If you like to surf the internet for the most-emailed and most-popular news conveniently gathered on one web page, you'll appreciate Guy Kawasaki's Alltop.

Securing Innovation, the corporate blog of IP.com, is featured  in the patents and innovation sections of Alltop, along with many other interesting blogs we follow. We're also into science, biotechnology, law and venture capital.

Some might also be into surfing, or hockey, like Guy Kawasaki, the world's most famous Hawaiian hockey player. You can follow this Guy Kawasaki on Twitter and all things Twitter on Alltop.

Whatever your areas of interest, for business or pleasure, all the top websites are on Alltop, the “online magazine rack” of popular topics. It's a whole new way to browse the best of the internet.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Gottschalk?

Gottschalk v Benson , 409 U.S. 63 (1972) was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that a process claim directed to a numerical algorithm, as such, was not patentable because "the patent would wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect would be a patent on the algorithm itself." That would be tantamount to allowing a patent on an abstract idea, contrary to precedent dating back to the middle of the Nineteenth Century. The Court added "it is said that the decision precludes a patent for any program servicing a computer. We do not so hold." The case was argued on October 16, 1972 and was decided November 20, 1972.

Following graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post. After almost two years of searching, a former classmate's father helped him get a job in Berne, at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property, the patent office, as an assistant examiner. His responsibility was evaluating patent applications for electromagnetic devices. In 1903, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office was made permanent, although he was passed over for promotion until he "fully mastered machine technology".

With friends he met in Berne, Einstein formed a weekly discussion club on science and philosophy, jokingly named "The Olympia Academy". Their readings included Poincaré, Mach, and Hume, who influenced Einstein's scientific and philosophical outlook.

During this period Einstein had almost no personal contact with the physics community. Much of his work at the patent office related to questions about transmission of electric signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time: two technical problems that show up conspicuously in the thought experiments that eventually led Einstein to his radical conclusions about the nature of light and the fundamental connection between space and time.

Source: Wikipedia on Albert Einstein

Inspiration for this post came from these leading patent law bloggers:

USPTO Implements New Program to Teach Examiners How to Read and Understand Case Law

Should the Patent Office Teach Examiners Case Law?

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

A final project for a class called "Innovation & Implementation in Complex Organizations," offered by the Hasso Platner Institute of Design at Stanford University (d.school). It's a tribute to Gordon MacKenzie's "Orbiting the Giant Hairball," a book which offers some insights on how large and complex organizations can innovate.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (3)
• Trackbacks

World Toilet Organization (WTO) is a global non- profit organization committed to improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide.

November 19th was declared 'World Toilet Day' in 2001 by 17 toilet associations around the world. Since then there has been established an annual World Toilet Summit and many other regional conferences. Each toilet association has also engaged in many activities promoting clean toilets in their own respective country. There's even a World Toilet College.

World Toilet Day has become a global platform for academics, sanitation experts, toilet designers, environmentalists etc. to share the latest on rural and urban toilets.

In other toilet news, Philip and Arnold Hennessy of Toronto were awarded a $10,000 cash prize and a coveted Manning Innovation Award for 2008. Their patented innovation, the Flapperless, Tip-Bucket Toilet is designed to reduce the water wasted in conventional toilets through flapper valve leakage.

The $10,000 award is in Canadian Dollars, so they're not all that flush.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Johnson Kong, Executive Vice President and Head of Asia Pacific for IP.com Inc., is in Korea with Tom Colson, our CEO, who addressed an international group of thought leaders gathering at PATINEX 2008.

IP.com Inc. CEO Tom Colson's presentation was on Advanced Enterprise Management and IP Strategies.

The keynote address for PATINEX 2008 was by KAIST President Nam-Pyo Suh, who spoke on the Strategy of Patent Information Usage for Finding a New Market.

After this conference, Johnson Kong and Tom Colson are continuing on to Beijing and other centers in Asia that are regular stops for executives from IP.com Inc.

Readers can follow at @ipdotcom on Twitter, where we're following other leaders in the technology space, like Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz. Here's how Jonathan Schwartz explains how Twitter helps him run Sun:

"Communication is a key part of leadership—as CEO, I need to engage the market, inside and outside Sun, with whatever technology affords me the greatest possible reach. Through blogs, online news, social networking sites, or Twitter, the Internet has fundamentally changed how we communicate with one another. Today, we have thousands of employees participating, engaging customers and developers across the world, 24 hours a day. And whether it's via a half-hour streaming video or a 140-character Tweet, we need to reach everyone in the forum and format they choose—not what we choose."

We're working on it, but it's still early days in the integration of Twitter feeds into this blog. However, if you add @ipdotcom to those you're following on Twitter now, you'll be sure to hear more about the latest innovations in intellectual property management and IP strategies. We look forward to reading your "tweets" and following you, too, just like we're following Jonathan Schwartz and Guy Kawasaki on Twitter.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Duncan Bucknell at IP Think Tank is hosting Blawg Review #185, the carnival of law blogs, a special global intellectual property edition in recognition of Inventor's Day. 

The birthday of Hedy Lamarr, 9 November, was chosen as Inventor’s Day not because she was an ‘Edison’, but because the Austrian-born Hollywood diva ‘tried to realise her idea’. And oh what an idea it was – an early form of spread spectrum communications technology – key to wireless communication, even today. For those who can’t resist, here’s her US patent - US 2,292,387.

So let’s celebrate the spark of creativity, the spirit of innovation that keeps the world of IP and the wider world beyond such an exciting and ever-evolving space.

