In a recent discussion on Twitter about defensive publishing, an article I wrote for publication in Machine Design, an online journal by engineers, for engineers, was linked. It's not a new article but, as noted by the IP professionals discussing it on Twitter, the advice is still good. We thought our readers here on IP.com's blog might be interested in seeing it, so we're cross-posting here with a link to the original publication in Machine Design.

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 www.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.

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On a recent business trip to China to speak at the China Intellectual Property Business Conference, I took the opportunity to meet with the father of our Chinese exchange student who's living with our family in the United States for a year and helping my three girls learn to speak fluently in Mandarin. So this television commercial for Cisco's TelePresence really hit home.

 In our business at IP.com we've been using teleconferencing more and more frequently  to connect with people in China. Johnson Kong our Executive Vice President, Asia Pacific, is resident there, and I've been traveling on business to China, myself, almost once every month or so, during the past few years. I now speak a bit of Mandarin, with a New York accent. While there's nothing like face-to-face meetings to bridge the cultural divide, it's great to be able to keep in touch on a more regular basis with teleconferencing. Videoconferencing is sure to become a part of our lives, not just our business, sooner than we might have imagined just a few years ago,

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I've been looking forward to this week's trip to Asia, where I'll be getting together with other speakers at the first IP transaction focused conference in China. Marshall Phelps, Corporate VP for IP Policy and Strategy at Microsoft,  Joff Wild, Editor of IAM Magazine, and Duncan Bucknell, CEO, IP Strategist, Lawyer & Patent Attorney, coincidentally our featured guest blogger here on IP.com's corporate blog, Securing Innovation, are among the global IP leaders speaking at this conference.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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November 9th is Inventors' Day, marking the birthday of Hedy Lamarr a famous Hollywood glamour girl of the 1940's, who is now recognized as one of the leading women inventors of the 20th century.

"Any girl can be glamorous," Hedy Lamarr once said. "All she has to do is stand still and look stupid." The film star belied her own apothegm by hiding a brilliant, inventive mind beneath her photogenic exterior. In 1942, at the height of her Hollywood career, she patented a frequency-switching system for torpedo guidance that was two decades ahead of its time.

We've still got a ways to go when it comes to removing gender stereotypes, but we've come a long way, baby. It's encouraging, today, to see fashion magazines recognize women for their brains, not just their beauty. This week, Glamour magazine named Google's Marissa Mayer a 2009 Woman of the Year.

“It’s pretty hard to overstate her impact,” says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “She built the team that designs the products we all use.” With a wardrobe that’s strong on Oscar de la Renta and Armani, Mayer cuts a striking figure on the company campus. “When people think about computer science, they imagine people with pocket protectors and thick glasses who code all night,” Mayer jokes. “I do code all night! I am the stereotype, but I also break the stereotype.” Among her goals: to bring more women into technology and teach them to take chances. “Get in a bit over your head,” she says. “That’s how you grow and learn and stretch yourself.”

These are important life lessons for our children and, as the father of three young girls and an author of children's books that dispel gender stereotypes, I'll be telling stories about women like Marissa Mayer, Hedy Lamarr, and other famous women inventors. For our girls, these women are real-world superheroes.

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"Innovation, really, is the magic that makes imagination become reality," says Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology Officer at Cisco Systems, speaking at Google.

As CTO, Padmasree Warrior helps define Ciscos technological strategy and helps drive innovation across the company, working closely with the senior executive team and board of directors. As an evangelist for what's possible, she pushes the organization to stretch beyond its current capabilities not just in technology, but also in its strategic partnerships and new business models.

She says, "The debate is not really about content ownership, anymore. How do you consume content more in a community, and make that more of a community experience."

This is a very interesting talk, touching on many areas of interest to us: innovation, leadership, education, generations, communcation, and technology. Take a few minutes to hear what Padmasree Warrior shares from her experience at Motorola and at Cisco. Fascinating, really.

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Did you know? We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, using technologies that haven't been invented, in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet.

So what does it all mean? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Congratulations to  Peter Vanderheyden and our friends and associates at LexisNexis on the launch of their transparent semantic search technology announced today in this press release: 

LexisNexis, a leading global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions, today announced the availability of transparent semantic search technology for its full complement of intellectual property (IP) research products – enabling users to find the most precise and relevant patent search results.

