It will take a combined effort of academia, government, and industry to bring about the change from a gasoline economy to a hydrogen economy. The forces are building and progress is being made. It is of major importance that a change of this magnitude not be forced on unwilling participants, but that all of us work together for an economically viable path to change.

Geoffrey Ballard,

World Hydrogen Energy Conference

Geoffrey Ballard, a Canadian pioneer of the fuel cell industry and an entrepreneur Time magazine once named one of its "Heroes for the Planet," died on August 2, 2008. He was 76.

Ballard developed the world's first hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered, zero-emission transit bus. Science World, a science center in Vancouver, British Columbia, unveiled the vehicle in 1993.

In 1979, Ballard founded Ballard Power Systems Inc., which makes fuel cells that are used in materials handling, residential cogeneration, backup power and transportation. Until 1997, he was chairman of the company that bears his name.

Ballard's name "will forever be associated with this company's fuel-cell products, which are being deployed as an energy source for applications in a growing number of important global markets," said John Sheridan, president and chief executive of Ballard Power Systems.

A geophysicist by training, Ballard spent the first years of his career working for the U.S. Army, specializing initially in microwave communications and later in ice physics. In the latter role, he studied ways to hide fuel tanks for U.S. bombers in Greenland's ice fields.

When the energy crisis hit the United States in 1974, Ballard was chosen to lead the newly created Federal Energy Conservation Research program.

Stymied by Congress' refusal to provide what he considered adequate funding, he quit and set out on his own, buying a decrepit Arizona motel for $2,000 and turning it into a research laboratory. He initially tried to create a lithium battery that could be used instead of an internal-combustion motor in cars, but that effort led him into bankruptcy.

The company moved to Vancouver when it got a contract to provide a lithium battery for a submarine owned by Canadian industrialist John Horton, who agreed to provide funding for the company.

In 1983, Ballard teamed up with engineer Paul Howard and electrochemist Keith Prater to try to develop fuel cells, getting seed money from the Canadian military.

Conceptually, fuel cells are simple. Hydrogen and oxygen are combined in the presence of a catalyst to produce electricity, with the only waste product being water.

The concept for the technology was developed in the 1830s by British scientist Sir William Grove, but implementation had been slow and fuel cells proved to be either bulky and inefficient or very expensive.

The three entrepreneurs worked tirelessly to improve the efficiency of existing fuel cells and reduce their size and cost.

A breakthrough moment for the company came in summer 1989 while Ballard was relaxing in a spa at the Hollyburn Country Club in Vancouver with a British Columbia official. Ballard convinced the official that his company could produce a municipal bus that would run on hydrogen and emit only water vapor.

A recent story about Geoff Ballard in the LA Times notes that he recognized that fuel-cell cars could never be viable unless a distribution system could be established for hydrogen, so, in 1999 he started General Hydrogen to explore ways to manufacture and market the fuel. That company was bought by Plug Power Inc. last year.

Geoffry Ballard is acknowledged world-wide as the father of the fuel cell industry. But his humble mission in life was to use his unique intellect and far reaching vision, and combine his scientific, business, and environmental knowledge for the betterment of the world. While doing so, Geoffrey was awarded the 1st ever "Lifetime Achievement Award" by the World Energy Technology Summit in 2004. He is the only person to have won in two different categories; Energy in 1999 and Environment in 2001. He was recognized by The Economist with an "Innovation Award for Leadership in Energy and the Environment"; named "Business Leader of the Year" by Scientific American magazine; honored for "Energy Innovation" by Discovery magazine; featured as a "Master of Modern Technology" on CBC Newsworld; recognized as a "Pioneer of Innovation" by the Vancouver Board of Trade; and graced the cover of Time magazine as "Hero of the Planet. In December 2000, Geoffrey received the first ever "Goteborg International Environmental Prize" from Sweden.

He was awarded many honorary doctorates from universities, and Canada rewarded him with the Canadian Commemorative Medal in 1992. He was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1999 and the Order of British Columbia in 2003.

Although Mr. Ballard never sought public recognition, his vision, clarity of thought, and strong sense of integrity influenced all who came in contact with him. He believed in "giving back" to his community and was an enthusiastic supporter and volunteer at Covenant House in Vancouver, British Columbia. He died peacefully, surrounded by his family on August 2, 2008. Geoff will be missed greatly, and remembered by many of us for fuel cell innovations that continue to have an impact on our planet.

Inequitable conduct cases usually arise out of a failure to notify the patent office of relevant prior art or a prior public use, publication or sale of an invention. Other categories of misconduct include submission of misleading comparative data during prosecution, or misleading the patent office regarding the date of invention. A checklist addressing these areas would include the following:


1. Remind your client of the duty to disclose relevant prior art, including related copending applications (and make sure to file this prior art with the United States Patent and Trademark Office). Make sure that the examiner at the patent office is aware of activity in related cases, if handled by other examiners.
2. Ask about attendance at conferences, posters, and abstracts submitted to journals.
3. Remember to file prior art uncovered in foreign searches.
4. Ask about offers for sale or other public disclosures through use or publication.
5. If you are filing a declaration, make certain that it is clear to the PTO where the interests of the declarant lie. Do not conceal from the PTO facts known to you that are adverse to your client’s position (such as negative data), in order to advance your client’s case.
6. Discuss the date of invention and related evidence with your client.

Keeping a checklist permits one to easily keep track of new developments in the law, by merely updating the checklist as new practice requirements (based on changes in the law) develop. The above checklist is just a start.

You can think of an Alltop site as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In other words, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation” by providing “aggregation without aggravation.”

Here’s how some other people have explained Alltop. First, Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems with Pictures, used these two pictures to explain Alltop vis-à-vis Google. Second, here is a review by Sarah Perez in ReadWriteWeb.

A search of the US Patent database from 1996 to 2001 reveals almost 10,000 patents that cite the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin as prior art. The Bulletin, which is published as a component of Research Disclosure, is a mechanism for defensive publishing. Citation of a publication, such as the Bulletin, in a patent application indicates that the publication contributes to the state of the art against which the application is judged. IBM uses the Bulletin to advance the state of the art, thereby raising the bar for its competitors' patent applications. In other words, Bulletin publications force IBM's competitors to narrow their patent claims, helping IBM to reduce the possibility that its competitors' patent claims will encompass IBM inventions.

Citation of such a large number of Bulletin articles strongly suggests that IBM's defensive publication strategy is paying off. Despite its successful use by IBM and a handful of other companies, defensive publication has been slow to catch on as an intellectual property (IP) strategy in biotechnology. This article discusses the legal implications of defensive publications, analyzes strategic considerations for determining whether to publish, patent, or maintain an invention as a trade secret, discusses legal considerations for the preparation of defensive publications, and discusses forums for defensive publication.

• are published electronically on a real time basis
• are digitally fingerprinted and date-stamped as irrefutable proof of the content/date
• are published twice each month in the IP.com Journal
• are made available via the web and libraries around the world
• are searched worldwide by patent examiners
• become an integral part of corporate IP strategies
• reduce the costs of IP administration by preserving your right to use technology without the cost of patenting

“Intellectual property is one of the hottest, fastest-moving areas for corporate counsel and law firms alike,” said Peter Vanderheyden, vice president of Global Intellectual Property at LexisNexis. “LexisNexis continues to add content and functionality to its growing suite of IP services to ensure customers have the best tools available to protect their valuable assets.”

Consolidating two important prior art sources, LexisNexis allowed customers to have full-text access to defensive publications from both IP.com and Research Disclosure available through lexis.com. Consistent with LexisNexis prior art collections, these sources will be directly accessible in full text from TotalPatent via the lexis.com toolbar.

Research Disclosure is an international defensive publication service that’s considered one of the most significant non-patent prior art databases in the world. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) list Research Disclosure’s content on its “minimum documentation required” list.

IP.com provides companies with the tools and solutions to better manage IP and innovation records. In fact, lexis.com customers will have access to IP.com’s exclusive list of all IBM disclosures dating back to 1957.

“The integration of Research Disclosure and IP.com content allows customers to minimize the time and expense with researching, writing and registering patents on similar ideas,” said Vanderheyden. “In addition to this valuable content, we offer unique insights and interpretations through our world-class suite of authors. In fact, we’d like to recognize one of our prestigious authors, Paul McGrady, who was recently named to IP Law & Business' List of ‘Top 50 IP People Under 45.’”

Launched on June 15, 2007 by New York Law School Professor Beth Noveck together with a network of corporate and academic collaborators and in cooperation with the USPTO, Peer-to-Patent is the first social networking project with a direct link to decision-making by the federal government. Under traditional practices, USPTO patent examiners bear the sole burden of identifying and relating information pertinent to patent applications. Under Peer-to-Patent, expert volunteers were permitted to assist in these efforts at the www.peertopatent.org Web site.

