Therein lies the problem for the intellectual property side of the house. We want IP to be unique, innovative, and special. In fact, we want it to be so special that it would not have been obvious to other people reasonably well versed in whatever industry or technology that we are dealing with. For FDA approval to go smoothly, you have to declare that the product is, in many ways, like other products. For the patent filing process to go smoothly, you have to show that the product is, in most ways, unlike any other product. If you are a patent examiner trying hard not to award a patent to something obvious, you might think to look at the regulatory filings related to the same drug that a company is trying to patent. If the company expresses the view that it conventional, you can easily read obvious.

This sounds very much like a Publication Clearance problem. Typically, with a Publication Clearance process, a company tries to insure that nothing contained in a technical or scientific publication will jeopardize intellectual property rights. The Regulatory – IP conflict is very much the same. Companies need to insure that what is written in a published document, in this case an FDA filing, does not inhibit the ability to gain patent protection later. A well thought out Publication Clearance system, modified for the particular workflow of regulatory filings, should help to provide this level of oversight. Like all publications, the document has to go out on time but needs to be reviewed to insure that it is correct in many ways.

So, why continue to risk patent approvals because of the wording of an FDA document? An easy solution exists by way of the same process necessary to release other publications.

Q: What is happening in the area of patent pools? Are these becoming more popular and, if so, in which industries?

A: In a patent pool, firms blend their patents with those of other firms. These pools allow users to access a number of firms' patents simultaneously, thereby avoiding the "patent thicket." In many cases, the pooling agreements also specify the pricing schedule in the agreement that establishes the pool, assuring that no party attempts to extract very high fees or to increase its fees after users are locked in.

Patent pools date back as far as the 1850s but have proliferated in recent years. Goods covered by patent pools totaled at least $100 billion in the United States in 2000, while multiple standard-setting bodies today cover virtually every high-technology product. Moreover, the scope of these activities is likely to grow in future years. In many industries, leaders have expressed frustration about the proliferation of patent thickets—the large number of overlapping awards—and the ensuing rise of costly and time-consuming litigation. In many cases, technology sharing has been proposed as a remedy.

And the scope of industries considering adopted patent pools has also grown. While the patent pools have been well established in basic manufacturing and electronic industries for decades, they have been seen as a potential solution for increasingly prevalent patent licensing issues elsewhere, such in new biotechnology-related fields. For instance, a great deal of interest has surrounded proposals to use patent pools to address the multiplicity of rights that are slowing research in critical diseases such as AIDS and breast cancer.

Patent pools are only one way in which firms share their technology with each other. The rapid growth of open source software over the course of this decade has been highlighted in numerous press accounts. The multibillion dollar initial public offerings of Red Hat and VA Linux, IBM's embrace of open source and its investment of billions of dollars into these projects, and the recent (though qualified) embrace of Linux by Microsoft, formerly a bitter opponent: all these events have been extensively documented. What is much less well appreciated, however, is that open source is only the tip of the iceberg of the technology sharing that is reshaping high-technology industries. Patent pools, standard-setting organizations, and technology licensing efforts are having a profound effect on how firms seek to exploit new discoveries.

This Q&A is especially topical this week  when, that very same day the interview was published, it was announced that Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel Corporation, Samsung Electronics and Sprint have formed the Open Patent Alliance (OPA) to advance a competitive and open intellectual property rights model stimulating a larger WiMAX industry that supports innovation through broader choice and lower equipment and service costs for WiMAX technology, devices and applications globally.

Both the question and the statements are pretty ugly and, even worse, ignorant. Two myths should immediately be dispelled about what is happening in Asia. First, there is a lot more going on in Asia than manufacturing. Second, they care very much about IP, and not just their own.

Myth 1: Asia only makes things for other people.
Ignoring for the moment that Asia is a big, diverse, place that simply can't be painted with the same brush, there is wholesale change going on in China, Taiwan, Singapore, and India. It is true that these countries have a vast, low cost manufacturing base. It is also true that they do tremendous business in contract manufacturing and low-cost services. However, it is no longer the case that this is all they do. Just look at companies like HTC, whose smart phone may give the Apple iPhone a run for the money. Another example is Lenovo, a major producer of laptops computers. Check out Huawei, a huge telecommunications equipment manufacturer just now making inroads in North America. All of these companies are in the business of creating their own innovative products. That means innovation and intellectual property.

Myth 2: They steal IP! They don't want to protect my IP or even their own.
Piracy happens throughout the world but that doesn't make everyone a thief. For example, The Pirate Bay, a bit torrent aggregator, known for their disdain of US intellectual property laws, are in Sweden. Yet, no one would accuse the Swedes of being IP thieves. In fact, people in Asia have the same issues, worries, and goals for intellectual property as the rest of the world. It's only that the people in China, Taiwan, and India came into the game a bit later. Many of legal protections, available in the US or EU are also available in Asia. Some are even better than what we have in the US. They are also investing in infrastructure for managing IP. Companies in Asia are keenly aware that they can't misappropriate other people's IP and expect other countries to protect theirs. That is no different than it is in the US or EU. So, no. Businesses in Asia are just as worried about IP and are as much spending time and money to protect it as anyone else in the world.