Through a development alliance with Dallas-based Pure Discovery, LexisNexis has become the first provider of legal information services to integrate the power of semantic search technology with familiar Boolean search technology, giving the user greater control over the patent research process via a simple, streamlined user interface that matches their typical daily workflow.

Semantic search uses the science of meaning in language ("semantics”) to produce highly relevant search results. While semantic search engines are not uncommon, most contain limitations – including lack of transparency and user control – which can ultimately undermine the overall value of results. For example, they typically do not show precisely how search results are generated and the user must simply trust that the right relevance between the original query and the semantic application are, in fact, appropriate to the intent of the searcher.

The new semantic search solution from LexisNexis and Pure Discovery, however, overcomes such challenges to accomplish four breakthrough objectives in online search:

• Transparency: Each query is enhanced by the machine intelligence and shown to the user for their complete understanding and engagement.
• Increased control: Not only is the semantic search transparent, but users are in control with the ability to add, delete, increase or decrease the importance of all query words (concepts) in a unique visual query interface called a "querycloud.”
• Fully federated: While LexisNexis maintains one of the largest full-text patent and non-patent literature databases in the world, its semantic search platform can associate semantic searches to virtually any index, whether it resides internally or on the web.
• Scalability: The LexisNexis index includes semantic intelligence from more than 10 million full-text patent documents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s patent index, as well as Elsevier journal articles and other documents.

"With semantic search technology we have changed the very nature of online patent research by providing users with an additional means of researching patent and non-patent prior art,” said Peter Vanderheyden, LexisNexis vice president of Global Intellectual Property. "This alliance will provide users with tools to create more meaningful queries, allowing them to obtain more precise results by using semantic technology to enhance their Boolean search strategies.”

The new technology is now available through the patent research and retrieval service LexisNexis® TotalPatent™ and the automated patent application and analysis product LexisNexis® PatentOptimizer™. In addition, the functionality is also available through lexis.com®, the flagship online legal research service from LexisNexis, for full-text non-patent prior art and other patent-related content.

Technical Disclosures from IP.com's Prior Art Database are also accessible to users of LexisNexis.

New Content for Patent Research: Technical Disclosures from IP.com and Research Disclosure!

Two premium sources for non-patent prior art research have been added to "Select a Source > Law by Topic > Prior Art/Non-Patent". Why are technical disclosures important to patent researchers? Obtaining a patent is very expensive.

Only a small number of possible inventions are worth such a large investment. An innovation that is not patented is in danger of being patented by a competitor. The only way to prevent this is to prove that the idea already existed and was available to the public. When an innovation is published as a technical disclosure, it is no longer at risk of being patented by others. Publishing the innovation establishes a clear trail of evidence that the inventor originated the idea and made it available to the public. The inventor, in effect, retains the right to use his or her own innovation, without the difficulty and expense of obtaining patent protection.

LexisNexis is the only platform where the full text of both IP.com and Research Disclosure Technical Disclosures can be found! A searcher on LexisNexis® TotalPatent™ can highlight a patent claim and launch a Freestyle search directly into IP.com or Research Disclosure Technical Disclosures on lexis.com®.

LexisNexis Toolbar users may activate access to IP.com and research Disclosure Technical Disclosures by re-downloading the Toolbar. Just click this link: "Download the LexisNexis Toolbar Today."

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Padmasree Warrior is Cisco Systems' Chief Technology Officer. As CTO, she is responsible for helping drive the company's technological innovations and strategy, and works closely with its senior executive team and board of directors to align these efforts with Cisco's corporate goals. As an evangelist for what's possible, she pushes the organization to stretch beyond its current capabilities – not just in technology, but also in its strategic partnerships and new business models.

We @ipdotcom are among over a million followers of her on Twitter @Padmasree.

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As a father of three young girls and the CEO of a company involved with innovation, I was pleased to read in this news release that RIT has been awarded a Motorola Foundation Grant to hold Science Workshops for Families.

Rare is the day when kids are encouraged to throw eggs. Rarer, still, is the challenge to toss an egg 20 feet without cracking its shell. But in the name of science, almost anything goes, and hidden behind the conundrum is a blend of physics, creativity and fun.

Making an “egg lander” is one activity planned in a series of free workshops that Rochester Institute of Technology will hold this school year. The workshops are designed to get children, eight to 13 years old, and their parents thinking like scientists.

Supported by a $30,700 grant from the Motorola Foundation’s Innovation Generation program, “Learning Science through Innovation and Creativity: Workshops for Families” will explore “The Changing Earth,” “Beneath the Oceans” and “Living in Space.” The first set of workshops—The Changing Earth—will be held 6-8 p.m. Sept. 10, Oct. 1, Oct. 22 and Nov. 12 on the RIT campus.

“The focus behind the Motorola grant is that we’re trying to develop more innovative and creative people,” says Jacob Noel-Storr, associate scientist in RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science and workshop director. “We’re trying to show connections between science and innovation and creativity, and also to show that scientists use those skills.”

Noel-Storr and his assistant Greg Wyllie, a second-year biotechnology and honors student at RIT, have developed a curriculum exploring each of the three themes from four different scientific perspectives. The 12-workshop series devotes a separate session per topic to physics, chemistry, biology and earth science. An aspect of each theme will be central to the challenges and hands-on activities in the various workshops. All the projects are designed to be scientifically measurable.

For instance the workshops corresponding to the theme “Living in Space” will use the egg-lander experiment to highlight physics concepts. The chemistry component will have students and their parents creating a Mars-like surface. The biological aspect of Living in Space will explore the conditions a planet needs to support basic life forms. And the earth science workshop will focus on comets like the one that recently hit Jupiter.

“We’ll do activities where the kids learn something the parents didn’t know before and they have to then teach it back to their parents,” says Noel-Storr. “We also teach the parents to understand how to work with their kids even when they don’t know the answers. We encourage them to go with their kid and find out, teaching them that it’s OK not to know everything.”

For more information, or to register, contact Jacob Noel-Storr at insight@cis.rit.edu.

To learn more about the Motorola Foundation’s Innovation Generation grants, visit www.motorola.com/giving.

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"For many of us, our father is a hero, an inspiration, a teacher, a role model, a mentor, a friend. Long after our father may pass away, or even after we leave the roost and start our own family, our father continues to influence many of our lives in both large and small ways." - Robert W. Zinnecker, The Faculty Lounge.

As if a foreshadowing of our special Father's Day presentation of Blawg Review, John Hochfelder of the New York Injury Cases Blog touched us with a heartfelt tribute to his father, a WWII hero who survived the battle of Iwo Jima. Blawg Review #209 is a wonderful read, again, on Father's Day.

This Father’s Day it’s important to give your dad something he’ll appreciate. For many fathers, this could simply mean helping him to access a variety of services that can improve his quality of life and save him time and money. Henry Allingham, the oldest man in the world at 113 years young, has other ideas.

In other news this Father's Day weekend, reports that Walter Cronkite is "gravely ill" have been "overstated" says his spokeswoman. Uncle Walter is just 92, and both his parents lived to be 100.

During the past 13 years, Father's Day has taken on a new, special meaning to me.

Before, it was a day to honor my own dad, and thank him for a lifetime of support, sacrifice, and guidance. As a kid, I would prepare for Father's Day like every other kid. I would make something, or get my mom to buy something from me to him. Then, on the big day, I would race to give him my gift first (I would be racing against my four brothers and sisters who were trying to do the same thing). My siblings and I would then do everything we could to make it a great day for our dad (mostly, refrain from fighting).

But, even though I did the whole gift thing and the make-the-day-great-for-my-dad thing, I never really saw the unique value of my dad. He always seemed like a great dad, but he didn’t seem much different from all the other great dads in my neighborhood. I had an awakening about my dad, though, during my 4 year career as an Assistant District Attorney. It was then that I began to see the outcome of bad fatherhood. Most criminals I prosecuted were the product of a home without a dad, or a home with a really bad dad. Seeing this, seeing the outcome of children raised with bad fathers or no fathers, I began to appreciate the importance of being a great father.

Thirteen years ago, I became a father.

At that time, I made the decision to become more than a good father. I decided to become a great father to my children. I decided to become a mentor, life coach, and ally, providing them with tools and skills necessary to meet life’s challenges. And since I believe that success has a lot to do with planning, I decided to use Father's Day as my planning day.

Since then, I have invested a few hours every Fathers’ Day building my Fatherhood Plan for the upcoming year; setting goals, tactical plans, and reviewing my successes from the previous year. One Father's Day I had planned to create a series of children’s books to empower my own children and help them to believe they could accomplish any goal; to believe that they could do anything. Because of that plan, my children and I have created a series of children’s books about A Girl Named Pants and have sold over 6,000 books. In doing this, my children have not only gained confidence about what they can achieve in this world, but they have built valuable business skills.