And next time the conversation turns to gender stereotypes, and girls in science, remember Hedy Lamarr and these women inventors who showed the world they can do anything.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

As I continued thinking about the IP lifecycle, something occurred to me. Most companies put a lot of energy and money into creating and acquiring intellectual property. Not nearly as much time and effort goes into IP that is at the end of its life.

That's unfortunate since maintaining old IP costs money. It also represents a lost opportunity for one last revenue stream from an old standby. In a sense, selling IP is like the old garage sale adage "one person's junk is another's treasure." And like selling something at garage sale, you have to know you want to sell it, know how much you want to sell it for, and understand its value to someone else.

The hard part about IP divestiture is that so many constituents are involved, and there can be a lot of emotion involved. For the inventor, some of themselves is tied up in the IP. If their name is on the patent, they may not want to see another company, especially a competitor, using it. If the IP has been part of a very successful product, there may be an overinflated sense of its value.

Unlike a lot of IP decisions, the simple, gated workflow doesn't really apply. Decisions around end of life divestiture are more collaborative. They require that the constituents add their knowledge and express their views about the IP. Otherwise a true picture of the market, value, and continued internal usefulness of the IP will not emerge.

There are a number of well known techniques that can help drive this type of decision. Meetings are one way. Unfortunately, scheduling the number of constituents can be a challenge. People often don't have all the information they need when they come into the meeting leading to tabled decisions and more meetings.

Collaborative software, which allows participants to review and comment on the IP in question, is a good tool to use assuming it's secure and safe. A method of voting on IP also helps. By using standard survey methods, the attitudes of the constituents can be divined and better decisions made. Sometimes, thematic analysis of comments is needed since not all information is easily quantifiable. No matter what methods are used, typical top down decision making is not adequate.

Divestiture decisions are complex and require complex interactions between knowledgeable people. Since InnovationQ strives to be a complete IP lifecycle product, it has different collaboration and decision support features. IP.com continues to address the entirety of IP management and not just the legal aspects.

As someone who worries about how to leverage intellectual property, I see a lost opportunity. Management of the entire IP lifecycle is necessary to get the most leverage from these important assets. This includes managing the end of life.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks (1)

Defensive publishing, patents, and technology transfers are regular topics of discussion here on Securing Innovation, the corporate weblog of IP.com Inc., so we thought our readers in academia would be interested in the following press release, issued today.

(Media-Newswire.com) - Publishing academic papers is a top priority for MIT researchers, but they should also be aware of the need to protect their inventions with patents. That's where MIT's Technology Licensing Office can help.

The movement of knowledge and discoveries from MIT to the general public has had a major impact on economic development and job creation, both nationally and locally. Patent protection is critical to these activities.

At any given time, more than 1,000 MIT researchers -- faculty, postdocs, research staff and students -- are inventors on patents being filed or prosecuted through the TLO. More than half of these patents will eventually be licensed to companies for development and commercialization with the hope of impacting the "real world." The TLO grants more than 100 licenses a year, many involving a suite of patents; between 20 and 30 of these go to start-up companies.

Why patents matter

Companies' investments in "university stage" inventions are typically very risky, because neither the technical practicality nor the market potential of the technology is established. Often very substantial financial investment is needed to bring them to market -- with substantial risk that the investment will not pay off. Strong patent protection is a company's best protection from later competitors if the product is successfully brought to market.

In a global economy, worldwide patent protection is most valuable. But, except in the United States ( and a few much smaller countries ), any public disclosure before a priority patent is filed will bar filing for patent protection. Public disclosure can include written publications, Internet descriptions, poster sessions and even public talks.

Fortunately, only one priority patent need be filed in the United States before the public disclosure. This then preserves the possibility of later filing for international patents.

How to protect your invention

The TLO encourages researchers with a potential invention to submit a Technology Disclosure form -- available for download -- at the time a first rough draft is made of a potential publication, poster session, or planned talk to anything other than an all-MIT audience. The form will ask for the anticipated date of first public disclosure.

Upon receipt of the Technology Disclosure, the TLO will evaluate whether the invention appears to have commercial potential. If time allows prior to public disclosure, the TLO will also ask a member of the inventing team -- usually a postdoc or graduate student -- to meet with the TLO's search librarian to search for "prior art" ( references, including patents, that may show prior invention by others ). A patent application will be filed if no damning prior art is found and if the invention is assessed as having potential commercial applicability.

"We hope to get Technology Disclosures at least a couple of months prior to the publication, but we will never ask the researchers to delay their publication; we understand the academic priorities," said TLO Director Lita Nelsen. "If necessary, we can file a 'rush' patent application -- but more time allows better quality."

What to do if you have already published

All is not lost if you have published before filing a patent application. Unlike in most foreign countries, U.S. patent law allows filing within one year after publication. Clearly, it's better to have worldwide patent protection, but a U.S. patent will cover any products made in the United States, wherever sold; or imported to the United States, wherever made.

It is also possible that your publication was not "enabling" -- that is, did not provide sufficient detail to enable others to replicate your invention. In this circumstance, worldwide patent protection may still be available.

Readers who have experience with the technology licensing office of any academic institution are welcome to contribute to a discussion of this topic in the comments below.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Meet the companies that make up this year's list, as determined by BusinessWeek and the Boston Consulting Group. Click here to watch a slideshow presentation of the 50 most innovative companies in the world.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks (1)

BusinessWeek has an online feed of interesting videos of innovative companies, including this clip in which Abbott Laboratories CEO Miles White discusses a new drug-coated stent technology that lowers a patient's risk of arteries becoming reclogged. Full disclosure: Abbott Laboratories is a client of IP.com.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks