While it's sometimes hard to find metrics that show exactly how this blog is making a meaningful difference in how IP.com is perceived in the intellectual property community, it's good to know that journalists writing for major media sources are apparently reading our corporate blog.
The Register, a widely-read technology publication based in the UK, recently reported on a lawsuit brought by a company called IPCom GmbH & Co that has been "trying to get money out of Nokia, to the tune of €12bn" in this legal action, "which has been rumbling along for the last 12 months at least." As noted in a recent article headlined:
Nokia has lodged a complaint with the European Commission, claiming that IPCom is abusing mobile patents originally owned by Bosch that are already the subject of legal action in the UK and Germany.
The patents concerned relate to GSM and were developed by Bosch back when that company had aspirations on the telecommunications market, but transferred to IPCom GmbH & Co (not to be confused with IP.Com) in 2007. Since then IPCom has been trying to get money out of Nokia, to the tune of €12bn, for licensing those patents.
What's interesting about this from our perspective, as we've emphasized above, is that the reporter apparently googled IPCom GmbH & Co and found this blog post that obviates any confusion between that company and IP.com Inc., which is unrelated and is not suing Nokia for bazillions. Kudos to reporter Bill Ray for doing his homework and making sure his readers are well-informed about this legal action, which is probably the largest patent infringement claim in history.
The Eco-Patent Commons is an initiative to create a collection of patents that directly or indirectly protect the environment. The patents will be pledged by companies and other intellectual property rights holders and made available to anyone, free of charge. The Commons is a resource for connecting those who have had success with a particular challenge in a way that benefits the environment and those who are facing similar challenges.
With the launch of the Eco-Patent Commons earlier this week, four companies -- IBM, Nokia, Pitney-Bowes and Sony -- joined with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development to do something almost unprecedented: they agreed to relinquish their control over inventions that could benefit the planet in order to spur innovation for the greater good.
Thus begins the transcript of a very interesting podcast interview with IBM's Vice President of Environmental Affairs, Wayne Balta, on GreenBiz Radio.
Wayne Balta: The Eco-Patent Commons is a first of its kind initiative under which we at IBM and some other like-minded companies are partnering with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to create a place where patents related to the environment can be pledged by the patent holder so that others around the world can access them and use them free of charge.
The basic premise here is that in the environmental arena, sharing knowledge and technology has the great potential to better address the world's problems. That there exists no organized way today to do this on a global basis. That leading businesses may hold patents that are not an essential source of business income to them. And that by sharing them with others on a global basis, both developed and developing countries, it can help people develop in a more sustainable way. And for those who pledge the patents it might also need to lead to new opportunities for innovation and collaboration with others, whom you might not otherwise reach.
...you know, pledging patents for free use by others is not necessarily a common way companies think about their portfolio of intellectual property and we at IBM recognize that. Now, we at IBM probably have as much or more experience as anyone with this because we have also done prior patent pledges. So we recognize that as we've spoken to others about the idea that it isn't something that you're innately thinking of doing. But as people think through the best use of some of this IP and the opportunities that could come out of a commons like the one we're creating, many have realized and others I believe will realize that it can be a win-win situation.
It can be a win for innovators in other parts of the world, who might look at these ideas and further them and use them as the basis of additional solutions. And it can be a win for those who pledge because it could open up opportunities to collaborate with people that you might not otherwise have collaborated with.
In a joint press release, other member companies of the Eco-Patent Commons today issued the following statements:
Donal O’Connell, Director of Intellectual Property, Nokia, said, “Environmental issues have great potential to help us discover the next wave of innovation because they force us all to think differently about how we make, consume and recycle products. From Nokia we have pledged a patent designed to help companies safely re-use old mobile phones by transforming them into new products like digital cameras, data monitoring devices or other electronic items. Recycling the computing power of mobile phones in this way could significantly increase the reuse of materials in the electronics industry.”
Angelo Chaclas, Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Intellectual Property and Technology Law at Pitney Bowes, said, “The Eco-Patent Commons offers an effective framework to develop and make available technology that helps combat climate change and reduce the release of carbon dioxide. Our objective for the Eco-Patent Commons is to promote the spread of environmentally conscious technologies that make conservation and preservation a priority.”
Hidemi Tomita, General Manager of Sony Corporation’s Corporate Social Responsibility Department, said, “To more effectively protect the environment, it is time for business to join efforts rather than tackling the issue alone. We truly believe this joint effort with our peers will mark a significant step and help transfer innovative ideas and technologies across industries and beyond to developing countries. We are excited to launch this platform to share technologies that will bring about positive changes in the environment.”
These ideas are exemplary of a new wave of thinking described in a recent blog post on Open Innovators. "Companies need to get a lot better at bringing external ideas and knowledge in from the outside, while at the same time allowing internal ideas not being used to flow outside the organization."
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a CEO-led, global association of some 200 companies dealing exclusively with business and sustainable development. The Council provides a platform for companies to explore sustainable development, share knowledge, experiences and best practices, and to advocate business positions on these issues in a variety of forums, working with governments, non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations. Members are drawn from more than 35 countries and 20 major industrial sectors.
Get the FAQs and download the Brochure of the Eco-Patent Commons in pdf here.
At IP.com Inc., we'd like to get involved in support of the Eco-Patent Commons project to expand this initiative to include the sharing of innovative ideas and technologies that directly or indirectly protect the environment, which have not yet been patented but are otherwise in the prior art and knowledge of the member corporations, the scientific community, and academia.
IP.com's Prior Art Database technology could be made readily available, free of charge, as a customized repository of global innovation in support of the Eco-Patents Commons. How amazing would that be?
Make no mistake about it, our company IP.com Inc. has nothing to do with a German IP licensing company IPCom GmbH & Co. KG that is demanding billions in patent licensing fees from Nokia.
IPcom, an exploiter of patents based in Pullach, near Munich, is demanding 12 billion euros from the Finnish group Nokia for use of mobile telephony patents, reports Handelsblatt. IPCom is said to have lodged a complaint with the Land Court in Mannheim in early January, aimed at prohibiting Nokia's use of eight patent families. That would mean a ban on sales in a large number of countries, though what particular patents are involved is not yet clear.
The IPCom boss, Christoph Schoeller, said negotiations on the licensing of the patents had been going on for a long time, and now his firm's patience was at an end. The Nokia group is reported to be rejecting the claims, asserting that some of the patents are invalid and the fees being claimed are excessive.
News of this multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Nokia by the German-based company, which press reports sometimes refer to as simply IPCom or IP-Com, provoked commentary in The Motley Fool article headlined Have Patent, Will Sue:
No one expects reforms to happen overnight. Particularly when the U.S. government and the entire tech industry deal with the tangled nuances of patent law, positive changes in the system will naturally be slow in coming.
But in the meantime, companies continue to use and abuse patent rights to go after competitors -- or after any entity with deep enough pockets. While many of the industry's larger players, such as Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) and Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM), are tangled in more legitimate beefs over patent infringement related to their products, some companies employing only a few lawyers and developing no products continue to sue indiscriminately.
And the cost of damages seems to know no limits. The industry marveled at the $612 million Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) ended up paying to scrappy patent prosecutor NTP, but that's nothing compared with what some are asking for. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) recently got slapped with a lawsuit demanding -- get this -- at least $17.7 billion. The complainant in this case is a German company called IP-Com, bankrolled by Fortress Investment Group (NYSE: FIG).
Our company, IP.com Inc., based in the USA, should not be confused with any other company using a similar name. Information about our company, which serves many leading companies with tools to protect and secure their intellectual property assets, can be found on our corporate website at www.ip.com.
IP.com was founded to fill a growing void in the tools available to the intellectual property community. Our initial product, the IP.com Prior Art Database, was created to provide companies with a fast and effective, centralized outlet for publishing and searching technical disclosures. Since its inception, the IP.com Prior Art Database has continued to grow, attracting high profile clients such as IBM, General Electric, Motorola, Abbott Laboratories, and Eastman Kodak (to name a few).
In our process of developing the Intellectual Property Prior Art Database, we have built a rock-solid, easy-to-use, legally-defensible method for providing verifiable date-stamps and ensuring the integrity (proving they haven't been altered) of electronic files. This technology has become the cornerstone of IP.com's service offerings. We have extended our product line to allow corporations to utilize our innovative file protection (safeguarding) methods on their own private (internal) data using the IP.com Innovation Q or the online IP.com Creative Registry.
The IP.com Innovation Q product combines the legal safeguarding processes along with secured-access search and retrieval to provide a complete solution for safeguarding, searching, and archiving your sensitive data (such as R&D lab notebooks).
Journalists are welcome to contact the CEO of IP.com, Thomas J. Colson, a registered patent attorney, for more information about the company, to get a quote or comment, or to arrange an interview about current issues in patent litigation and intellectual property management for innovative companies.
Deep in a dumpster lay two hundred years of patent lithographs that the US Patent Office discarded when they went digital. Out went the handwritten examiner notes and fine ink drawings on patents by Tesla, Edison, Bell, Goddard, Farnsworth and Carlson - masters of innovation who lived in far more challenging economic times.
Randy Rabin and I have shared with the world 140 of these original hand drawn lithographs in a book Drawing On Brilliance. Most have never been seen by the public before. Each holds the secret to innovation success – how to build products that will change the world.
Accelerating Innovation With Search
Think about this. There have been a mere 360 years between Galileo's discovery of the sun's turning on its axis and the first moon landing. Then less than 100 years between a time when the world's roads were made of dirt and the invention of the Internet. We are on a steep trajectory of success in solving global problems.
So drawing on the brilliance of the innovators who brought us this far, we can accelerate the rate at which we successfully build products that change the world.
