The team from IP.com Inc. is on the road this week attending the BIO International Convention in San Diego, California, meeting with biotechnology executives and introducing the latest release of InnovationQ, our enterprise software platform that automates and streamlines common intellectual property management functions.

Bio, the Biotechnology Industry Organization is live blogging from BIO 2008 on their roadshow blog Bio on the Road. Here's some photos from the exhibition floor.

Patent Docs Kevin Noonan, Donald Zuhn, and Sherri Oslick are also be attending here as part of the MBHB contingent at booth #4320 where they're inviting readers of their blog to stop by and talk a little biotech patent law.

Patent Attorney Steven Albainy-Jenei from Frost Brown Todd LLC is working  the conference floor, handing out iPods courtesy of Patent Baristas -- swag! He says, "You couldn’t swing a dead cat at the BIO2008 conference today without smacking at least one governor out pressing the flesh and showing their state’s support for the biotech industry." California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking this opportunity to welcome these 20,000 visitors to San Diego for BIO 2008.

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According to recent news reports, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. will avoid a trial with Visto Corp. after a Canadian court ruled the privately held California-based company infringed on three RIM patents.

Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Visto "threw in the towel,'' Ronald Dimock, a lawyer for RIM, told Bloomberg News. "There is no settlement.''

The two companies must still agree on a royalty payment plan, Dimock said.

On the heels of that patent litigation win, Research in Motion has now filed a preemptory lawsuit in Texas against the patent licensing outfit based in Germany that's suing many cell phone manufacturers, alleging infringements of hundreds of patents it holds and seeking license settlements.

IP Com GmbH & Co. is not associated in any way whatsoever with  IP.com Inc.

Now, according to the latest news reports, RIM, maker of the new BlackBerry Bold smartphone, also asked the court to issue an injunction preventing IP Com from using the patents to sue RIM for infringement.

IP Com has countersued RIM in Germany, IP Com managing director, Cristoph Schoeller, told Dow Jones. He didn't provide details of the suit.

IP Com had been negotiating a license agreement with RIM when RIM filed its lawsuit, Schoeller said. "We thought we were in negotiations," he said, adding that he believes RIM may be trying to intimate IP Com.

Maybe, like Sun Microsystem's General Counsel Mike Dillon, the patent lawyers representing RIM think that the best offense...is a good defense.

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What's in a blog?

Taken at face value, entering posts on the blog is very easy. It looks like an online word processor which enables you to publish your articles and make them available online as well as manage a few options and features. However, this is a lot more complex than you think. Not necessarily from a technical point of view, but certainly from an Internet writing skills point of view.

If you'd like someone to simplify the complexities of company blogs, there's probably no better overview of corporate blogging than an article on Marketing & Innovation that is divided into three blog posts on the golden rules for corporate blogging.

The first post in the series is a general introduction to blogging for companies.

The second post raises some preliminary questions: "What is the objective of this blog?  Is it about awareness?  Is it intended for you to share knowledge with the community?  Is it there to show that your corporation and its experts are particularly good at something?"

The third posts lists some of the "do's and don'ts" of writing on a corporate blog.

How are we doing?

When we started this blog at IP.com Inc., CEO Tom Colson wrote here:

What we're doing at IP.com might not change the world (or maybe it will) and we certainly don't position our company at the center of the universe, but it's probably not an exaggeration to say we're changing the world of intellectual property.

In our little corner of the online world, there's a lot happening with patents, trademarks, and trade secrets, and a lot of relevant stuff is being said on interesting blogs by people who really know what they're talking about. So we're joining the conversation, and blogging about how innovation is managed by corporations with a vested interest in their Intellectual Property.

Is there something in particular you'd like to discuss here? We'll keep an eye on the comments below this post where readers can give us some feedback on how we can make our company blog more interesting and helpful. Ask questions. Let us know what you think. Tell us how we can improve. We won't publish every rant and rave (we do read all of them) but if you've got some constructive criticism or helpful advice for our blog, we'd really love to hear from you.

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John Cass, a marketer who writes about corporate blogging, PR communications, marketing, social media, and the Internet, reports better than average ratings for blogging Fortune 500 companies.

[Cass] developed a new chart for the Fortune 500 business blogging wiki. The chart shows the average scores for reviews conducted on Fortune 500 companies that are running a corporate blog.

You can review the chart on the about this wiki section of the website.

Using the businessandblogging.com methodology for reviewing blogs, which is a system of eight review factors to give a total of 80 potential points for assessing a company's blog,

Heaven forbid anyone might apply such rigorous analysis to our corporate blog, but at least that gives us some high standards to aspire to. We've long been fans of the blogs at Sun Microsystems, led by CEO Jonathan Schwartz. When we launched this corporate blog for IP.com Inc., I wrote about why we believe in business blogs, mentioning Sun blogs as leading examples of what we hope to achieve with this new medium for corporate communications. So we were especially interested when John Cass reported on PR Communications that one of the Fortune 500 blogs reviewed was Jonathan Schwartz's Blog.

Nigel Vanderford reviews the CEO of SUN Microsystem's blog, Jonathan Schwartz. Nigel gave Jonathan's blog high marks, 68 out of 80. He liked the frequency of posting, engaging writing and interactiveness with the rest of the blogging community. Nigel discovered Schwartz comments on other blogs.

I would have given Jonathan's Blog even higher marks--because his blog makes me aware of how much I have yet to learn about blogging. Hopefully, my team and I can learn from the good example set by Jonathan Schwartz and other senior executives like Mike Dillon who blog at Sun.

The goal isn't to get everyone at Sun contributing online, it's to become part of the industry conversation. So, if you are going to write, look around and do some reading first, so you learn where the conversation is and what people are saying. Remember the Web is all about links; when you see something interesting and relevant, link to it; you'll be doing your readers a service, and you'll also generate links back to you; a win-win.

That's what we like to do in our Quick Links in the sidebar to the left, where we share interesting blogs and articles we've found. We're learning, and sharing.

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In a blog post titled Chinese Patent System: Problems and Best Practices on the California Biotech Law Blog, Kristie Prinz points to a recent article by Thomas Babel on IP Frontline, Patents in China - Is There Any Real Protection?

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.

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The authors of  the outstanding "Patent Docs" blog are patent attorneys who hold doctorates in biotech and chemical disciplines, so it's a good place to keep track of all the upcoming continuing education seminars and conferences of interest to patent professionals in those industries.

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.

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Since we linked IP Newsflash in the navigation header at the top of the home page of the IP.com website, our clients and visitors have been checking out this Intellectual Property meta-information portal that browses your information channels for you and presents only relevant, recent and customizable IP information on a single page.

As a result of this new traffic to IP Newsflash from IP.com, our website has risen rather quickly in the list of the top links that send visitors to this handy intellectual property news portal.

The list features websites that link to IP Newsflash and have sent visitors to IP Newsflash within the last four months. The rank is determined by the visitors that use these links. The number in the column 'visits' shows, how many visitors since 20th June 2004 came from this website.

To be featured on this list, you may simply link to IP Newsflash. IP Newsflash will automatically detect the link and store it in a database. Every visitor that uses your link counts toward your rank. The more visitors click on the link on your website, the higher your rank will be.

Thanks to Rolf Claessen, who created IP Newsflash, for sending a good number of his visitors to us, as well. We really appreciate all the new visitors to IP.com who have discovered our company from links on IP Newsflash.

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We're at the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo at the World Trade Center in Boston showing off the latest version of InnovationQ. This release, version 3.1, adds several major new features to the InnovationQ platform.

InnovationQ helps companies safeguard their intellectual property, derive more value from ideas, and speed the monetization of innovation. With streamlined processes and a secure system for managing innovation, InnovationQ effectively protects and enhances intellectual property from its earliest stages.

Version 3.1 incorporates collaborative features within the InnovationQ platform. With InnovationQ, users can now efficiently communicate as a team in an environment that secures their ideas as intellectual property. Combined with the workflow engine and document management capabilities, InnovationQ delivers full-featured innovation and intellectual property management solutions.

Next month, we'll be at the PharmaBiotech IP Summit in Philadelphia.

See what's happening here at IP.com in the weeks and months ahead, and where you'll be able to meet up with us between now and the Bio International Convention in San Diego in June.

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In her Strategic Thinking column on GreenBiz.com, Nancy Edwards Cronin recommends Growing the Eco-Patent Commons to Truly Promote Green Innovation. While lauding the objectives of this green initiative, she suggests that the Eco-Patent Commons itself is in need of some innovation if it truly hopes to accomplish its goal: sharing useful environmental technologies for "the greater good."

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.

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One of our favorite patent law bloggers, Stephen Albainy-Jenei at Patent Baristas, points out that today is blogger appreciation day.

On this day, we'd be remiss if we didn't show our appreciation for all the new readers directed to our company blog from Duncan Bucknell's IP Thinktank and David Lat's Above the Law.

Our greatest appreciation, always, is for the intellectual property law bloggers who continuously recommend our blog to their readers by adding a permanent link to Securing Innovation in their blogrolls:

• Patent Baristas
• Likelihood of Confusion
• Patent Docs
• The Invent Blog
• The Patent Prospector
• Anticipate This!
• BlawgIT
• The Legal Thing

Editor's Note: From time to time, we'll update this list to show our appreciation for bloggers who have added this blog to their blogrolls, as we become aware of links.

We'd like to take this opportunity, on blogger appreciation day, to thank patent attorney Brett Trout for including Securing Innovation in his patent meme, an excellent list of patent blogs. We really appreciate all the attention that regularly comes from that special recognition.

Finally, we'd like to thank Kevin O'Keefe and the team of weblog professionals at LexBlog for helping us develop this corporate blog for our company, IP.com. We really appreciate the extraordinary service.

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