All in all, Asia is an exciting environment full companies that are creating really interesting products. Though nascent, Asia is on the road to becoming a technology powerhouse just like the US and EU.

...at some point, a company needs to ask how many patents it really needs. And, that's exactly what we did about three years ago. Up to that time Sun was filing well over 1,000 patent applications per year. But, in 2005, we made the decision to reduce our patent filings to the point that we had about 700 patents issued last year. And this number may decline in the future. While this is still a sizable number for most companies, it is a significant decline for Sun and occurs during a period in which we have more innovation than at any point in Sun's history.

Why the change? Part of the reason is financial. On average, it costs more than $20,000 to obtain a U.S. patent and this figure grows significantly when you file around the world. Also, this amount does not include annual annuities required to keep a patent in effect. Being selective in what you patent can result in significant savings. However, the bigger reason for the change is that our focus has shifted from quantity to quality. To this end, we have completely re-architected the manner in which we determine the innovations we will patent. As part of this process, inventions are reviewed by a panel of the chief technology officers from across our different lines of businesses with input from distinguished engineers and other experienced innovators. We apply a significant amount of scrutiny to determine whether something is truly innovative before we submit it to the PTO. For us, it doesn't make sense to patent everything. Rather, our focus is on patents that represent significant technological innovation.

Makes a lot of sense. Companies that file applications for several hundred patents every year have to consider carefully which of many thousands of inventions by their employees are worth making a patent application for, and which innovations should be protected with a different strategy. Managing the intellectual property review process, especially in large companies with experienced innovators in many locations around the world, is critically important and sometimes challenging to control.

In many cases, companies rely on ad hoc, human driven processes for safeguarding ideas and making decisions about them. Subsequently, a lot of innovative ideas lie fallow or are lost. Since human processes are error prone, a lot of mistakes get made. This represents a significant risk for companies today. That's why many of our larger clients are employing the newest technologies from IP.com to help them organize their processes for intellectual property review in a secure environment customized for their special needs.

InnovationQ helps protect intellectual property by securing and authenticating it. Powerful tracking and reporting capabilities enable managers to see every event associated with an intellectual property asset, helping to detect synergies in their organization and guard against misuse.

The InnovationQ workflow engine also allows companies to automate intellectual property processes in an easy to use, yet deliberate fashion that helps to ensure error-free compliance.

If your company manages a lot of intellectual property, you might find interesting the white paper "Best Practices for Successful Innovation Management" that is available to download free here from our website. And if you'd like to talk confidentially about your special requirements, by all means give us a call and let's see if we can help you.

With increased pressure from the West and the World Trade Organization, China has instituted a number of reforms to its patent system. Much like the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”), China has a centralized intellectual property office, known as the State Intellectual Property Office ("SIPO"), which processes patent applications, grants patents, and enforces patents in China. At first blush, the patent system and SIPO seem to be modern and in tune with the concepts and protections found in Western patent systems. Unfortunately, the actual functioning of the patent system in China is far different from its official representation of performance.

The article goes on to make a comparison with the United States patent process. The author concludes, "No protection is foolproof. However, understanding the limitations and risks involved when producing products or components in China can help a company understand the costs of doing business in China and limit its exposure to the loss of patent rights."

IP.com Inc. is providing technologies to companies and organizations to help secure their inventions and innovations in China, where the company's Executive Vice President,  Asia Pacific, Johnson Kong, is now meeting with clients in Hong Kong. Here on our company blog, Johnson will be discussing the special needs of businesses and companies securing innovation in Asia.

Tom Petrocelli, Senior Vice President for Enterprise Software at IP.com Inc., is also travelling on business in Asia. While he writes on this blog about company business, he's also writing a personal blog Tom's Technology Take, where he reports in this weekend from Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Speaking of language translation, we note this recent announcement:

The State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) has launched a free online machine translation service for patent information searchers. The Chinese-to-English translation engine, launched on 25 April 2008, was developed by SIPO and the China Patent Information Center (CPIC). The service supports Chinese patent documents and utility models and allows English language searching for bibliographic data and abstracts of published Chinese patent documents. The machine-translation engine is now open to the public for testing.

In addition, SIPO's Intellectual Property Publishing House (IPPH) has launched an English version of their "China Intellectual Property Net" (CNIPR) website, which includes a new search tool, "C-Pat Search" and offers the possibility for a machine translation.

In the weeks and months ahead, our clients and friends will be able to read more about the business of IP.com Inc. in Asia, and we'll even be blogging in Chinese languages some of our executives are fluent in -- more fluent in Chinese than in blogging, perhaps, so bear with us while we get this blog up to speed for our readers in Asia.

We urge our readers around the world to give generously to the victims of the recent earthquake disaster. Here's an excellent China Earthquake Donation Guide, recommended by our friends at the China Law Blog.

IP.com Inc. will be represented at two of those upcoming conferences:

May 28-30, 2008 - PharmaBiotech IP Summit (Worldwide Business Research) - Philadelphia, PA

June 17-20, 2008 - BIO International Convention (Biotechnology Industry Organization) - San Diego, CA

In addition to introducing InnovationQ to many prospective clients like these, hopefully, we'll get a chance during these conferences to meet with outstanding bloggers like  the Patent Docs and get together over coffee with the Patent Baristas. If you're going to be attending one of these upcoming conferences and would like to meet up while we're there, contact us and we'll set something up.

The problem is that the project includes only "patents" and not the undisclosed innovations and trade secrets within the intellectual property of companies and independent inventors that have not yet been patented. Many of those inventions might better be published now to promote the progress of science and the useful arts for a sustainable environment and ecology for the future.

To compensate for these drawbacks and make the Eco-Patent Commons as useful and powerful as it can be, the initiative requires expansion to offer truly recent inventions that have not spent years in the patent application process. This involves widening the scope of the initiative to include non-patented inventions that have yet to be marketed and made public.

One way to make these inventions available is through enabled invention disclosures. An enabled invention disclosure (also called “defensive publication” or “technical bulletin”) is a written description of an invention that ideally has the same degree of detail as an issued patent. Therefore a well-written invention disclosure provides sufficient information to the reader to understand and use the invention.

Many companies successfully use enabled invention disclosures as part of their intellectual property (IP) strategies. Companies frequently have inventions that they do not wish to patent because the patent process is so expensive, including invention development costs, legal preparation and patent prosecution fees. However, companies also wish to prevent competitors from patenting those same inventions.

By using enabled invention disclosures to publish the invention, companies accomplish both goals: they save the cost of patenting but they also establish a “prior art bar” to obtaining the patent and make it impossible for competitors to claim it the invention as their own. Several Web site forums exist for publishing inventions, including www.ip.com and www.researchdisclosure.com.

The Eco-Patent Commons should be expanded to include these enabled invention disclosures. Many inventions that companies deem non-strategic for patent application and instead decide to publish may be excellent candidates to be donated to the Eco-Patent Commons. These published inventions would be truly new, fresh and useful -- a good first step to creating the true springboard for green innovation that the Eco-Patent Commons was meant to be.

We couldn't agree more.

As indicated in our original post about the Eco-Patent Commons, IP.com would really like to contribute to this very worthwhile initiative by providing the publishing platform to broaden the scope of the project to include innovations and inventions useful to the environmental movement well beyond those patents that have been contributed by the project's founding companies, some of which are already using the IP.com Prior Art Database. We've got technologies available that could very quickly take this green initiative to a whole new level of global participation.

Let's discuss.

World Health Day, on 7 April, marks the founding of the World Health Organization and is an opportunity to draw worldwide attention to a subject of major importance to global health each year. In 2008, World Health Day focuses on the need to protect health from the adverse effects of climate change.

The theme “protecting health from climate change” puts health at the centre of the global dialogue about climate change. WHO selected this theme in recognition that climate change is posing ever growing threats to global public health security.

Through increased collaboration, the global community will be better prepared to cope with climate-related health challenges worldwide. Examples of such collaborative actions are: strengthening surveillance and control of infectious diseases, ensuring safer use of diminishing water supplies, and coordinating health action in emergencies.

Today, on our blog, we'd like to draw attention to a new invention by Dean Kamen that is a very promising innovation to provide safe drinking water in areas of the world that are experiencing drought as a result of climate change.

One person in six lives without regular access to safe drinking water, and more than twice as many lack access to adequate sanitation, according to the United Nations. Water-related diseases kill a child every eight seconds, and are responsible for 80 percent of all easily preventable illnesses and deaths in the developing world. These alarming statistics have not escaped Dean Kamen's attention.

The entrepreneur and quixotic inventor best known for the heavily hyped (and somewhat disappointing) Segway scooter has been working on what he promises will be a revolutionary new water purifier. Dubbed the Slingshot, Kamen's washing machine-sized device produces 10 gallons of clean water an hour on 500 watts of electricity. It uses heat to distill water—boil it, condense it and recycle the energy. The heat that it uses is captured from a new type of generator that, you guessed it, he's also invented. NEWSWEEK's Brian Braiker spoke with Kamen about his mission to bring light and water to the world's poorest.

