IP.com research and analytics professionals are engineers and scientists with backgrounds in physics, optical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, materials science, chemistry, and life sciences. All our research professionals have many years of experience practicing in their respective industries as well as several years of experience performing intellectual property research.

Earth Day Network is a driving force steering environmental awareness around the world. Founded by the organizers of the first April 22 Earth Day in 1970, Earth Day Network promotes environmental citizenship and year round progressive action worldwide. Through Earth Day Network, activists connect change in local, national, and global policies. Earth Day Network enjoys partnerships with 22,000 organizations in 192 countries that are all dedicated to diversifying and mobilizing the environmental movement. Earth Day is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities. More than a half billion people participate in Earth Day Network campaigns every year. This year's campaign is a billion acts of green.

Earth Day seems as good a day as any to note the contributions of leading corporations that have joined together in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to make their patents available for the common good.

Eco-Patent Commons, launched by IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes and Sony in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), was founded on the commitment that anyone who wants to bring environmental benefits to market can use these patents to protect the environment and enable collaboration between businesses that foster new innovations.

Since the launch of the Eco-Patent Commons in January 2008, one hundred eco-friendly patents have been pledged by eleven companies representing a variety of industries worldwide: Bosch, Dow, DuPont, Fuji-Xerox, IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes, Ricoh, Sony, Taisei and Xerox.

We hope more companies join in the Eco-Patent Commons and that this important initiative expands beyond patents to include technical disclosures of innovations that would be helpful to the environment and the future of planet earth, making every day "earth day."

For over 40 years, Earth Day—April 22—has inspired and mobilized individuals and organizations worldwide to demonstrate their commitment to environmental protection and sustainability. What can we do?

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.

Together, let's save our planet; we're really not going to discover another earth.

Among the topics Tom will be addressing are:

• Patents defined. (What a patent is and is not; different types; rights and protections of a patent; ways to get around a patent.)
• Assessing the need for a patent. (When/under what circumstances should an individual inventor be going out and be spending money on a patent?)
• Alternatives to patenting. (Covering defensive publishing, trade secrets, use of Non-Disclosure Agreements, or NDA, in advance of patent application, and use of search to determine validity.)
• International filing. (How to protect in other countries. And... Manufacturing in China and what that means with respect to an inventor's patent rights.)

Please help spread the word on your blogs and Twitter. And don't forget to tune in at 8pm EST on Thursday, April 14.

How to tune in? Just go to http://www.gotinvention.com and click on the "Live" tab.

IP.com

The world’s most innovative corporations entrust IP.com with defensive publication through our acclaimed Prior Art Database — an industry-recognized go-to source for patent examiners and searchers worldwide.

Go beyond just searching — discover an interconnected world of intellectual property at IP.com.

Our weblog, Securing Innovation, designed as a resource for the intellectual property community, includes links to other interesting blogs and useful IP Resources.

• Patentability Search
• Freedom to Operate Search
• Patent Validity Search
• State of the Art Search
• Intellectual Property Search
• Prior Art Database
• Pipers
• IP.com Global Patent Search
• IP Search Service
• Basic IP
• Boliven Patents
• Patents.Alltop.com
• Innovation.Alltop.com
• PatentSurf
• Patent Buddy
• Patents.com
• Patent Law Center
• Trademark Law Center
• Copyright Law Center
• IP Justice
• Relatip.com
• PriorSmart Patent Search
• The Library of Congress Blog
• Chilling Effects Clearinghouse
• WikiPatents
• IP Newsflash
• IPIC
• Patent Law Center
• Public Patent Foundation
• Intellectual Property Watch
• IP Law 360
• CIPO
• European Patent Office
• IPO.org
• Patent Information Users Group
• Software Patent Institute (SPI)
• SparkIP
• InvenioIP
• Google Patent Search
• WIPO
• Intellectual Asset Management
• InnovAccess
• IP Law & Business
• Managing Intellectual Property
• PatentFIZZ
• Peer to Patent
• Patent Debate
• IP Menu
• USPTO

Do you know of another intellectual property resource that should be considered for inclusion in this list of helpful IP Resources? Help us out here. Please let us know in the comments below, and we'll add more to our blog's sidebar. While we're updating our blog sidebars, are there additional Intellectual Property Blogs that we should include in our blogrolls? Something new? We're always looking for new IP Blogs, Tech Blogs and Business Blogs that would be of interest to our readers.

The Library introduces some unique concepts in free online patent searching:

• It is the first free access website to actively combine patent and non-patent prior art searching into a single resource.
• In addition to a classic full text search engine, it also offers access to a sophisticated semantic search engine, creating unique abilities to rapidly locate related art.
• It is the first website outside the People's Republic of China to enable free access to SIPO patent data.

The Library is brought to you by IP.com, a Manning & Napier company. IP.com's first product, the Prior Art Database, launched in September 2000. The Prior Art Database provides companies with a fast, effective, and centralized outlet for publishing and searching technical disclosures. Since its inception, the Prior Art Database has become a world-leading outlet for defensively disclosing research and innovative art.

IP.com's charter is to provide our customers with tools and solutions to more effectively manage their intellectual property and innovations. We have successfully and repeatedly developed numerous IP-related solutions that are trusted by some of the world's largest and most innovative companies.

Try searching for something interesting in the search box below.

Here's some Interesting Queries to start your journey. We welcome your feedback and encourage you to visit often to see what new collections or interesting features we've added to the Library.

Kevin Costner explained his company's machine and its early development and patent history.

David Meikrantz's invention that is the foundation for this new machine was a method of recovering hazardous waste from phenolic resin filters that received  US Patent Number 4995916 in 1991.

Taxpayers paid for the early development of a liquid-liquid separator technology, licensed and patented from the Department of Energy (DOE) and Idaho National Laboratories (INL), a government owned, private contractor operated facility, in 1993. Originally developed to assist in nuclear fuel reprocessing, the machine was then made available to the private sector to improve upon the licensed patent. Today the technology represents one of the laboratory’s highly successful transfers of technology, which makes the patent unique and of particular interest for the government and U.S. citizens.

The foundation of our CINC technology was created over 30 years ago and has been used by the Department of Energy (DOE) to recover valuable metal resources through a process of solvent extraction. In 1993 I was awarded a Technology Transfer from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a liquid solvent extraction technology, which we believed had the potential to be scaled up and commercialized in the fight against oil spills. Dave Meikrantz, a scientist working for DOE, and the original inventor of the technology, came on board as the Director of Technology at Costner Industries (CINC), my newly formed private company.

In 1998, inventor David Meikrantz received a  US Patent 5762800 for a Centrifugal Separator and that patent was assigned to Costner Industries of Carson City, NV.

You can read more about Kevin Costner's Ocean Therapy Solutions on the corporate website for CINC Industries, which manufactures the centrifugal separator.

As they say, "The time to talk became the time to act."

Google Patent Search enables users to search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest them.

All patents available through Google Patent Search come from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Patents issued in the United States are public domain government information, and images of the entire database of U.S. patents are readily available online via the USPTO website.

Using the same technology that powers Google Book Search, Google has converted the entire image database of U.S. patents into a format that’s easy to search. You can search the full text of U.S. patents from the Google Patent Search homepage, or visit the Advanced Patent Search page to search by criteria like patent number, inventor, and filing date.

Google and the USPTO have entered into an agreement to make bulk patent and trademark information available to the public at no charge.

Earlier this month, Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) David Kappos announced that the USPTO has entered into a no-cost, two-year agreement with Google to make bulk electronic patent and trademark public data available to the public in bulk form. Under this agreement, the USPTO is providing Google with existing bulk, electronic files, which Google will host without modification for the public free of charge.

Director Kappos said the USPTO does not currently have the technical capability to provide this public information in a bulk machine readable format that is desired by the intellectual property (IP) community. This arrangement is to serve as a bridge as the USPTO develops an acquisition strategy which will allow the USPTO to enter into a contract with a contractor to retrieve and distribute USPTO patent and trademark bulk public data. The contractor will be capable of acquiring this bulk data and providing it to the public.

“The USPTO is committed to providing increased transparency as called for by the President’s Open Government Initiative. An important element of that transparency is making valuable public patent and trademark information more widely available in a bulk form so companies and researchers can download it for analysis and research,” said Under Secretary Kappos. “Because the USPTO does not currently have the technical capability to offer the data in bulk form from our own Web site, we have teamed with Google to provide the data in a way that is convenient and at no cost for those who desire it.”

“We’re happy to work with the USPTO to make patent and trademark data more accessible and useful,” said Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager for Google. “It’s important to make public data easier to gather and analyze. And when the data is free, that’s even better.”

Until now, the USPTO’s public data in bulk form has been provided solely as a fee-based service. The USPTO estimates that nearly ten terabytes of information will be made available through Google.

This has been described by intellectual property professionals as "good news and bad news." Good news that all this patent and trademark information previously available for a fee is now freely accessible. Bad news that it's only  available in "bulk" form, which is less useful than it might otherwise be. It's also limited to United States Patent and Trademark data. So far, so good.

IP.com provides companies and intellectual property professionals with tools and solutions to more effectively manage their IP and innovations. Whether your objective is searching for patents or prior art, defensively publishing your innovations, obtaining research prior to applying for a patent or for other IP-related reasons, or realizing improved IP processes, IP.com has the right solution.

Our Intellectual Property Library website is a free international database of patent and patent-related publications. Our goal is to encourage worldwide access to resources where innovators can explore and understand patents, technologies, and related art. The database contains an ever increasing array of international patents (as published by the authorities) as well as non-patent literature (including our own Prior Art Database). The site features such things as full text and English translation searching along with unique "more-like-this" capabilities.

Start by Searching the Library or visiting the Library's Resource Center.

Like Google, IP.com's Intellectual Property Library is free.

Free Patent and Non-Patent Literature Database

Our Intellectual Property Library website is a free international database of patent and patent-related publications. Our goal is to encourage worldwide access to resources where innovators can explore and understand patents, technologies, and related art. The database contains an ever increasing array of international patents (as published by the authorities) as well as non-patent literature (including our own Prior Art Database). The site features such things as full text and English translation searching along with unique "more-like-this" capabilities.

Start by Searching the Library or visiting the Library's Resource Center.

Defensive Publishing

Our initial product, the Prior Art Database, was created to provide companies with a fast, effective, and centralized outlet for publishing and searching technical disclosures. In addition to electronic publication, the Prior Art Database collection is also published in print in our semi-monthly publication, The IP.com Journal, which is distributed to libraries and patent office worldwide.

Since its inception, the Prior Art Database has continued to grow, attracting many high profile clients such as IBM, General Electric, Motorola, Abbott Laboratories, and Eastman Kodak (to name a few). More importantly, it is searched and cited daily by patent examiners worldwide.

Learn more about our Prior Art Database.

Patent and Prior Art Research

Our Intellectual Property Search Service is a recognized leader in providing innovative companies with high quality patent searching and analysis. As veteran engineers and scientists with decades of industry and intellectual property experience, we have accumulated knowledge and employ a proven process for managing each search project that enables us to find the most relevant information and deliver timely, accurate, and concise results.

Learn more about our IP Search Service.

Personal Intellectual Property Protection

Our Creative Registry is a web-based registry that allows you to upload your documents and creative work for legal safeguarding. IP.com digitally fingerprints and date-stamps your work while placing it into a private archive for your personal access. IP.com then publishes the fingerprint and date into the public domain as a testament to the existence of your work. Your actual document is never exposed to anyone else, yet you have irrefutable proof of its content at the precise time it was safeguarded.

Learn more about the Creative Registry.

