the Patent Reform Act of 2009 Senate Bill provides for the following: Sec. 2. Right of the first inventor to file -- This section converts the United States’ patent system into a first-inventor-to-file system, giving priority to the earlier-filed application for a claimed invention. Interference proceedings are replaced with a derivation proceeding to determine whether the applicant of an earlier-filed application was not the proper applicant for the claimed invention – such a proceeding will be faster and less expensive than were interference proceedings. This section also encourages the sharing of information by providing a grace period for publicly disclosing the subject matter of the claimed invention, without losing priority. (Click on the link above for other sections summarized at Patent Baristas.)
Sometimes companies leave the patenting to the R&D department, figuring that they know their inventions better than anyone in management would. The problem is that R&D may not know or always be cognizant of the overall goals and strategy of the business the way management is. And what sometimes happens when the R&D department takes over the patenting process is that they lose sight of the truly important aspects of the inventions, leading to patents that cover products, and not innovations.
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Links on a variety of IP issues (Archives)
"Although Google, Google Patents and the USPTO’s electronic databases are commonly declared favorite research tools by patent researchers throughout the world, an important niche of knowledge is imperative not to forget: the world of non-digitized information. This week, the Top 5 Unexpected Places to Find Prior Art have been gathered from the best and brightest AOP Study Submissions – from non-digitized favorites like old manuals, to the interesting world of looking for prior art in non-related industries." Great article by Article One Partners at the link above
"When most people talk about the dot-com boom and bust they talk about the money that was made and lost in the process. What they don’t talk about so much is the innovation that created completely new and world changing technologies. From my perspective the money is interesting but the real conversation needs to be about the rate at which a new technology is adopted, the speed with which new companies are gaining market share and the disruptions that are happening as new technologies and companies supplant the prior generation’s most popular products," writes Ben Keighran, CEO & Co-Founder of Chomp, a search engine for mobile apps.
Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t yet dramatically transformed, it will. People, companies, investors and even countries can’t stop this transformation. The only choice you have is whether you join the side of innovation and progress or you don’t.
MIT calculates that its living alumni have founded 25,800 companies that currently provide 3.3m jobs for people around the world. These firms have combined annual revenues of some $2.2 trillion.
George Will, conservative icon, wrote an Op-Ed piece in The Washington Post last week extolling the virtues (and the necessities) of innovation and government support for it ("Rev the scientific engine"). Kevin Noonan at Patent Docs reviews the piece in a blog post at the link in the blue headline above.
eMarketer estimates that, even with the hype around newer social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, nearly two in five US companies will maintain a public-facing blog this year for marketing purposes. This usage is on the rise as firms will increasingly realize the value of the blogosphere to further a variety of corporate functions, such as communications, lead generation, customer service and brand marketing.
IBM, Nokia, Sony, and Pitney Bowes teamed up with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to create the Eco-Patent Commons, an organized effort to make freely available patents that "reduce waste, pollution, global warming, and energy demands." The Commons allows global businesses to share environmental innovations, turning the patent-long the emblem of all that is the opposite of sharing-into a vehicle for collective innovation.
Facebook’s new community pages have created a lot of confusion for businesses. Many companies have been surprised (and many angry) to find their brands showing up in community pages that are fully outside of their control.
Both Google and Bing have added many social search features over the past year. There’s also been talk about using “social signals” to help rank regular search results. For more information, read Danny Sullivan's blog post on Search Engine Land at the blue link above.
With the red-hot acquisition dance between Google and Groupon sucking up all the attention, it’s easy once again to ignore the No. 2 player in the fast-growing social buying space–LivingSocial. Read Kara Swisher's article in Boomtown, a columns in the Wall Street Journal's Digital Network. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference.
As noted in the link above, according to a report from Reuters, the court ruled that IPCom’s amended patent, which protects technology that connect phones to networks, was valid. [Readers of IP.com's blog, Securing Innovation, will recall that, since the commencement of this patent dispute years ago, we have made it clear that IP.com is in no way related to IPCom GmbH KG, a company in Germany that is involved in patent litigation reportedly involving 17 billions of Euros in claims. [For the latest news about IPCom GmbH, including our clarification to avoid confusion with IP.com, just search Google for IPCom GmbH.]
The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington...As daunting as it is to publish such material over official objections, it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name.
America’s biggest corporations have dramatically increased their participation in Twitter, according to “The Fortune 500 and Social Media,” a yearly report from the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Infamous “balloon boy” hoaxer Richard Heene is at it again, hitting America right where it itches. The determined dad is trying to raise scratch for his wife and three sons by hawking his own “Bear Scratch” itching post in a YouTube commercial that makes him come across as an even more excitable version of late, leather-lunged pitchman Billy Mays.