During another Father's Day, I had planned to begin teaching my children how to speak Mandarin (a challenge made more challenging by the fact that I don’t speak Mandarin). I believed (and continue to believe) that being bilingual is a valuable tool, and in light of the direction of the world, it seems that Mandarin would be the most valuable second language for my children. Since then we have completed almost 30 units of Pimsleur’s Mandarin Chinese program; fifteen minutes per day per kid, four-five days per week. My children are not only speaking some Chinese, but building more confidence in the process.

Last Father's Day, I planned to help my children build public speaking skills. These young girls are now implementing our “POP” program every time they speak in public (Passion, Organization, Practice). Two weeks from now, my children and I will be launching the first-ever “A Girl Named Pants” public speaking camp for 8-11 year-olds. [Updated: July 14, adding the photo below.]

I don’t know what my Fatherhood plan will look like for the upcoming year, but I know that I will invest a few hours this Father's Day thinking about it and creating it.

'What Every Woman Should Know" is a series on American Women’s History at The New Agenda: the new “feminism,” improving the lives of women and girls. There, on Father's Day, Anna Belle writes, "a father’s impact on a daughter cannot be overstated." She begins:

Fathers’ Day, like Mothers’ Day, was invented by a woman. Ann Jarvis is responsible for Mother’s Day, an effort she began in 1912, which she later came to despise, as she thought that the holiday had become what she called a “Hallmark Holiday.” Sonora Smart Dodd is officially credited with starting Father’s Day in 1910, though her effort was not taken very seriously for many years. Woodrow Wilson signed Mothers’ Day into law, and Lyndon B. Johnson signed Fathers’ Day into law.

Mothers and fathers throughout history have often been the biggest influence on a child’s life, and the same is true today. There is no greater opportunity to have an impact in this world than to direct your children in your own values. Since today is Fathers’ Day, I thought I’d share with you how some fathers have had an impact on some of the famous daughters I’ve covered in this series.

Is it Father's Day or Fathers' Day? Future Lawyer takes a grammarian view of the spelling and insists it's Fathers' Day. Wikipedia explains the spelling of Father's Day:

Although the name of the event is usually understood as a plural possessive (i.e. "day belonging to fathers"), which would under normal English punctuation guidelines be spelled "Fathers' Day", the most common spelling is "Father's Day", as if it were a singular possessive (i.e. "day belonging to Father"). Dodd used the "Fathers' Day" spelling on her original petition for the holiday, but the spelling "Father's Day" was already used in 1913 when a bill was introduced to the US Congress as the first attempt to establish the holiday, and it was still spelled the same way when its creator was commended in 2008 by the U.S. Congress.

Just in time for Father's Day this weekend, a San Diego lawyer and the Oakland A's have settled a controversial class-action lawsuit over a Mother's Day giveaway in 2004, reports the ABA Journal.

In preparation for Blawg Review, we received submissions and recommendations of some of the best law blog posts from the past few weeks that might be fitting for our Father's Day presentation. Let's begin with the President of the United States of America, a lawyer, and a father first.

'We Need Fathers To Step Up' wrote President Barack Obama, in Parade Magazine.

Good fathers get a puppy for their kids, and while it's a high honor to be the First Dog, it's even greater, perhaps, to be "King" and have a park named after you, like Stephanie West Allen's dad's dog.

Eric Turkewitz at the New York Personal Injury Law Blog reports the the New York Court of Appeals recently tossed out a personal injury case premised on a violation of a local leash law.

R. David Donoghue, shown with his father and son in the photograph of three generations watching the Blackhawks, wrote on the Chicago IP Litigation Blog about a recent case where it was held that color trademark infringement is a question of fact for the court to determine. Dave will be at the IP Business Congress in Chicago this week and has arranged a venue for conference attendees and orgainisers to Meet the Bloggers at the Billy Goat Tavern. No doubt, the conference will be all atwitter about President Obama's announcement of his intent to nominate David J. Kappos as the next Director of the Patent and Trademark Office, also known as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property. Kappos is currently IBM's Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Intellectual Property. Joff Wild, Editor of Intellectual Asset Magazine has written extensively on the IAM Blog about the Kappos nomination, concluding,

For my part, I think he will do an excellent job. He knows the issues; he has a strong IP background; he comes from an industry in which IP is hugely important; he knows all the major players; he has long management experience; and he thinks deeply about IP and its role in society. Frankly, I cannot think of anyone better to do the job. He is not perfect, but who is? President Obama has made a good choice.