Innovation Repository and Workflow Software

Our InnovationQ software system provides solutions for managing the information, records, and processes associated with innovation and IP. InnovationQ is a software framework which delivers functions including sophisticated workflows, collaborative environments, and legally safeguarded document management. Utilizing this framework, we create configurable modules that provide integrated company-specific solutions. InnovationQ allows companies to improve their processes and derive new and additional value from their innovation and IP assets.

Learn more about InnovationQ.

Many corporations and organizations see the advantages that working with IP.com brings. We offer a variety of affiliate relations to help those companies more easily offer IP.com's services to in-house staff or as an added value to their clients.

IP.com designed the Search Box HTML code to work with the default style for forms on your blog or website. This means the presentation of the "Search Patents" textbox might appear a little different on your page than what you see below. If you like, you are welcome to adjust the style to assure the best visual integration with your site.

Please try out the active search box above to see how it works and, in the comments below, let us know what you think.

This page contains information on how to add one of these Intellectual Property Library Search Boxes to your website or blog. Having our Search Box available enables your site's visitors to easily search patents and IP.,com's selected non-patent literature.

Be sure to explore the More-Like-This feature of this unique search engine for patents, prior art and non-patent literature in this growing library.

This page contains a variety of links which showcase queries into the Library. If you are interested in exploring, consider beginning with one of these queries, selecting a document of interest, and then clicking on More Like This. You could start a journey into our Intellectual Property Library that will surprise and delight you. Enjoy!

YouTube video seen on Mashable

You can even search for patents and prior art on an iPad. Is there an app for that?

According to PC Magazine, "it remains to be seen just how many apps from Apple's App Store have been downloaded by the millions of iPad users thus far--around the one-million-sold mark, Apple announced that iPad owners had been busy nabbing more than 12 million apps and 1.5 million eBooks."

Try searching something in the search box below to see how it would work if you added this search box to a blog post or, better yet, into a sidebar on your blog. There are two sizes of search box available here.

Your comments are welcome following this blog post, if you've got any questions about the IP.com Library Search Box. What do you think?

Search Patents and Non-Patent Literature - IP.com

Senior In House Counsel repressentingl Align Technologies, Cisco, Coverity, eBay Inc., Google, JDS Uniphase, Microsoft, Whirlpool, Palm, Sony Corporation of American, Sun Microsystems, Tessera, Whirlpooll, Xilinx, Inc. and Zoran Corporation, among others, are expected to be there. Delegates represent a wide range of companies and firms, including Fortune 500 Corporations, mid-sized corporations and recent start-ups with novel ideas to patent in their respective markets.

For more information and details on how to register for this event presented by ALM, click here.

If you'd like to meet with someone from IP.com during this conference, please contact us here and we'll be happy to arrange a convenient time to meetup.

If you're unable to be at the conference in San Jose, you can follow @IPCounselForum on Twitter where the event will be covered by those attending using the hashtag #ipcf as well as here on the Securing Innovation blog of IP.com..

Last year, I wrote about Thomas Edison and National Inventors' Day in a blog post here on Securing Innovation, the corporate blog of IP.com Inc.

Again, this year, I made a pilgrimage to the Schenectady Museum, the virtual shrine to all things Edison and General Electric.  It's amazing all the good things brought to life by GE and its innovative scientists and engineers. From something as silly as, well, Silly Putty, to something as important as the electric automobile.

Early electric cars like that developed with a patent by George Selden and early modern electric automobiles like the GE-100 electric vehicle prototype on display at the Schenectady Museum.

It's been over thirty years since this prototype was shown to Congress. After all these years, what I wanna know is, where's my Tesla?

IP.com's goal is to encourage worldwide access to resources where innovators can explore and understand patents, technologies, and related art.

In this preliminary version, the database contains the full text of U.S. Patents, U.S. Patent Applications, and IP.com's unique Prior Art Database.

In the coming months IP.com will continue to expand its features and add more patent and non-patent literature to the database. Please check back regularly to see what more we are offering. We think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Check it out.

