Oh, by the way, congratulations to the Chicago Blackhawks and their fans.

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.

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."

A month ago, the world saw Apple as equal parts North Pole and KGB—unpredictably innovative and notoriously secretive, they were a force wielded by nothing less than magic. Then, an elf got loose.

Learn almost everything anyone ever wanted to know about the next iPhone at Gizmodo.

• • How Apple lost the next iPhone
• 
  • Why Apple couldn't get the lost iPhone back
• 
  • All the details about the device
• 
  • The next iPhone, dissected
• 
  • Apple didn't leak the iPhone, and why that matters
• 
  • And finally, how Apple asked for their phone back

Before giving the top secret iPhone back to Apple, Gizmodo should have answered the ultimate question.

Ralph Losey is the lawyer, writer and educator behind the e-Discovery Team blog. Ralph has been practicing law since 1980 and playing with computers and cyber-communications since 1978.

Jason R. Baron has served as the National Archives' Director of Litigation since May 2000. In this position, Mr. Baron is responsible for overseeing all litigation-related activities confronting the National Archives, including complex Federal court litigation involving access to Federal and Presidential records in the National Archives' custody.

For more information on the movie and how it came about see the interview that Jason and Ralph gave to The Posse List: Putting the “tsunami of e-data” in perspective.

Publishing some of your company's innovations can protect the creativity that keeps the company going.

Intellectual property (IP) has long been a mainstay at companies that turn out the newest and the next "best" products. As a result, the race for innovation has become a mad dash to the patent office. New companies need to make their mark early or risk getting left behind. And established companies must maintain and build upon their current IP portfolios to remain contenders in this innovation race. Defensive publishing lets companies ranging from start-ups to major corporations adroitly manage IP without exhausting valuable time and resources.

By definition, defensive publishing is the practice of placing innovation into the public domain. Although the tactic is not new, when used hand in hand with patents and trade secrets, it lets companies efficiently build and maintain competitive IP portfolios.

Traditionally, patents have dominated companies' IP strategies. But patenting is expensive. Companies spend, on average, $12,000 to $15,000 to file one patent application in the U.S. Filing this same application in key locations throughout the world can cost up to five times that figure. Is it wise for any company, no matter how rich, to invest resources and rely on just patents to protect their innovative ideas? This is where defensive publishing steps in.

Defensive publication protects a company's freedom to use its innovation in its products and services. And most defensive publication tactics are easy to implement. For example, if your company develops and patents an innovation vital to its business, and later develops incremental improvements or new uses of that innovation, those later developments are not protected by the initial patents. Patenting every new improvement or new use could be cost prohibitive. But if your company doesn't patent it, a competitor who independently discovers the incremental improvements or new uses might patent them. This could create far more expensive problems for your company in terms of litigation, downstream product redesign, royalty payments, and lost time to market. So how do you protect your freedom to practice without investing huge dollars in patents?

Trade secrets are one option. However, they are not always a realistic way to protect your freedom to practice in today's business and technological environment. In some instances, trade secrets are more dangerous than protective. Employees are hop-ping from company to company more rapidly than ever before. With the advanced searching and data-mining technologies in the market, competitive intelligence has become more effective than ever. Which leads one to ask: Are my trade secrets really secret? Anyone who has been involved in trade-secret litigation knows that specific actions must be taken to turn company secrets into trade secrets. Managers who think they have trade-secret protection, but don't, are at the greatest risk of having their innovations patented by competitors.

Defensive publishing alleviates some of the risks associated with trade secrets. By breaking trade secrets into actual steps and components, companies can safely publish selected pieces of that trade secret. This successfully blocks competitors' patents without disclosing the trade secret itself.

Defensive publishing offers many individually tailored publication tactics. The most obvious one is to use publishing defensively, protecting already established intellectual property portfolios. Two ways to do this are the noncore publication tactic and the conference proceedings publication tactic.

A business-savvy company understands the need for continuous growth and development. However, no company has unlimited financial resources. Though new innovations are a key to many companies' success, not every innovation will be patentable. Because of the costs, companies need to discriminate in choosing what to patent. Only innovations vital to a company's business strategy warrant such a financial investment. But, if a company decides not to patent an innovation, one of its competitors might. Using noncore publication prevents this by placing noncore innovations in the public domain. This protects the creating company's freedom to practice in noncore areas of business while at the same time letting worldwide patent offices search and find this prior art.