For example, success at controlled flight eluded the likes of Galileo, DaVinci and hundreds who followed them. So what was it that two bicycle shop repairmen from Ohio named Wright did differently that would then serve to raise the standard of living around the globe? What approach did they take that centuries of geniuses before them did not?
Search! With no engineering degrees and limited financial resources they began a profoundly systematic search, (and without the benefit of the internet).
Dear Sirs (letter to The Smithsonian):
I am about to begin a systematic study of the subject in preparation for practical work which I expect to devote what time I can spare from regular business. I wish to obtain such papers as Smithsonian Institution has published on this subject, and if possible a list of other works in print in the English language. I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine.
I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then if possible add my mite to help on the future worker who will attain success. I do not know the terms on which you send out your publications but if you will inform me of the cost I will remit the price.
Yours truly,
Wilbur Wright
Before building a single model they looked at centuries of prior art, dissecting the patterns of failure as carefully as the patterns of success as far back as Leonardo DaVinci. They used mapping, visualization, and had completed a painstaking analysis of as much available scientific information and technical intelligence as they could find.
How does starting with search ensure product success?
IPis the administrator and editor of this blog. If you have questions about the blog concerning errors, typographical or otherwise, please send an email...More...
Johnson Kongis the Executive Vice President / Head of Asia Pacific, for IP.com Inc. Johnson Kong has many years of hands-on experience in business. As the Execut...More...
Mark O'Donnelljoined IP.com as the Vice President of Intellectual Property Research and in April of 2006. He currently manages the direction and growth of IP.com's...More...
Sam Baxteris the Chief Technology Officer and a Vice President of IP.com, Inc. Previously he was the Executive Vice President of JRS Clinical Technologies, Inc....More...
Thomas J. Colsonis President and CEO of IP.com, Inc. He is a registered patent attorney with extensive experience in both prosecution and litigation. Throughout his c...More...
Blawg Review #254 features links with information about International Women's Day, National Women's History Month and the 30th anniversary of the National Women's History Project.
Confidential business and trade secret information is more than the stuff of corporate espionage. It is the competitive edge of any business, regardless of size, and deserves protection. Set up the proper safeguards to protect you confidential and trade secret information and you’ll be able to pursue your legal remedies the way Home Depot recently did.
Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT") announced that it has released claim construction dictionaries authored by Dr. David Garrod (PUBPAT Senior Litigation Counsel) free of charge to the public.
Note: IPCom GmbH & Co KG is not to be confused with IP.com Inc., an unrelated corporation. Nokia Oyj, the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, withdrew an antitrust complaint at the European Commission after German patent licensing company IPCom GmbH & Co KG said it’s committed to licensing its technology under fair terms.Nokia said in a statement today that it has achieved its “main objective” in the complaint, which was to make sure that IPCom offers its mobile-phone patents under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.
"Genius is the act of solving a problem in a way no one has solved it before. It has nothing to do with winning a Nobel prize in physics or certain levels of schooling," says Seth Godin. "It's about using human insight and initiative to find original solutions that matter."
The Fortune 500's use of blogs, online video, and podcasts continues to increase, but Twitter was the social media channel of choice in 2009, according to a study by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) and Financial Insite.
Discover a treasure trove of patent lithographs - discarded by the US Patent Office then rescued from destruction by Randy Rabin as he and Jackie Bassett uncover the secrets to innovation success behind the Wright Bros., Heddy Lamar, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, W.H. Carrier and others.
Inventors Eye, a new electronic publication by the United States Patent and Trademark Office is a bimonthly publication for the independent inventor community.
Jordan Furlong, hosting this week's Blawg Review on Stem's Law Firm Web Strategy blog, writes, "For a story that’s nearly 200 years old, Frankenstein feels powerfully modern, in part because it expresses the trepidation and occasionally the fear humanity still feels about the things it creates. From the cotton gin to Google Buzz, we marvel at the machines we invent and congratulate ourselves for our ingenuity. But lurking at the back of our minds is a deep uneasiness over whether we’re getting too good at building things simply because we can, and whether the next invention will be the one that gets away from us — whether next time, we’ll go too far." Read Blawg Review #252 at the link in the headline above to see the best of this week's legal blogs, including a link back to one of the posts on IP.com's blog, Securing Innovation.
"Who would have thought that an online community of patent researchers would even take off?" writes Oscar Bruce on the Patent Quality Review Blog. "For many people, patents are too dense to understand. They are filled with legal and technical jargon that no layman can probably digest. Yet, the diverse community of Article One Partners has grown tremendously since its launch in November 2008. What motivated all these Advisors to register on Article One?"
This Blawg Review comes to you from the Canadian Trademark Blog, resident in Vancouver, British Columbia – a blawg run by several of the talented trademark law practitioners at Clark Wilson LLP.
Recently, companies manufacturing in China have come across some costly and time-consuming trademark predicaments. It seems that certain players in the Chinese market are using the Chinese trademark system to swindle unsuspecting American companies.