Click here to read excerpts of the NEWSWEEK interview.

Dean Kamen's water purifier was recognized as a "runner up" among the Coolest Inventions of 2003 selected by Time Magazine. Dean Kamen, founder of DEKA, has registered a number of patents for this invention and others.

If you'd like to see a video of Dean Kamen's Miracle Water Distiller,code-named Slingshot,  check out this video clip from Kamen's appearance on The Colbert Report.

If you bring up the subject of "IP in publications" most companies will sincerely tell you that they are worried about it. Yet despite that, examining publications for IP is not always part of the normal publication review process. On the flip side are the companies that are paranoid about IP in publications. For many, the knee jerk reaction is "publish nothing!" This doesn't work for long since publications are a major part of corporate communications. Are you going to tell scientists that they can't publish a scientific paper? They won't work for you. Just try and shut up an engineer with a good idea for an article. You'll only infuriate him. Marketing has to publish white papers and sales literature so you can't stop them from producing publications. 

The simple solution is a publication clearance process, implemented as a workflow. The process of Publication Clearance pushes the document in front of everyone who should see it including legal counsel, patent counsel, technical and marketing. Publication clearance within InnovationQ also protects the document as intellectual property. It is subjected to the same LegalSafeguarding process as documents in the Trade Secret Management modules. We can even build hooks into docketing or our Trade Secret Management modules to help better identify IP contained in publications before it is too late.

Adopting a publication clearance process is a good first step toward protecting important intellectual property. Having tools to automate this process makes it much easier to live with.

A copyright is quite simply the definitive legal form of protection for your intellectual property rights in any work of authorship. The following is an excerpt from the Library of Congress copyright website:

“Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:

• To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;
• To prepare derivative works based upon the work;
• To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
• To perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works;
• To display the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and
• In the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright. These rights, however, are not unlimited in scope. Sections 107 through 121 of the 1976 Copyright Act establish limitations on these rights.”

It is important to note that formal US copyright registration is not required for copyright protection. Copyright protection begins the moment the author fixes the work in a tangible medium of expression. The above rights exist for owners whether they have filed a formal registration or not. All one has to do is prove what they wrote and when they wrote it.

To better understand copyright, you might want to read our posts on the subject of copyright:

How To Copyrght
When To Copyright
Myths Surrounding Copyrights
How IP.com Supports Copyrights

Or, better still, go to The Patry Copyright Blog for the latest, in depth, coverage of copyright law and policy. William Patry is the Senior Copyright Counsel, Google Inc. Formerly copyright counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, formerly Policy Planning Advisor to the Register of Copyrights, formerly Law Professor, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; author of numerous treatises and articles (including one on fair use with Judge Richard Posner), and the new 7 volume treatise on "Patry on Copyright" --  kept current by the Patry Treatise Blog, which supplements Bill Patry's magnum opus on copyright.

“The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright… There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration.

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is "created" when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. "Copies" are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, such as books, manuscripts, sheet music, film, videotape, or microfilm. "Phonorecords" are material objects embodying fixations of sounds (excluding, by statutory definition, motion picture soundtracks), such as cassette tapes, CDs, or LPs. Thus, for example, a song (the "work") can be fixed in sheet music ("copies") or in phonograph disks ("phonorecords"), or both.

If a work is prepared over a period of time, the part of the work that is fixed on a particular date constitutes the created work as of that date.”

A formal copyright registration is made with the Library of Congress. In order to register your work you will need to send a properly completed application form, a nonrefundable filing fee of $30 for each application, and a non-returnable deposit of the work being registered. For more information and specific details on how to file a formal registration you should consult your attorney and/or go to the Library of Congress copyright website at www.copyright.gov

• Inertia, it takes time and money;
• Work is dynamic, so the question becomes “when is it done and ‘ready’ to be registered” (i.e. it’s in final form and won’t be changed);
• If you create a great deal of written or artistic work it may be cost prohibitive to simply adopt a strategy of registering all of your work. Like any business, you have to make cost/benefit decisions about when to register; and
• Not sure it yields sufficient value beyond normal copyright protection. The section “Ideas on protection strategies” may offer some thoughts as to when you should register your work and more importantly how you can protect your work prior to a formal registration. However, nothing can replace the advice and counsel of your attorney who can review your specific situation and guide you accordingly. Some general guidelines to consider:
• When in doubt, seek the advice of counsel;
• When your work is final and is going to be published, register;
• When your work is going to be disseminated to a large number of people or venues, register;
• If you need to file a lawsuit, register your work (it’s a requirement at this point); and
• Consult your attorney with any questions or to seek advice.

The real question when it comes to copyrights is whether you can prove what you wrote and when you wrote it. The fact is, if you can prove what you wrote and when you wrote it you have copyright protection.