Another seemingly obvious defensive tactic is for a company to publish its conference proceedings. When a company attends a conference and gives a presentation, any innovation discussed may be considered prior art, thus providing the basis for rejecting a competitor's patent application. However, unless patent examiners are present at the conference, they may never know of this prior art. By publishing the conference proceedings, a company ensures that the information is available for search by patent examiners.

Contrary to its name, defensive publishing can also be a valuable offensive business strategy. It's not enough to just maintain your IP portfolio. To be a player in today's business world, companies must aggressively build on their portfolios. Publication tactics can help companies combat the competition.

The Pied Piper tactic, a recent approach in IP protection, involves publishing technical details of a pending patent application. Because pending patent applications are kept confidential while in the patent office (for 18 months, with exceptions), a company would use this strategy hoping other companies adopt the technology before the patent's issue. Once the published technology is adopted by a company and built into its products or services, that company becomes the perfect licensing target when the patent is finally issued.

Another offensive tactic is disseminating misinformation to confuse competitors. Typically publications and patents are an excellent source of competitive intelligence. Competitors can use the information to determine the direction and trends of new products and technology. By publishing noncore technology in the mix with core technology, a company can throw off competitors.

The benefits of publishing information on innovations are evident. So how does a company go about publishing its work?

Companies can take the traditional route of working with journals, both paid and academic. Academic journals are an acceptable option but publication is not guaranteed. Even if the work is accepted, the timeliness of publication is up to the editors' discretion. This means that when working with an academic journal, a company has little control over when the material reaches the public domain if, in fact, it ever does.

Another traditional option is to partner with a select group of paper-based journals designed strictly for defensive publishing. Then publication is guaranteed. But even this has its drawbacks. For one, publication is not immediate. There is a delay between the time an innovation is submitted for publication and when it actually reaches print. What's more, the point of publishing an innovation is to provide meaningful access to the patent examiners. Many journals do not offer searchable electronic indices, so busy patent examiners will probably never see them, essentially defeating the publications' purpose.

The latest option for companies is to publish over the Internet, posting information on the corporate Web site. The assumption is doing so puts the information in the public domain. However, this is not necessarily the case. There are a number of legal requirements as to what actually qualifies as a defensive publication. Generally speaking, most sites don't have the proper safeguards in place that can act as critical references downstream in the event of a trial.

Another consideration when posting on the Internet is accessibility to patent examiners. With a workload that has grown by an estimated 75% since 1992, patent examiners don't have time to search thousands of company Web sites. Realistically speaking, innovations posted on individual corporate Web sites will most likely never be found.

The most recent option is a central Web resource designed solely for defensive publishing. The first site to offer such services is IP.com. With security measures in place to assure document retention and authenticity, IP.com lets companies publish innovations via the Internet at low cost and in a small fraction of the time it takes paper-based sources. In addition to publishing services, the site offers a globally accessible database dedicated to defensive publications that is visible to all patent examiners. A complete overview of defensive publishing tactics is available at ip.com.

In this age of research and development, it is the intellectual property portfolio that makes or breaks a company's success. A well-rounded IP strategy can be a company's strongest weapon in these times of patent wars. With the help of the Internet, defensive publishing is becoming a highly recognized and respected alternative to more traditional IP management techniques. Using defensive publishing alongside such practices as patenting and trade secrets helps companies enhance and maintain formidable IP portfolios.

You might also want ot check out some of the currently featured articles and editor's picks on Machine Design. Interesting stuff.

So, it's come to this has it? We're now posting pictures of cats with funny captions in an attempt to meet the standards set by Jeremy Phillips for what makes an Intellectual Property blog remarkable these days. Not sure this will help us.

We can't compete with The IPKat on substance, and we're not sure we'll be able to match his inimitable style. But we're trying. Our featured Guest Blogger is non other than Jeremy Phillips himself. Now, if we can just keep up.

As we pushed ourselves away from the Thanksgiving dinner table and got thinking about what to write about the press release we received yesterday from the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP) in the UK, we noticed that Jeremy Phillips had a front row seat at the press conference and has already written extensively, and with authority, here and here at The IPKat blog.

In short, SABIP's chairman Joly Dixon, summarised the plot. We Brits are now going to deepen our knowledge of how IP works within the economy and make up for the fact that we have little hard evidence as to precisely how IP affects its owners, users and the various markets in which it is engaged or exploited.

Here in the former colonies, we aren't surprised that The IPKat scooped us again on the important story of the day, as he so often does. Actually, we're thankful.

Have a great weekend.

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.

The Asia Pacific region, especially China, is undergoing massive changes in all aspects of economic might, including the cornerstone of Intellectual Property (IP) governance. China and the greater region are making great contributions to innovation and development of new technology to better humanity worldwide.

The nation’s innovation and intellectual property mandate has become the centerpiece of discussions at conferences and in boardrooms throughout China. The Chinese commitment to building infrastructure for innovation is as deep as its commitment to building roads, bridges, and skyscrapers. And to see the depth of that commitment, one needs only to spend a day in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, or any other Chinese city. At IP.com, we are more than pleased to be working with Chinese business and government leaders in building this infrastructure.

IP.com landed in China more than three years ago, and we have been on the ground there almost every day since. We have worked with law firms, universities, businesses, and the Chinese government, and we look forward to growing our Chinese presence and involvement. At the beginning of this year, we relocated our EVP, Asia Pacific, Johnson Kong, to China. This will be of great value not only to IP.com, but to me personally, as I will be spending 25% of 2009 in China…now I will have a place to call my own…or my home away from home.

On a personal note, not only am I placing an IP.com bet on China, but for the past two years I have been placing a family bet on China as well. Two years ago, I started learning Mandarin with my three daughters, and we continue with our Chinese studies together as a family activity almost every evening. So, we're pleased to express our best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year for our many friends throughout China.

Gōng Xǐ Fā Cái.

The IP.com Hong Kong Office is located within driving distance from Shenzhen, a ferry distance to Macau, and a short flight to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Shanghai and Beijing are also easily accessible from the IP.com Hong Kong office.

Johnson Kong, Executive Vice President and Head of Asia Pacific, has graciously taken on the personal challenge of relocating his family on our behalf. Mr. Kong is passionate and committed to our Chinese and Asia Pacific business growth initiatives.

IP.com is in the business of providing software and services for innovation management. In his current role, Mr. Kong assists clients in creating and implementing innovation management and intellectual property strategies to advance business goals. He has held several positions from sales & marketing to executive management with leading industries across Asia Pacific, and has become an expert in the creation and implementation of innovation management and intellectual property strategies. Mr. Kong has invented software and business methods associated with the analysis and management of intellectual property.

The new Asia Pacific office of IP.com is located at:

One Harbour View Street
1 IFC
33 Floor, Suite 16
Central
Hong Kong, SAR, China
T: 852-3960-6391
F: 852-2166-8999

For more information, call our US headquarters at 1-716-362-4562 or visit ip.com. You can read our company blog, Securing Innovation, where we write about Intellectual Property, not only in English but also in Chinese on matters of interest to our readers in China. You can read, in Chinese, some of the posts by Johnson Kong if you click on this link.

Failing to follow sound IP management practices can leave directors and officers liable for breach of loyalty and open to claims of corporate waste...

One classic situation in which director and officer liabilities could arise: A corporation has over time accumulated a substantial IP portfolio whether patents, trademarks, trade secrets, or copyright, and has effectively lost track of what it has. It has not considered how best to maintain or strengthen the protections for the IP, let alone how best to exploit it. The problem is not necessarily in (just) failing to take certain steps to protect the IP or to exploit it, but in the failure to be sufficiently informed to competently consider alternatives so that the decision to take action or not can be defended as one that was given due consideration. This is where sound IP management can enhance internal controls and reduce regulatory and litigation risk.

 Read the article here on the new website for IP Law & Business.

Not since James Bond's boat chase scene in Moonraker have the Venetians had a chance to see such a display of intellectual property management. Tom Petrocelli will be at IPI-ConfEx 2009 in Venice from March 2nd to the 4th.

The conference is of direct interest to information managers and patent searchers and is particularly noted for its coverage of leading-edge ‘how-to’ technical discussions and reviews of information resources. Commercially-available products and services, free patent databases and other unique resources available worldwide for intellectual property research all form part of the program, as well as issues generally affecting the industry. Additional workshops provide optional training/learning opportunities and a chance to brush-up on the latest searching techniques.

This annual forum allows Information Professionals to:

* gather together each year to network with colleagues in other corporations and institutions;
* to update their knowledge on the latest thinking, techniques and tools available;
* to keep at the leading edge of their profession in the demanding patent information industries.

Patent Information Specialists, Information Managers and Scientific & Technical Search Experts working in corporations, academic or government research organisations, or other specialist scientific research environments will benefit from attending.

Tom Petrocelli, IP.com Inc.'s SVP of Enterprise Software, wants to see the latest IP gadgets and will be using Twitter to meetup with others at the conference who love intellectual property. If you want to catch up with Tom at IPI-Confex, subscribe to IP.com's Twitter stream @ipdotcom and follow our man in Venice @tompetrocelli and you'll get a chance to see the latest InnovationQ release. If you miss all the action in Venice, email or direct message Tom Petrocelli, and he will track you down when he gets back from his latest mission.

While 007 is adored by millions for his fictional feats of spydom, Bond would be nothing without his enduring and endearing gadget man, Q.

As the Quartermaster himself reminded Bond in the movie License to Kill, "Remember, if it hadn't been for Q Branch, you'd have been dead long ago."

Innovations for the Field

The character Q was based on a real-life engineer named Charles Fraser Smith. Smith worked for the British Government's Ministry of Supply and designed tools for agents during World War II. Today, Q's influence reverberates throughout government agencies in the United States and abroad.

But we're not here to blog about James Bond's Q, today.

We've got something more exciting to announce. This just came across the wires:

AMHERST, NY--(Marketwire - February 27, 2009) - IP.com announces a major release of their flagship intellectual property management software, InnovationQ. The new InnovationQ 3.2 features a new graphical user interface plus two new modules. In addition, several new features are incorporated into this release.

More complex IP management tasks require an interface that provides for quick and easy navigation while allowing power users shortcuts to key features. At the same time, organizations need to visually integrate applications such as InnovationQ into their overall environment. InnovationQ 3.2 accomplishes this with a brand new user interface and configuration features that allow customers to substantially customize visual elements of the application to appear like their other Intranet applications.

"InnovationQ 3.2 continues IP.com's commitment to comprehensive, flexible intellectual property management software," says Tom Petrocelli, SVP of Enterprise Software. "We are always adding new features that our customers need while focusing on those areas of IP management that are often underserved."

InnovationQ 3.2 also introduces two new modules -- the Patent Analysis System for Acquisitions and Divestiture and the Standards Management and Collaboration module.

When making decisions about whether to acquire or sell patents and other intellectual property, a number of stakeholders need to be consulted. Even more so, critical information must be gathered from these stakeholders in order to make considered decisions. The Patent Analysis System for Acquisitions and Divestitures facilitates this communication through the use of collaborative tools that allow stakeholders to discuss opportunities and provide critical information, facilitating decision making.

The Standards Management and Collaboration module assists companies who contribute intellectual property to standards bodies. It helps to track who in the company has contributed IP to a standard body through documents and meetings. InnovationQ 3.2 then identifies changes based on a number of factors that might effect those contributions.

About IP.com.

IP.com offers solutions to help companies effectively manage their intellectual property. Many of the world's most innovative companies use IP.com's services and software to support their IP strategies. With products ranging from prior art publishing and searching to management of intellectual property assets and processes, IP.com offers scaleable products to fit the needs of any organization.

I know, you want us to blog more about James Bond.

In a series of posts here on our corporate blog, Securing Innovation, we've recently looked at how InnovationQ helps our clients manage important facets of their intellectual property assets in these four areas:

1. Invention Review Process
2. Trade Secret Management
3. Publication Clearance System
4. R&D Collaboration

And those articles are now available on this blog in Chinese, here, here, here, and here.

简介

虽然所有的公司都认为专利是知识产权资产的基石，事实上，取得专利和保护专利都是非常昂贵的。更糟糕的是，90%的专利不能够为专利所有人产生收益。美国最高法院最近放宽了“显而易见性”的定义，这使专利的前景更加的

不明确；因为这将使专利更加难以执行。针对此，创新型企业

把商业秘密作为它们知识产权资产中更加经济、更加战略性的

组成部分。

已确立的商业秘密使公司能够：

• 阻止竞争对手使用该技术

• 恢复被挪用的损失

• 阻止前雇员把发明创新泄露给竞争对手

• 阻止非法公布商业秘密

未能保护您的商业秘密将导致：

• 竞争对手可以自由使用您的技术

• 离职员工能够与其它公司分享您的创新

• 失去竞争优势

• 失去市场主导地位

创新管理Q为有效的商业秘密管理提供重要的工具：

1 .防止无关人员访问文件

• 保护登录和访问权限

• 清楚地定义角色和许可

2. 可疑活动提醒：

• 下载和浏览大量文件等

• 异常的访问，例如下班时间发生的大量下载等

• 报告总结所有使用者和文件的动态

3. 在庭审中提供不可辩驳的证据

• 所有文件都被法律保护

• 证据证明文件没有被更改

• 证据证明访问系统的都是经授权的使用者

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a series of posts here on our corporate blog, Securing Innovation, we've recently looked at how InnovationQ helps our clients manage important facets of their intellectual property assets in these four areas:

1. Invention Review Process
2. Trade Secret Management
3. Publication Clearance System
4. R&D Collaboration

InnovationQ Features

The Workflow Engine - The Workflow Engine is software that implements a document workflow process. Workflow processes are standard paths that a document is passed along for review and approval. These can be configured to meet more specific needs. Convenient options to delegate your responsibility or seek consultation on a specific document are available.

A Document Repository - A software platform that stores and organizes documents. It includes the following features:

• Document storage and multi-categorization

• Full text search

• Document event tracking

• Document event alerts

• Reports of user and document activity

Collaborative Innovation - The Collaborative Innovation Module provides customers with the ability to send documents to other members of their team for comment and revision. It facilitates innovation through structured collaboration.

Roles-based Access Control – Administrators can develop different sets of permissions, or rules, which govern what a user (or groups of users) can do within the system.

Automated Invention Scanning/Scrubbing – Enables companies to rapidly align and evaluate technologies for consideration of further investment.

Integrated Prior Art Searching – Seamlessly search peripheral databases including IP.com’s Prior Art Database, U.S. patents and patent applications.

Legal Safeguarding – All documents loaded into the InnovationQ system are automatically date-stamped and digitally fingerprinted for verification. 

InnovationQ Benefits

• InnovationQ helps make processes more efficient and less error prone
• Offers a secure and legally defensible, document management environment
• Extremely easy to use – dramatically reducing training time and costs
• Quick to deploy – the web-based application requires no on-site hardware or software
• Future enhancements – constant focus on solving the problems of innovation management from IP.com
• InnovationQ allows you to mine your intellectual property for product ideas
• InnovationQ provides a solid ROI. Thorough IP asset protection at a cost that is relatively low compared to the value of the assets

A trade secret is essentially technology that is maintained by a company in secrecy. Importantly, though, a trade secret is only enforceable if reasonable safeguards are in place to maintain its secrecy.

While many companies believe that patents are the cornerstone of their intellectual property portfolio, in reality, patents are expensive to obtain and more expensive to defend. Worse yet, 90% of all issued patents turn out to be valueless to the owners. The landscape has become even more treacherous since the Supreme Court has recently broadened the definition of “obviousness”. This will make patents harder to enforce. To combat this, savvy, innovative companies are leveraging trade secrets as an economic and strategic component of their IP portfolio.

An established Trade Secret allows a company to:

• Prevent competitors from using the technology
• Recover damages due to misappropriation
• Prevent former employees from taking the invention to a competitor
• Prevent unlawful disclosure of the trade secret

Failure to protect your Trade Secret(s) means:

• Any competitor can freely use your technology
• Departing employees can share your ideas with other companies
• Loss of competitive advantage
• Loss of market dominance

Key tools for effective Trade Secret Management:

1. Prevent the wrong people from accessing documents

• Secure login and access control
• Clearly defined user roles and permissions

2. Alerts of suspicious activity

• Large number of document downloads, previews, etc
• Unusual access such as off-hour, high volume downloads, etc.
• Reports summarizing all user and document activity

3. Provide irrefutable proof at trial

• All documents are legally safeguarded
• Proof that documents have not been altered
• Proof of secure access to the system by authorized users

To read more about dynamic tools for innovation management see this overview.

September 29th is Día del Inventor in Argentina where they celebrate inventors on the birthday of an individual inventor, much the same as National Inventors Day in the United States is celebrated on Thomas Edison's birthday -- but this particular invention is worthy of worldwide commemoration.

His new invention would sweep the world one day - and so too would his name.

Biro... Laszlo Biro.

No prizes, then, for guessing what his brilliant idea was.

The ballpoint pen is 70 years old this summer and Laszlo was its creator - a man with a vision and a stained shirt front.

He designed it in his garage in Buenos Aires. By the time he died in 1985, a millionaire aged 86, there was one in every pocket on the planet.

"What could be more beautiful than the ballpoint pen," said Eduardo Fernandez, president of the Argentinian Inventors Association, who are planning a celebration in Laszlo's honour on his birthday.