Like I did this week, Jay Shepherd visited an Apple retail store and noted how different its acclaimed business methods are from typical law firm behavior.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset's federal retrial concluded last week as a jury found her liable for willful copyright infringement, awarding the record labels $1.9 Million, or approximately $80,000 for each of the 24 songs illegally downloaded. The retrial and verdict have been covered in detail at ars technica.  Ron Coleman at Likelihood of Confusion considers this an award of "Infinity Dollars" for copyright infringement of music. Fred von Lohmann at the Electronic Frontier Foundation wonders if the jury award in this case is unconstitutional.

New York Criminal Defense Attorney Scott Greenfield, a humble father shown here with his son in a vintage sports car, bears a striking resemblance to a younger Graham Nash in the YouTube video above. This week, he discusses FCC v. Fox Television, the "fleeting expletives" case of which much was made of the Court's use of "F-word" and "S-word" in the decision rather than the actual word spoken. In a blog post titled "The Language of the Law" Scott Greenfield writes,

While I've no doubt that somewhere in this vast land there are people who have never uttered either word, I've never met one. Both words are, for better or worse, rather common. I've taken the liberty of having both my children, at a tender age, speak the words aloud to get them over the taboo and to teach them, as Wasserman does, that they are mere words and carry no greater weight than others. But I then explain that people find the words jarring, particularly out of the mouths of children, and will think poorly of them for using such words. I explain further that the language has many other words that can be used to express their thoughts, and that these words aren't needed to make their point clear. Curses won't hurt them, but won't help them either.

First Amendment lawyer Marc Randazza, who uses all the words of the English language at The Legal Sartyricon, discusses the Catsouras photos, privacy, and privilege. For those who don’t know, Nikki Catsouras was a beautiful young girl who made a terrible error in judgment, and it cost her dearly.

Lawyer of the Day at Above the Law is appropriately named. "From the sound of this story, this Indiana lawyer could probably hold down the name Larry Wildest." According to The Indiana Law Blog, Wilder apologized for any embarrassment he caused. "I apologize to my children more than anyone," he said.

Our company blog is Securing Innovation, and IP.com publishes the Prior Art Database, so we were interested in the innovation reported on Lowering the Bar, British Manufacturers Offer Pointless Anti-Stab Knives.

Colin Samuels, shown in the photo on the right with his daughter all dressed up to go to a "Rock Star"-themed Daddy-Daughter dance, has probably talked to her about tattoos and branding.

Jason Voiovich explains how a portfolio of enforceable patents and trademarks failed to result in a commercially successful product, owing to poor branding, and the resulting problems don't have an easy legal solution for a composite screw maker which is more-or-less screwed.

After blogging exclusively about substantive patent law for more than five years, J. Matt Buchanan has lauched a new site as a home for his thoughts and writings that relate to a completely different side of his practice – helping organizations build inventive cultures and idea friendly environments.

Alex Harris is critical of the bureaucratic export control laws and, noting the high costs of compliance for businesses, writes that "too little attention has been paid to these costs on doing business internationally when passing feel-good “anti-terrorism” and “anti-proliferation” laws and regulations."

Dan Harris concedes that he is "paranoid about my clients registering their trademarks in China, pretty much before they do anything else" and that when the "anything else" comes to naught, the costs and trouble incurred in trademark registration are largely wasted, but he suggests that that's a small downside considering the larger costs of overcoming a lost trademark.

Fernando Rivadeneyra offers excellent advice about doing business in Mexico.

Michael Atkins discusses trademark enforcement and jurisdiction in those nations within our nation -- tribal nations.

The revolution will not be televised; it will be on Twitter. Sort of.

Frank Pasquale at Balkinization asks if there's a duty to tweet. "Is Web 2.0 really becoming a "technology of freedom" via social software like Facebook and Twitter? If so, do defenders of liberty have some moral duty to be part of these networks?"

Frank Pasquale on Concurring Opinions discusses why the "public/private" distinction might need to be revisited and privacy restrictions currently applicable to government be extended to private entities which provide information to the government.

Evan Brown discussed a keystroke-capture case which suggests that the scope of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act may not be as narrow as previously believed.