Dan Ballard of Sequoia Counsel, who's on Twitter @Ballard_IP was quick to pick up on a tweet by @nishantmodak pointing to an oldie but goodie -- an article in Machine Design written by IP.com's CEO, Tom Colson, in 2001 titled "Defensive publishing: Protect your intellectual property".

We don't know what's more surprising, that patent attorneys and others interested in protecting intellectual property were on Twitter on New Year's Day commenting on an article on defensive publishing, or that we were on Twitter on the holiday, too, following their conversations.

It seems that social media doesn't take holidays off.

China Intellectual Property Business 2009 ("CIPB 2009") is organized by Global Leaders Institute, which issued a press release today announcing the conference. It will take place on November 18-19, 2009 at the Shanghai Marriott Hotel Hongqiao.

 

 

This conference is mainly focused on Intellectual Property transaction issues, including IP strategies, IP portfolio management, diversified IP transaction methods, IP valuation approaches and database applications.

Unlike other IP conferences focused on legal issues, this event deals more with the strategic concerns within a company rather than just protection issues. Not only are IP counsels and patent counsels being invited to this event, corporate CEOs, Vice Presidents and General Counsels are all expected to join this exciting conference.

Director of SIPA, Mr. Guoqiang Lv, will make the opening address for this event and deliver a presentation as the curtain raiser for CIPB 2009. Former Supreme Court Judge, Mr. Jiang Zhipei will also deliver a speech on the current IP business background, especially in China.

120 companies from different industries will join this event. Among them, this conference has gathered over 30 Global IP Leaders and IP Strategists to brainstorm the IP strategies and transaction issues in this booming China market, including, Philips IP&S, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, Bosch, Sanofi-Aventis, Agilent Technologies, Alibaba, Alcatel Lucent Shanghai Bell, and TSMC. Leading Chinese firms will also present on site, including ZTE, BYD and TCL.

Thomson Reuters, IP.com, TechInsights, Finnegan, Property Corp. and RPX Corporation have engaged this event as its honored sponsors. Mr. David Liu, the Managing Director of China from Thomson Reuters will make a toast during the first day's lunch.

This conference is problem solution driven and each company who has the need to extract more value from their IP assets will find a suitable solution for them and find potential business partners either during the conference or after the conference. Hope to see you there.

You can log on the event website for more information: http://www.cipbusiness.com

If you're attending CIPB 2009, as well, or would like to get together while I'm in China, please contact me by email tcolson [at] ip.com either in advance or during the conference, and we'll set something up.

PATINEX offers insight into various facade of IP information and latest cutting edge developments of new tools and services for protecting, enforcing and exploiting a company's IP.

Conference host, Jung-Sik Koh, Commissioner, Korean Intellectual Property Office has welcomed us back again this year, and we're having very productive meetings here and enjoying the conference program.

This year, we're featuring IP.com's InnovationQ enterprise solution for organizations with significant portfolios of intellectual property to manage throughout the IP life-cycle.

Also of great interest at this conference is the Prior Art Database, the world's leading repository and registry of prior art.

The IP.com Prior Art Database is a unique database dedicated to the publication of technical disclosure documents. The IP.com Prior Art Database contains content that cannot be found anywhere else, and is an essential source of non-patent prior art data for intellectual property professionals, research and development (R&D) staff, corporate library staff, and individual inventors wishing to research prior art. The IP.com Prior Art Database is home to a wide array of technical disclosures from many Fortune 500 companies. While many publish anonymously to prevent competitive intelligence, you will also find many disclosures published with full authorship information from innovative companies such as IBM, Motorola, and Siemens. The IP.com Prior Art Database is also the exclusive location for new IBM-TDB (Technical Disclosure Bulletin) documents on the Web.

Recently, the Korean Intellectual Propery Office (KIPO) showed its leadership in fast-tracking green patent applications. 

On 1 October 2009, the Korean Patent Office (KIPO) launched its "super speed examination system" for green technology. The system is available for green technologies that minimise the discharge of pollutants, as well as those which have received funding or authentication for green growth. Applicants can apply for super speed examination by requesting a prior art search from one of three agencies authorised to conduct such searches on behalf of KIPO (the Korea Institute of Patent Information (KIPI), WIPS Co. Ltd. or IP Solution Co. Ltd.) and submitting the results of the search to KIPO.