With the consent of participating inventors, patent applications were posted to the Peer-to-Patent site where the expert reviewers discussed the applications and submitted bibliographic information, known as prior art, relevant to determining if an invention was new and non-obvious, as the law requires to obtain a patent. At the conclusion of the review period, this prior art was forwarded to the USPTO patent examiner for consideration and use in their further search efforts.

Major companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Intel, and GE, companies whose patent portfolios account for nearly one-third of the patents issued to the top 30 U.S. patent holders in 2007, all submitted patent applications to the Peer-to-Patent process. Other patent applications were submitted by Red Hat, Cisco, and Yahoo!, as well as smaller firms.

Data from the first year of the Peer-to-Patent pilot shows that an open network of reviewers can improve the quality of information available to patent examiners and that such citizen-reviewers are capable of producing information relevant to the patent examination process and are willing to volunteer time. Initial results based on a survey of patent examiners from the USPTO suggest that information provided by the public is beneficial to the examination process.

Findings from the first-year report include:

* Peer-to-Patent attracted more than 2,000 peer reviewers.

* The first 23 office actions issued during the pilot phase showed use of Peer-to-Patent submitted prior art in nine rejections

* On average, citizen-reviewers contributed 6 hours reviewing each patent application in the pilot

* Although USPTO rules permit third-party prior art submissions on pending applications, the average number of prior art submissions on Peer-to-Patent applications was 2,000 times that of standard rule-based submissions.

* Ninety-two percent of patent examiners surveyed said they would welcome examining another application with public participation, while 73% of participating examiners want to see Peer-to-Patent implemented as a regular office practice.

* 21% of participating examiners stated that prior art submitted by the Peer-to-Patent community was "inaccessible" directly to USPTO examiners.

* Prior art submissions by Peer-to-Patent reviewers were four times as likely to include non-patent literature (any document that is not a patent, including Web sites, journals, textbooks, and databases) as compared to prior art submissions by applicants.

"As the first example of harnessing public knowledge to improve a government process, the first year of Peer-to-Patent was an unquestioned success," Noveck said. She added: "While the impact of this project on patent quality will take longer to assess, the early indications are certainly promising."

1. Encourage Organized Efforts to Have a More Thorough Review of Patent Applications

* Increase third party efforts to improve prior art searches and to facilitate a stronger understanding of the world of prior art.

2. Support Organized Efforts After Patents Have Been Issued

* Reexaminations should be limitless in time and with no financial harm limitations (in many countries, public interest organizations like EFF are only allowed to challenge issued patents for a short period of time after they have issued, even though often a patent’s threat to innovations may not be immediately obvious).

* Don't Streamline. Maintain a variety of options for reexamination requesters.

3. Increase Access to Information in the Patent Office

* Update information in the patent office’s online databases regularly.

* Conduct and publish regular evaluations of effectiveness and performance within the Patent Office.

1. Software Patent Institute
2. Open Source as Prior Art
3. Patent Commons
4. Peer to Patent Project

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Salvation. The name of two intricate Belgian-style ales, created by us -- Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing and Adam Avery of Avery Brewing. After becoming friends a few years ago, we realized that we both had a Salvation in our line-ups. Was it going to be a problem? Should one of us relinquish the rights? "Hell no!" we said. In fact, it was quickly decided that we should blend the brews to catch the best qualities of each and create an even more complex libation. In April 2004, in top-secret meeting at Russian River Brewing (well actually it was packed in the pub, and many were looking over our shoulders wondering what the hell was going on), we came up with the perfect blend of the two Salvations. Natalie, Vinnie's much more significant other, exclaimed, "We should call this Collaboration, not Litigation Ale!" -- Perfect!

"I am absolutely amazed at the success of these patents," said Steven Farago, Ph.D., the inventor of the Acticon "smart connector" technology. "Back in 1996, I wouldn't have thought it was possible to license 150 companies. But General Patent has been wonderful and exceeded all my expectations. They have left no stone unturned in enforcing the Acticon patents."

When a third party claim has been clear and the terms reasonable, we have entered into licenses. However, those situations are easily distinguished from the cases that make up almost all of our present docket of patent litigation. These lawsuits have usually been filed with no advance notice, by plaintiffs that don't commercialize their patents (i.e. create and sell products) and in venues considered favorable to them. It's also almost always the case that these plaintiffs have done little or no investigation to ascertain whether our products infringe prior to filing their lawsuit.