Of course, this is false. Every work is immediately copyright protected at the moment that it is put into a tangible medium of expression. With a few exceptions spelled ou previously in this booklet (which may or may not have value to you), your rights to your work are the same whether you register or not.

2) If you don’t have sufficient cash to enter a lawsuit against an infringer, a copyright registration will guarantee that your fees will be paid by the opposition and that you therefore won’t have to “front” the money for a suit (i.e. you will be able to find an attorney who will take the case on contingency…betting to get paid when/if you win).

Good luck. The simple facts are that few if any attorneys are going to take your case on contingency. The result – whether you registered your copyright or not, you will need to finance any lawsuits you file against infringers. This can be an expensive proposition and is unaffected by registration. And, if you think you are protected by the statutory damages provision of the copyright laws, read the next myth in our list. Finally, and most important, you are always eligible for “actual” damages. If someone has profited from your work or you have been damaged by their infringement of your work you are eligible for actual damages with or without formal copyright registration (of course, you still have to win your case).

3) In the event of a lawsuit, you will get statutory damages and legal fees if you have a copyright registration on file with the Library of Congress.

Not so fast. This is perhaps the most widespread and misunderstood myth of the lot. The fact is that a registered copyright will not guarantee that you get either of these statutory awards. Registration makes you eligible for these items, it does not guarantee you will get them (i.e. buying a lottery ticket makes you eligible to win the lottery, it does not guarantee you will win). In order to collect, three things must occur (assuming one prerequisite – that you actually go to court through a final verdict and do not settle out of court). First, you have to win the case. Second, the judge has to decide in your favor to award statutory damages or statutory fees (independent of each other). Third, the judge has to set the amount of any award. Many believe that if the first two occur then you will have your attorney fees paid for…again, not so fast. The amount of the award is purely up to the judge and is not based on actual fees you might have paid. The judge could award you statutory legal fees of one dollar. A moral victory maybe, but not a financial one. Before you make an investment in a lawsuit betting on either of these items you might want to check the frequency with which they are awarded (and the average amounts when they are awarded).

4) If you didn’t file for copyright registration before you were infringed you won’t be able file suit or otherwise defend your copyrights.

False. You can register your copyright at any time and you can bring suit against infringers whether you registered before or after the infringement occurred. Remember, protection is effective as soon as you have put your work in a tangible medium. That said, you are required to register your work before you file a federal suit, but that does not change your rights other than as noted earlier in this booklet. If you file before the infringement occurs (or within three months of publication of your work) you will be entitled to all rights of registration (including eligibility but not a guarantee of statutory damages and fees). You can still register the work after the infringement occurs and before you file suit. And, in either case you’re always eligible for actual damages.

5) A copyright registration will allow me to get both statutory and actual damages.

Not likely. In the event that you win your suit, you should expect to get actual damages and fees or statutory damages and fees but not both. If your work was truly valuable, the actual amounts may well be in excess of anything you could have hoped for from the statutory awards. Thinking about it logically, if you haven’t been damaged or no one profited from your work, what could you expect in terms of an award of either actual or statutory damages. Common sense tells us that even if you are eligible for statutory damages, since the award amount is in the sole discretion of the court, you still have to prove actual damages before getting a meaningful award. A court simply is not going to give you something for nothing. Either way, actual damages must be proven.

Email has had a major impact on business. It's all but eliminated the need to send letters and memos on paper. The ability to have quick, on-line conversations has made e-mail (and it's kin, instant messaging and texting) the model for modern communications. For teams trying to produce something creative, however, it falls short. The issue with e-mail is that it is totally free form, both in terms of information and user action. With e-mail, you can't produce predictable results. You don't know how the information will be organized or even what information you might get. While the ability to write anything has its strengths, e-mail systems usually need to be coupled with databases and other structured information systems to be useful for managing innovation. The unstructured nature of e-mail also makes tracking difficult. From an IP perspective, this means no inherent way to protect prior art.

The failure of email to support innovative processes and protect IP is part of the reason that IP.com has developed collaboration features in InnovationQ. The Consultation feature available in the InnovationQ workflow engine is a form of structured collaboration. Rather than take interactions offline to e-mail, we have introduced a method of interacting  that mimics the freeform nature of e-mail. At the same time, users can tap into the the structure of a workflow and the structured documents attached to the workflow.

This is only the first step. The next version of InnovationQ will have a new Collaborative Innovation module that provides for group interactions within a structured environment. While maintaining the free flow of ideas, InnovationQ will allow those ideas to be tracked and preserved as IP. Just as important, it will encourage users to drive toward a goal rather than flail about in e-mail.

E-mail is great. Without it, most of us couldn't function. It has its limitations though, especially in the innovation process. We need to recognize these limitations and use tools better suited to our purpose. InnovationQ is about innovation. It's the tool to use when you want to accomplish something creative and protect it at the same time.