Happy Birthday, Biro.

In France, in 1945, a man named Marcel BICH, who had been the production manager for a French ink manufacturer, bought with his partner Edouard BUFFARD, a factory outside Paris and set up business as the maker of parts for fountain pens and mechanical lead pencils.

While his writing instruments parts business began to grow, the development of the ballpoint was advancing in both Europe and the United States and Marcel BICH saw the enormous potential for this new writing instrument.

After obtaining the patent rights to a ball pen created by Hungarian inventor, Ladislao BIRO, Marcel BICH introduced his own ball pen in December 1950. Touting his product as a reliable pen at an affordable price, he called it « BIC » a shortened, easy-to-remember version of his own name. The famous BIC® CRISTAL® ballpoint pen was born!

In 2002, the BIC® Cristal® ballpoint pen entered the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MOMA), at the Department of Architecture and Design.

By 2005 BIC had sold its hundred billionth ballpoint pen.

 Intellectual Property News and Opinion

The American Intellectual Property Law Association will be holding their annual meeting at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC on October 23-25, where the team from IP.com will be available to meet and discuss how the latest enterprise software platform for innovation management,  InnovationQ, helps companies and their counsel to safeguard intellectual property assets and make better decisions about those assets.

Some of the world's largest and most innovative companies trust IP.com for Intellectual Property asset management, defensive publishing, and patent search services. So, we were interested to learn from the story of the invention of the ballpoint pen that Biro had neglected to apply for a patent in the United States for his ballpoint pen invention, or to manage his intellectual property as well as he might today with the management tools now available to inventors around the world via the Internet.

Groklaw reports that IBM has just announced a new corporate policy regarding its "behavior when helping to create open technical standards" and hundreds of comments follow in the ensuing discussion.

There has been a debate among legal scholars about whether patents were seen by the framers of the US Constitution as “property” or, as Thomas Jefferson charged, a monopoly “privilege.”

In a post titled Patents & Financial Meltdown on the Technological Innovation and Intellectual Property blog, the question is asked: "What happens when you give out lots of property rights, but nobody exactly knows what those rights cover? Yes, that might describe software/business-method patents and the result is costly litigation, disputes and a net disincentive for innovation."

The American Bar Association Section of Intellectual Property Law has launched Landslide™, a bi-monthly magazine that offers news and analysis on patents, trademarks, copyrights and related topics. Written by and for an audience of intellectual property lawyers, the magazine will cover this rapidly evolving legal specialization through an emphasis that includes business, technology, the arts, legislation and international developments.

“Increasingly complex, intellectual property law touches nearly every aspect of business, trade and commerce. This magazine will acquaint lawyers with both a wide and narrow scope on this emerging body of law, presenting articles written by some of the best minds in intellectual property,” said Joe Potenza, chair of the ABA-IPL’s Content Advisory Board. “We believe Landslide will be a force in the IP world.”

The first new magazine introduced by ABA Publishing in nearly seven years, Landslide is dedicated to sharing IP knowledge and experience acquired on the frontlines of legal practice, business, the arts and science, exploring national and international legal arenas.

Virtual Law Cover Story by Benjamin Duranske and Sean Kane in New IP Magazine “Landslide”

Patent databases continue to proliferate on the internet. On the Patent Librarian's Notebook, there's a comparison of free patent databases.

In a blog post titled USPTO/EPO clogs up the prosecution highway with red tape, David Pearce at IPKat notes that the EPO has just announced that the Patent Prosecution Highway (their capitals) is due to begin on 29 September. This scheme will allow patent applications that have been examined and allowed in either the USPTO or the EPO to be fast-tracked in the other office. The programme will run for a trial period of 1 year, after which the offices will assess whether it is worth being fully implemented.

Out-Law.com, from the international law firm Pinsent Masons, reports that the European Patent Office (EPO) was hit last week by a strike by staff who were demanding not better pay and conditions but the freedom to help create better quality patents. Joff Wild at IAM Magazine asks, "Where is the evidence to support EPO examiner union's claims?"

Duncan Bucknell's IP ThinkTank Gobal Week in Review is a comprehensive selection of top intellectual property news breaking in the blogosphere and on the internet each week, with the added value of a Pharma & BioTech Review this week.

IP Watchdog notes that Everyday Edisons is recruiting at Inventors Expo.