Ken at the Popehat blog comments on a seemingly overreaching and unnecessarily privacy-invasive requirement by the City of Bozeman, Montana that city job applicants provide account names and passwords for all websites where they comment, blog, or post status updates. It may not directly implicate fathers for purposes of this Father's Day Blawg Review, but there's a definite hint of Big Brother at work there.

Familoo at the Pink Tape blog notes that in the UK one group's privacy is well protected -- "Judges found guilty of misconduct or who have been reprimanded." She's understandably perplexed.

Also in the UK this week, a judicial decision has effectively stripped anonymous/psudonymous bloggers of protection for their identities; the "logic" of the decision, that blogging is an essentially public activity and the use of a nom-de-blog (or no nom at all) does not make one's true identity more private and deserving of protection from publication, would seem to bode poorly for anonymous blog commenters as well as the bloggers themselves. "Jack of Kent" and "Jailhouse Lawyer" (AKA John Hirst) reproduced the decision itself. "Tufty the Cat" suggested that the decision would essentially chill speech by those who suspect their heretofore anonymous speech could be counterproductive to their personal or professional interests if their identities were known. "Charon QC" offered the most extensive and compelling analysis of the ruling and its likely effects. Don't you find it ironic that some of the best coverage of this important decision was provided by four writers who blog either exclusively or primarily under pseudonyms?

DNA testing might be a tangential topic to include in a Blawg Review celebrating fatherhood; Lyle Denniston had an excellent post discussing the impact of the recent SCOTUS Osborne decision. Grrl Scientist questions the decision...and justice for all?

Bridget Crawford and Lolita Buckner Inniss discussed whether the term "baby daddy" had racial overtones and whether its use by whites amounted to "twenty-first century blackface minstrelsy".

Ah, Father’s Day — filled with neckties, golf clubs and Brut soap on a rope. But there’s more to this important day than gift-giving and cookouts; it’s really about honoring and remembering your father. So Texas Lawyer asked some attorneys to reflect on the lessons they learned from their lawyer-dads.

Vickie Pynchon, an intellectual property law mediator and one of the Blawg Review "sherpas" who researched and recommended several of these law blog posts for Father''s Day, recently published a very thoughtful post about her father, also a lawyer, on his birthday and the one-year anniversary of his death.

The new Sports Law Handbook For Coaches and Athletic Administrators by William H. Glover, Jr., is dedicated to his 86 year old father, Coach William H. Glover of Jackson MS.

Georgia Attorneys point to an article on ESPN about a very special Father's Day for Atlanta Falcons Linebacker Stephen Nicholas who very nearly lost his son, but for a heart transplant for the infant boy.

One ongoing part of my annual Fatherhood Plan specifically relates to my son.

Colin was born in July of 1996; my first and only son. As a two-year old he contracted a rare disease called Protein Losing Enteropathy (PLE). PLE is a rare disease that kills virtually every child it meets. Colin survived with PLE for five months. When Colin died, I decided that the one remaining thing I could do for him as his father would be to find a cure. It hasn’t been easy, and I still haven’t found a cure. But, every year, seeking a cure for PLE is part of my Fatherhood Plan.

In 1998, we formed the Children’s Hearts Fund (a fund within Children’s Hospital of Buffalo foundation). Since then, we have raised almost $1Million for PLE research. We have hosted two international symposiums in an effort to bring together great brains throughout the world to investigate PLE. The Burnham Institute in San Diego has become our research partner. Together we have discovered a mouse-model and we are investigating two specific treatment options that could save the lives of thousands of PLE children. And, a few months ago, because of our efforts, the Burnham Institute received a $1 Million NIH grant for PLE research. We have a long way to go in finding a cure, but curing PLE will remain a part of my Fatherhood Plan until we do.

As I think about my 13 years as a father it occurs to me that there is no other relationship quite like the one between a parent and a child. And while fatherhood is a lot about teaching children, it's even more about learning from them. My children have taught me about the vulnerability and fragility of life, the depth of love, the intensity of joy, the weight of responsibility, and, at times, the burden of sadness. My children have even taught me about God and made that relationship more real to me. Because of my children, I have become more than a man...I have become a father.

Blawg Review has information about how to submit your law blog posts and recommend others for next week's presentation by our neighbor here in Buffalo, Adrian Dayton, a lawyer and father who is working to achieve work/life balance by putting family first.

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