Securing Innovation : Business Blog of IP.com about Intellectual Property Search, Patents, Trademarks, Copyright, and Trade Secrets

Technological innovation is responsible for three-fourths of our nation’s post-World War II economic growth rate, Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office David Kappos told attendees at a Center for American Progress.

This month’s issue of the American Bar Association’s Landslide magazine includes a thought-provoking article about this topic. In the article, R. Mark Halligan points out that patents have limited lifespans, are costly to enforce, and are subject to ever-shifting legal standards of patentability. The article asks: can trade secret protection be a better choice for many inventions?

Kent Displays is expanding global distribution and developing new product features for the Boogie Board Paperless LCD Writing Tablet based on heavy demand. Kent Displays subsidiary Improv Electronics launched the Boogie Board tablet in the United States in January 2010. It is the first paperless writing tablet to utilize a pressure-sensitive, Reflex™ LCD from Kent Displays for its writing surface.

Keith Bergelt, CEO of the Open Invention Network (OIN), in a guest post on CNBC "Trendspotting in 2010 and Beyond: The Future of IP in a Linux-Enabled World" listed 10 trends in IP for 2010, including this prognosis for the rise of defensive publishing. "Reduced emphasis on patents as the sole means of codifying intellectual capital and emergence of defensive publications as an efficacious and cost effective IP rights tool. Operating companies and open source begin to converge around the notion that only truly significant inventions should be patented with supporting ideas and incremental advances more properly made the subject of defensive publications."

The Library of Congress and other preservation-minded organizations ponder how we preserve what we're creating. In an article in Salon, Dan Gillmor reports that this week in Washington, DC, the Library of Congress is gathering its "Digital Preservation Partners" for a three-day session -- one of a number of such meetings the library has been holding under a broad initiative called the "National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program."

Click on the link above to see this week's selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet, compiled by Think IP Strategy.

Joe Mullin on The Prior Art blog writes, "It’s not a stretch to say that many members of the patent bar were relieved when the U.S. Supreme Court finally issued its decision in Bilski v. Kappos late last month. Considering that plenty of those lawyers—and the clients they represent—feared an opinion that would severely restrict what kind of technology is worthy of patent protection. As it turns out, those fears were misplaced. Click on the headline above to read the article.

The 100-year-old organization--it celebrated its centenary on Feb 8 of this year--has teamed up with the Lemelson-MIT Program, founded by the father of modern invention in America, Jerome H. Lemelson, to provide a new merit badge: that of invention.

Facing enemy gunshots, which would you choose: the old stand-by Kevlar vest, or a new “liquid” suit? Ongoing research at BAE Systems suggests you might be wise to pick the latter. Recent tests, BAE researchers suggest, hint that a combination of liquid and Kevlar layers might stop bullets more quickly and keep them from going as deep. Click on the link above to read all about it at Discover magazine's Discoblog.

On 06/28/10, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Bilski v. Kappos, a case about what subject matter (including software and business method patents) is eligible for patent protection under US law. Unfortunately, the Supremes blew it. Here's why, according to patent attorney Erik J. Heels. Click on the link above to read this great blog post.

Here are some examples of interesting company names and the backstories behind them. Click on the blue headline link above to find out more about these company names: Google, Hotmail, Volkswagen, Yahoo, Asus, Cisco, Canon, Coca-Cola, FranklinCovey, IKEA, Lego, Reebok, Sharp, Skype, Six Apart, Verizon.

Last month, at the the World Innovation Forum, Stone argued that Twitter is "not a social network," though many people view it as one. "That's been a myth since the beginning," he explained. "We're much more like an information network or a source of news." With 24 billion search queries a month, perhaps Twitter and Stone are onto something.

"Say what you will about the importance of computers, fax machines, printers and cell phones to do business but one of the most valuable tools is particularly low-tech: the whiteboard," writes Mark Evans in the Globe and Mail, Report on Business.

While oil companies have spent billions of dollars to drill deeper and farther out to sea, relatively little money and research have gone into finding new, improved ways to respond to oil spills in deepsea conditions like those in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts say the massive Gulf spill has exposed a failure by the industry and the federal government to commit adequate resources to oil cleanup and response technology.

Seventy days hasn't been enough for BP to find a way to stop the oil spewing into the Gulf, but in today's world, it's plenty of time to create a game based on the disaster. Super Boise, an independent game development company, has just released "Crisis in the Gulf" for the Xbox 360.