The National Archives is home to some of the nation’s most prized historical documents. But a new audit by the Government Accountability Office has found that it’s not doing a good job of keeping track of them. The audit was prompted in part by the loss of the Wright Brothers’ original patent for the flying machine. It was last seen in 1980 after being passed around multiple Archives offices, the Patents and Trademarks Office and the National Air and Space Museum. Maps for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also checked out by military representatives in 1962, and haven't been seen since.
Links to Prior Art (Archives)
Methods, systems, and computer program products for disabling a mobile phone suspected of being a trigger for a bomb are provided.
Deciding whether to contact a particular friend, classmate, or coworker often hinges on where the person is located and what that person is doing. Such a decision typically has to be made in a limited amount of time with a limited amount of information. Further, when a person arrives at a particular location, such as a park or shopping mall, they often want to know if someone else they know is also at the same location. There is thus a need for systems and methods for automatically locating web-based social network members. The present invention relates generally to web-based social networks, and more particularly to systems and methods for automatically locating web-based social network members, is the subject of a patent recently obtained by Facebook.
This patent, assigned to Apple, relates to text-based communication devices. The proliferation of computers and compact portable devices has led to vast amounts of text-based communication. One problem with text-based communications is that there is no way to monitor and control text communications to make them user appropriate. For example, users such as children may send or receive messages (intentionally or not) with parentally objectionable language.
The present invention relates to a method of production of graphene, notably employing a stage of annealing under irradiation.Graphene is a two-dimensional crystal in the form of a sheet of carbon, in which the atoms are positioned following a regular order of hexagonal structure, the thickness of this sheet corresponding to that of a carbon atom, thus corresponding to a thickness of less than a nanometre.
A UAV is a remotely piloted or self-piloted aircraft that can carry cameras, sensors, communications equipment, or other payloads, is capable of controlled, sustained, level flight, and is usually powered by an engine. A self-piloted UAV may fly autonomously based on pre-programmed flight plans. UAVs are becoming increasingly used for various missions where manned flight vehicles are not appropriate or not feasible. These missions may include military situations, such as surveillance, reconnaissance, target acquisition, data acquisition, communications relay, decoy, harassment, or supply flights. UAVs are also used for a growing number of civilian missions where a human observer would be at risk, such as firefighting, natural disaster reconnaissance, police observation of civil disturbances or crime scenes, and scientific research. An example of the latter would be observation of weather formations or of a volcano. As miniaturization technology has improved, it is now possible to manufacture very small UAVs (sometimes referred to as micro-aerial vehicles, or MAVs).
A fuel cell system comprises a fuel cell, a reactant gas pipe for supplying a reactant gas to the fuel cell, and an injector for controlling the state of the gas on the upstream side in the reactant gas pipe and supplying the reactant gas to the downstream side by driving a valve element with an electromagnetic drive force at a predetermined drive cycle to separate the valve element from a valve seat. The injector is provided integrally in the fuel cell, and hence the vibration and noise of the injector can be absorbed and suppressed by the fuel cell as a heavy article. -- US Application Publication (Source: USPTO) Publication No. US 2010/0209797 A1 published on 19-Aug-2010
A system for deploying a cover over an oil spill, to collect the spilled oil, uses a plurality of gas propelled rockets are attached to lines arranged around the periphery of the cover. Outward projection of the rockets spreads the cover, the weight of the expended rockets then pulling the edges of the cover below the water surface to trap the covered oil.
A weather-based financial index is based at least in part on weather. The index may take into account any of a variety of weather factors, such as temperature, precipitation, humidity, number of sunny or overcast days in a period of time, number of freeze days in a period of time, etc. Weather factor value(s) are combined with one or more financial components to provide the weather-based financial index. The index may be traded on an exchange, such as the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).
A method and apparatus for testing a blowout preventer (BOP) wherein a pressurization unit applies fluid to an isolated portion of the throughbore of the BOP.
This idea is to enable the silent operating engines/vehicles to broadcast signal over a specific frequency within a short distance where a receiver can detect the signal and produce appropriate alert signals.
The Self-Sustaining Electric Engine Enhancement (SSEEE) specification modifies the process by which electric car engines consume and replenish electric power and dramatically extends the distance a car can travel before the need for pit stops to recharge the energy source, i.e., batteries, fuel cells, etc.
The present invention relates to an oil spill identification system and oil spill identification sensors to be used in connection with this system. The system is used primarily on fixed offshore structures, but may also be used on fixed onshore constructions.
http://ip.com/patent/US7009550
A shark-repelling surfboard or flotation board made of polymer foam with coating. The surfboard or the flotation board has a locator device for locating large aquatic animals, and an alarm device for alerting a rider of large aquatic animals, such as sharks, located by the locator device.
http://ip.com/patent/US7731554