Details of the application procedure for super speed examination and the documents required, etc. are posted on KIPO's website in the News section (article no. 688, published on 2 October 2009): http://www.kipo.go.kr

As Executive Vice President of IP.com and head of the company's Asia Pacific operations, I look forward to working with KIPO and other leading governmental agencies and business organizations to increase efficiencies in management of patent systems. Look for IP.com in the exhibition hall at PATINEX 2009, or contact me personally by email jkong@ip.com at your convenience, and see how we can help.

As the whole world is witnessing China’s booming economy in recent years, Chinese corporations are becoming aware how critical indigenous innovation is for domestic businesses to survive the international competition in the wake of economic globalization. Eager to improve the present intellectual property service system, which is less efficient and not well supervised as compared with those of industrialized countries, governments at all levels in China are struggling to strengthen the construction of developed, powerful service channels to further boost a sustainable development, especially during the current global recession, by cooperating with relevant oversea companies and institutions as well as on their own.

As part of the effort to achieve this goal, the 5th International Conference on Corporate Intellectual Property Strategy, co-hosted by the Intellectual Property Development Research Center of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), the National Science & Technology Infrastructure Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Science & Technology Office and the IP Office of Henan Province will be held on the end of October, 2009 in Zhengzhou, Henan Province of China. A variety of professionals, managers and experts related to intellectual property and technology innovation, from IP service organizations, enterprises and research institutions home and abroad, will be invited. Topics include the construction of both Chinese and foreign IP service platforms,

IP.com is honored to be among the international companies invited to the 5th International Conference on Corporate Intellectual Property Strategy to share ideas, strategies, and technologies for the effective management of intellectual property by global corporations and governments. For many years, IP.com has worked closely with its clients, like IBM, as well as with governmental agencies, including the USPTO, to facilitate access to technical disclosure documents and the worldwide prior art database.

The conference includes the following panels:

Panel One: Innovation and IP Service System Construction

• The support of IP services to industry upgrading and economic development

• Introduction to the construction of IP service system in China

• Introduction to the construction of innovation service system in China Science Park

• Introduction to the status of European IP service system

• Introduction to the patent information service system in Europe

• Introduction to the technology transfer platform in the U.S

• One-stop IP service platform for small & medium enterprises

• Dialog: Constructing the innovation and IP service system with Chinese characteristics

Panel Two: IP Service in Innovation Cycle

Part 1) IP Services in Major National Science and Technology Projects (MNSTP) and economic activities

• Ideas on the overall IP management in MNSTP

• The practice of IP management in MNSTP assessment & implementation

• The support of IP services to the innovation, technology import and transfer of the major projects.

• Dialog: The support of IP services to national technology innovation and industry upgrading

Part 2 ） IP services in enterprises' innovation cycle

IP management in enterprises’ innovation cycle and its support services

Innovation

• Market and IP oriented innovation project setting and its support services

• Solutions and information services to enterprises’ innovation projects

• Effective utilization of patent information

IP Management

• Setting effective patent application strategy, maximizing the IP value

• Enterprises’ IP strategy and IP management system construction

• Intelligent innovation management system construction

IP Protection

• Techniques of IP protection and infringement prevention

• How to deal with patent infringement litigation

IP Commercialization

• Introduction to the IP commercialization service system in China

• IP evaluation, insurance, financing and commercializing services in the US

• Patent portfolio management and licensing services

• Dialog: Discussion on the key questions relevant to enterprises’ innovation cycle and the effective IP service modes.

If you're going to be at the 5th International Conference on Corporate Intellectual Property Strategy, or would like to set up a meeting with me at another convenient location in China, please don't hesitate to contact me by email at jkong@ip.com and we'll be happy to spend some time with you and your colleagues discussing how we might work together to develop the best intellectual property management systems and methods for your organization in China.