This lab-on-a-chip technology may enable rapid detection of cancer and infectious diseases at a fraction of the cost of current tests.

Research conducted with Landers’ lab-on-a-chip prototype (published in December 2006 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science) demonstrated its effectiveness in detecting bacteria-based infections in mice and humans within only 30 minutes, reducing the analysis time by almost two orders of magnitude.

"With the microchip MGA technology, it presents the possibility of obtaining a sample from a patient and, in the time it takes them to grab a cup of java at a nearby cafeteria, carry out the molecular test, then immediately talk about the test result, the implications and, if necessary, the treatment," Landers said.

Landers credited graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in his lab with providing the "brute-force effort and much of the creativity" in developing the technology; particularly Chris Easley, James Karlinsey, Joan Bienvenue and Lindsay Legendre.

New data that Landers presented at LabAutomation2008 from post-doctoral fellow Legendre shows the potential for cutting the diagnostic time for a T-cell lymphoma test from two weeks down to less than an hour. Landers' group is now working to fine-tune the processes on the chip and their effectiveness, but the use of this lab-on-a-chip technology for diagnostics may not be far off.

Another way to recognize college students for innovation is to enter their invention in the Collegiate Inventors Competition before the May 16, 2008 deadline for entries.

Introduced in 1990, the Collegiate Inventors Competition has rewarded and encouraged hundreds of students to share their inventive ideas with the world. The Competition promotes exploration in invention, science, engineering, technology, and other creative endeavors and provides a window on the technologies from which society will benefit in the future.

The Collegiate Inventors Competition is operated by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation  and is sponsored by the Abbott Fund and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. 

That's a perceptive observation pulled from the comments to a great article "Innovation and the University-Industry Interface" republished on Xconomy, which begins with this thought:

The buzzword of the 1980s and ’90s was “entrepreneurship.” This decade, the obsession is with “innovation” as the presumed path to riches for people and nations. Since the key generators of innovation are research universities and the key implementers of innovation are companies, there is an ever-increasing focus on making the university and industry interface more effective. But will the twain meet? It could be very difficult.

I thought the article was well worth reading again and, as I'm preparing to head off  to "Changing Horizons", the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), the following quote from the article caught my attention:

Academic institutions have huge reputations and visibility, but a very small or dedicated core staff. For instance, MIT is huge in reach, breadth, impact, and reputation. Yet its core faculty has hovered around 900 since 1950. Contrast this with IBM at some 350,000 employees.

IP.com works with major companies, helping businesses manage innovation, and recently we've been talking with technology managers at universities about leveraging our innovation management applications and technologies to create a customized interface between academia and big business. As noted in the New York Times:

The obsession with marrying research and markets, while generally a strength of American capitalism, leaves some needs unmet. To fill them, “companies need boots on the ground at universities,” says Henry Chesbrough, a business professor who studies innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.

We're really looking forward to meeting with the intellectual property professionals at  AUTM, a nonprofit professional association with membership of more than 3,600 intellectual property managers and business executives from 45 countries.  This looks like an especially interesting part of the conference program:

Innovation Showcases: academic and government technology transfer offices, along with university-based startup companies, present the latest and greatest technologies in life sciences and physical sciences to affiliate members in these rapid-fire, business-oriented sessions. The Showcase will be followed by AUTM's new "Getting Down to Business" Social Hour, a reception for academics, company representatives, investors and other service providers an opportunity to get to know each other in a relaxed social setting.

Who knows what new technology developed at universities will be showcased? I wonder if there will be anyone from the University of Michigan to talk about the new Hercules laser announced this week. Wow!

If you're planning on attending the annual meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers in San Diego from February 28th to March 1st and would like to get together and chat about what we can do to bridge the technology transfer gap between universities and corporations, please give me a call or email and we'll set something up. Perhaps we can connect you with the people at our corporate clients that share the vision for an innovative university-industry interface.

In the business of intellectual property (IP) protection, the first rule is to establish the date on which a new idea was conceived. Conventional wisdom for establishing this date is to write up a short IP disclosure, seal it in an envelope, and mail it to yourself. The US Postal Service postmark legally establishes the date on which the IP within the envelope was created.

Conventional wisdom, or urban myth?

In an article headlined "Who's Idea Is This Anyway?" published several years ago, BusinessWeek discussed with intellectual property attorneys Nadine Jacobson and Allison Strickland the pitfalls of protecting ideas:

Q: How do entrepreneurs get into trouble with copyright, patent, or trademark issues?

Strickland: I think for one thing, they listen to the urban myths that circulate. There's one that says if you write out an idea and put it in an envelope and mail it to yourself, it's copyrighted, and anyone else who uses it is infringing. That's widely believed.

Another one says that as long as you don't take more than 25% or 30% of someone else's work, you're not infringing. But neither of those things is necessarily true.