Patents

After the invention of the ballpoint pen that came to be known in many parts of the world by his surname, Biro kept tinkering. He reportedly recorded 32 inventions, including a washing machine device and an automatic transmission for cars that was bought by the German subsidiary of General Motors. The transmission invention might have secured Biro a wealthy life, but GM never used the patent.

Such was not the case with American inventor Robert Kearns, whose patent case of a lifetime against Ford and Chrysler is now the subject of a major motion picture, Flash of Genius, that opens in theaters this week.

The movie, Flash of Genius, is previewed on the Patent Baristas law blog by patent attorney Stephen Albainy-Jenei, who gives it two thumbs up based on subject matter alone:

Billed as educational while also inspiring and entertaining, the early reviews have been positive. The story is based on the true story of college professor and part-time inventor Robert Kearns’s (Greg Kinnear) long battle with the U.S. automobile industry and his fight to receive recognition for his invention. Kearns took on a battle that nobody thought he could win.

Kearns invented and patented the intermittent windshield wiper mechanism for use in light rain or mist and tried to license it to the big automakers. They all rejected his idea and then some went ahead and put intermittent wipers in their cars beginning in 1969. In 1967, he received the first of more than 30 patents for his wipers. He sued Ford in 1978 and Chrysler in 1982 for patent infringement.

Click the link on the movie poster above to watch the trailer. Hopefully, we'll get to read more reviews of this movie by other patent attorneys aspiring to be the next Siskel, Ebert & Roeper.

In this Friday IP Roundup at Patent Baristas, Albainy-Jenei notes:

Just a Patent Examiner has a rebuttal to the argument that patent reform is needed to prevent applicants from “wearing down” the Examiners. The theory is that by taking advantage of (or abusing) the unlimited continuations available to applicants, applicants can wring an undeserved allowance from an examiner simply by refusing to abandon the application. According to JAPE, this is wrong. Every time an applicant files an RCE (or a straight continuation), the examiner receives a count for the express abandonment, and another count for the first action after RCE. It also makes the Examiner’s job easier: “Speaking for myself, examining a continuation really does give me a serious head start.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit clarified the law of design patents. Rebecca Hanovice at Sheppard Mullin's Intellectual Property Law Blog says, " In view of the Egyptian Goddess decision, patentees should be aware that infringers may attempt to rely on similar prior art designs to narrow the focus of the ordinary observer test to distinctions in the designs that might otherwise escape notice."

Jeremy Telman at the ContractsProf Blog notes that some fruit now comes with an end-user license agreement to protect the intellectual property.

They Invented What? Banana protective device.

Gene Quinn at Patent Fools pens Trolling: A Massive Redistribution of the Wealth.

Trade Secrets

In the U.S. we have civil causes of action under federal law for infringement of patents, copyrights and trademarks. Alas, we do not have a federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation! But we need one badly! according to Jorda on Trade Secrets: the interface between patents and trade secrets.

Trade Secrets Derive From "Equitable Principles" Rather Than Property or Contract Rights, according to a recent case before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals cited by Jason Jarvis on the Trading Secrets blog of the Seyfarth Shaw law firm.

Judge awards $57 million in secrets theft but recovery of damages awarded is very unlikely. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Along with a recent post from the Annals of Chinese Economic Espionage, Womble Carlyle's Trade Secret blog has an interesting post about a former Intel employee who's been accused of misappropriating Intel trade secrets by downloading to his Intel- a host of confidential Intel documents, including 13 "top secret" company files containing highly sensitive design plans for future processor chips.

But what really got me up off my massage chair in the middle of the Bills vs.Rams football game of the week was news of a new Womble Carlysle Furniture Law Blog.This blog will focus on legal issues affecting the furniture industry with a particular emphasis on intellectual property issues.

Trademarks

Ballpoint pens are still widely referred to as a biro in many English-speaking countries, including the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The term "biro" in colloquial British English is used generically to mean any ball point pen. Although the word is a registered trademark, it has become a genericised trademark. The company's intellectual property department keeps a close eye on the media and will often write to publications who use its trade name without a capital letter or as a generic term for ballpoint pens, in order to preserve its trademark, according to this article about Laszlo Biro in Wikipedia.

Did you ever wonder where the BIC® logo comes from?

Green Patent Blog requests reconsideration of trademark application, argues "acquired distinctiveness" of its own blog name. It's no Likelihood of Confusion®.

Marty Schwimmer at The Trademark Blog has officially offered to file an application for TROUBLED ASSET RELIEF PROGRAM and catchy TARP logo, on behalf of the US Government, attorney fees waived.

Copyright

U.S. lawmakers approved the creation of a cabinet-level position of copyright czar as part of sweeping intellectual property enforcement legislation that sailed through the Senate on Friday. Ron Coleman at Likelihood of Confusion® asks, "...what can we do to at least try to get them to hire Bill Patry for the first copyright autocrat?"

In a post titled Sabine Dresses, Susan Scafidi at Counterfeit Chic tells incredible stories of identical twin sisters, bridezilla, and stolen wedding dress designs.

Walter Olson at Overlawyered picks up on a story from Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing about parody, nastygrams, and George Lucas of Star Wars, and ponders, "If only we could all resolve threatening letters from lawyers as neatly as the editors at MAD magazine were once able to do."

Cyber Law

Eric Menhart of CyberLaw PC discusses Political Domain Name Infringement.

As this election year heats up candidates in all types of political races are trying to reach likely voters at their doors, on their telephones and on the Internet. In this race for voters you might guess that a candidate’s domain name plays an important role in sharing his or her message with likely voters. What if a candidate’s domain name is already taken by a third party? What if a candidate’s name has already been taken by their opponent? Many of today’s candidates, finally recognizing the importance of a strong Internet presence in races for political office, are facing the reality of this intellectual property concern.

Brett Trout, author of Cyber Law: A Legal Arsenal for Online Business, discusses Internet fraud. So what is the most prevalent form of Internet fraud. Well, you might be surprised to learn that online auction fraud accounts for 44.9 percent of Internet fraud complaints referred to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). This is more than twice the number of complaints received for the next highest category, check fraud (19 percent).

Postscript

By the way, here's an interesting article He Invented The Ballpoint Pen from Investor's Business Daily that's perhaps the best story about the invention of the ballpoint pen by Laszlo Biro that we found during the preparation of this presentation.

Reinventing the most popular ballpoint

'din-ink' by andrea cingoli + paolo emilio bellisario + cristian cellini + francesca fontana, 2007
shortlisted entry of the designboom dining in 2015 competition, a set of biccaps, including a fork-cap, a knife-cap and a spoon-cap, that replaces the normal bic cap during lunch time

Blawg Review has information about next week's host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues. Of particular interest to everyone interested in Intellectual Property law and policy might be the November 10th presentation of Blawg Review #185 by Global Intellectual Property Strategist Duncan Bucknell at his indispensible IP Think Tank weblog.

Oh, one more thing...

This is simply birolliant - the incredible 10ft 'photographs' drawn with a ballpoint pen. They may look like pin-sharp photographs - but these amazing pictures are actually drawings created with the humble ballpoint pen. The stunning pictures, measuring up to 10ft high, were drawn by a rising star of the art world, Juan Francisco Casas.

Job of the Week: IP Work Isn't Just for Litigators

 

The Chicago office of a top international firm is seeking a mid-level attorney with general corporate skills to join their IP and Technology Transactional practice. The attorney will have the opportunity to work on a wide range of key tech matters, including outsourcing (ITO and BPO), strategic alliances, software and systems (development and licensing), R&D and technology transfer, licensing (patent, trademark, copyright), biotechnology, e-commerce, and financing and tech company M&A deals.

According to news reports:

Serenex alleged that Huang stole experimental cancer treatment formulations and delivered them to business partners in China. As the case unfolded in Wake County last year, Huang fled to the People's Republic of China, according to court documents.

The corporate espionage case highlights a particular vulnerability of the Triangle's research-and-development firms. The financial value of their research depends on secrecy.

Serenex went to elaborate lengths to protect its trade secrets, including devising internal code names for proprietary chemical formulas to fool computer hackers..

But, as is often the case, the greatest vulnerability of trade secrets was not computer hackers but the "inside job" of a company employee.

Serenex was the victim of corporate espionage carried out by Yunsheng Huang, a former Serenex chemist and, it is alleged, Tongxiang Zhang, a member of the Chinese Communist Party who runs the Chinese companies to which Huang delivered the Serenex trade secrets.

It is doubtful that the company will ever recover any of the judge's award for the damages determined to have been suffered by this theft of trade secrets. It's no comfort to the shareholders that the company has this award against individuals it can't actually bring to court for the loss of what the judge termed its most valuable asset, its intellectual property.

Clearly, there's a need for effective proactive protection of trade secrets to ensure that such valuable assets are not able to be taken from a company in the first place, leaving management to chase a former employee internationally only to recover a worthless award of damages.