The problem is that IP concepts are confusing and somewhat sophisticated. It's a very confusing part of the law and easy to misunderstand. The safest thing for entrepreneurs to do is to step back from what they think they know and consult reliable sources to get a reality check.

Jacobson: A lot of times, people who are starting up new businesses are concerned about keeping costs down, and they don't want to hire lawyers. So they go to a family friend or a corporate lawyer who dabbles in IP and get free advice, but it's not exactly accurate.

The blogging engineer is confused now, apparently applying an urban myth about establishing the earliest date of composition of song lyrics in which an aspiring songwriter claims copyright, and confusing that with defensive publication of a technical disclosure of a potentially patentable invention.

Patents are incredibly useful tools in that they give the inventor the right to exclude others from making, using or selling the patented invention. However, this exclusive right must be enforced. If someone is using an invention for which you have a patent, you can sue for infringement to reclaim damages, as well as force the offending party to stop. Unless you initiate the infringement proceedings (or the threat of infringement proceedings), there is nothing to make the offending party stop using your innovation. In essence, patents only have power if you are willing to stand up in court to defend them.

The problem is that obtaining patents is not a trivial process. Legal fees, filing fees, maintenance fees, and lost time by your R&D staff can be quite costly. Spending this kind of money on a powerful innovation that can return hundreds or thousands of times the investment is clearly worth it. Yet, only a small portion of the items from a typical invention review qualify as such. More often, the majority of ideas that result from an invention review are good ideas that, for one reason or another, do not end up patented.

Why?

Typically, there are a number of inventions on which you may already have partial patent protection. Inventions that improve upon an existing patented invention are good examples. Another reason you may not wish to obtain patent protection on a good idea is that you don't expect to ever gain back the money that would be spent pursuing the patent. This is highly typical for inventions that improve the operation of some aspect of your business, but are not part of your general business strategy. (A computer chip manufacturer that finds a better way of packaging would be a good example. Packaging sales are not part of the core business, and most likely patents in this area would never be pursued.)

So what happens to the innovation I don't patent?

Typically, nothing. You are free to use your invention without a patent ... until someone else patents the idea. That's when the problem occurs. At this point, they could force you into paying licensing fees, or to stop using the innovation altogether. In essence, forcing you to stop using an idea you had first, but never patented.

If I had the idea first, doesn't that give me the right to use it?

Unfortunately, having the idea first doesn't do anything for you. The only way to prevent another patent from issuing, or defeating one that has already issued, is by being able to prove not only that the idea already existed, but that it was available to the public as well. This is where technical disclosure comes in. Innovation you do not patent is at risk of being patented by others. Publishing that innovation establishes a clear trail of evidence that you had this idea, and made it available to the public. Therefore, it should be considered "general knowledge" by the patent examiners, and not be allowed to be patented. In effect, allowing you to retain your right to use your own innovation, without the hassle and expense of obtaining patent protection.

Mailing yourself a written record of an idea does not prove that the idea was available to the public. To establish that an idea was available to the public as of a date certain that can be accepted as evidence by a court of competent jurisdiction, an inventor can defensively publish a technical disclosure of the invention in the Prior Art Database, which is accessible by patent examiners at the USPTO and other patent jurisdictions.

Given the compelling reasons for publishing your technical disclosures, it's not a question of whether to publish, but rather a question of where to publish. IP.com's online publishing services are the fastest, easiest, and most cost-effective way to release your innovation to the public. However, many people are skeptical of the validity of electronic publications and their status in the courts.

What is the opinion of the USPTO regarding electronic documents?

A white paper by the United States Patent and Trademark Office states that "An electronic publication, including an on-line database or Internet publication, is considered to be a "printed publication" within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. 102(a) and (b), provided the publication was accessible to persons concerned with the art to which the document relates."

Does IP.com have an independent legal opinion of the service?

The legal opinion on IP.com's publication process by McDermott, Will & Emery states that "Based on the above analysis, it is our opinion that invention disclosures made available on IP.com's website can be authenticated, satisfy the hearsay rule or the business records exception, and satisfy the requirement of an original in a patent infringement action in federal district court in connection with an assertion of invalidity under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and/or 103." (read the entire document - 70Kb PDF)

What steps does IP.com take to ensure document longevity?

In addition to the online maintenance of disclosures, IP.com publishes a monthly printed (i.e. paper-based ' non-electronic) publication, The IP.com Journal, which is available to libraries worldwide. The presence of The IP.com Journal in libraries means that not only do you not need to fear the "electronic-only" publication, but it provides publicly accessible archive copies in the instance the IP.com database becomes unavailable online.

With the launch of the Eco-Patent Commons earlier this week, four companies -- IBM, Nokia, Pitney-Bowes and Sony -- joined with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development to do something almost unprecedented: they agreed to relinquish their control over inventions that could benefit the planet in order to spur innovation for the greater good.

Thus begins the transcript of a very interesting podcast interview with IBM's Vice President of Environmental Affairs, Wayne Balta, on GreenBiz Radio.

Wayne Balta: The Eco-Patent Commons is a first of its kind initiative under which we at IBM and some other like-minded companies are partnering with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to create a place where patents related to the environment can be pledged by the patent holder so that others around the world can access them and use them free of charge.

The basic premise here is that in the environmental arena, sharing knowledge and technology has the great potential to better address the world's problems. That there exists no organized way today to do this on a global basis. That leading businesses may hold patents that are not an essential source of business income to them. And that by sharing them with others on a global basis, both developed and developing countries, it can help people develop in a more sustainable way. And for those who pledge the patents it might also need to lead to new opportunities for innovation and collaboration with others, whom you might not otherwise reach.

...you know, pledging patents for free use by others is not necessarily a common way companies think about their portfolio of intellectual property and we at IBM recognize that. Now, we at IBM probably have as much or more experience as anyone with this because we have also done prior patent pledges. So we recognize that as we've spoken to others about the idea that it isn't something that you're innately thinking of doing. But as people think through the best use of some of this IP and the opportunities that could come out of a commons like the one we're creating, many have realized and others I believe will realize that it can be a win-win situation.

It can be a win for innovators in other parts of the world, who might look at these ideas and further them and use them as the basis of additional solutions. And it can be a win for those who pledge because it could open up opportunities to collaborate with people that you might not otherwise have collaborated with.

In a joint press release, other member companies of the Eco-Patent Commons today issued the following statements:

Donal O’Connell, Director of Intellectual Property, Nokia, said, “Environmental issues have great potential to help us discover the next wave of innovation because they force us all to think differently about how we make, consume and recycle products. From Nokia we have pledged a patent designed to help companies safely re-use old mobile phones by transforming them into new products like digital cameras, data monitoring devices or other electronic items. Recycling the computing power of mobile phones in this way could significantly increase the reuse of materials in the electronics industry.”

Angelo Chaclas, Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Intellectual Property and Technology Law at Pitney Bowes, said, “The Eco-Patent Commons offers an effective framework to develop and make available technology that helps combat climate change and reduce the release of carbon dioxide. Our objective for the Eco-Patent Commons is to promote the spread of environmentally conscious technologies that make conservation and preservation a priority.”

Hidemi Tomita, General Manager of Sony Corporation’s Corporate Social Responsibility Department, said, “To more effectively protect the environment, it is time for business to join efforts rather than tackling the issue alone. We truly believe this joint effort with our peers will mark a significant step and help transfer innovative ideas and technologies across industries and beyond to developing countries. We are excited to launch this platform to share technologies that will bring about positive changes in the environment.”

These ideas are exemplary of a new wave of thinking described in a recent blog post on Open Innovators. "Companies need to get a lot better at bringing external ideas and knowledge in from the outside, while at the same time allowing internal ideas not being used to flow outside the organization."

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a CEO-led, global association of some 200 companies dealing exclusively with business and sustainable development. The Council provides a platform for companies to explore sustainable development, share knowledge, experiences and best practices, and to advocate business positions on these issues in a variety of forums, working with governments, non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations. Members are drawn from more than 35 countries and 20 major industrial sectors.

Get the FAQs and download the Brochure of the Eco-Patent Commons in pdf here.

At IP.com Inc., we'd like to get involved in support of the Eco-Patent Commons project to expand this initiative to include the sharing of innovative ideas and technologies that directly or indirectly protect the environment, which have not yet been patented but are otherwise in the prior art and knowledge of the member corporations, the scientific community, and academia.

IP.com's Prior Art Database technology could be made readily available, free of charge, as a customized repository of  global innovation in support of the Eco-Patents Commons. How amazing would that be?

Essentially, a technical publications library is a web-based knowledge management system to organize all the company's publications into a public collection that resides on a company's corporate website. A technical publication library, custom created by IP.com to meet the specific needs of the client, can include such publications as journal articles, conference presentations, disclosures, white papers, and other technical documents. Oftentimes, these documents are scattered throughout various departments, providing little or no value to the company because relevant materials cannot be searched throughout the company's many silos of information and retrieved easily in time to be used effectively whenever needed.

Managing the customized technical publications library is done through a web-based administration site. Access privileges can be granted or restricted on a user-by-user basis. Designated administrators are prompted when an action is required. This is an essential component to a generating a smoothly functioning work flow.

A technical publication library like this designed by IP.com conveniently includes secure access for the company executives to download robust reports on all document activity. This is extremely beneficial to publication authors, inventors, corporate marketing executives, and the company's technical personnel who can monitor interest in content and measure technology trends.