The Patent Office, along with the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation and the Ad Council, launched a series of new ads this month to encourage children to invent stuff. The campaign is described in a recent article in the LA Times that features a video of the latest television ad.

The public service ads, which build off a campaign started last year and will appear on TV, radio, the Web and billboards, are aimed at kids between the ages of 8 and 11. The TV version features a boy showing off a very typical boy idea: bicycle tires with suction cups. Hint: it's not a real invention, as you could probably guess when you see the kid riding on the ceiling in the video above.

The idea is to use humor to inspire the next young Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. The ads tell kids, "Anything's possible. Keep thinking," and direct them to Invent Now, a social networking site sponsored by the same groups. Children can upload designs of their inventions, comment on other kids' ideas and play games. The site even walks them through the steps needed to get a real patent. It's like a mini-lesson in intellectual property law (which could come in handy if they're Scrabulous fans.)

Some  of the 1.200 children who have posted inventions to the Invent Now website are girls, too, but there's always the risk that such well-intentioned programs and the media reinforce gender stereotypes by showing boys inventing "typical boy ideas" and girls inventing things for women.

Raising three girls, we've become keenly aware of gender stereotypes in our culture, so we decided to make a special effort to teach our girls that they can do anything.

A Girl Named Pants is a series of children's books I've written to push back against gender stereotypes and teach girls that they can do anything. She'll probably invent something, too, like these women inventors. After all, she can do anything!

...at some point, a company needs to ask how many patents it really needs. And, that's exactly what we did about three years ago. Up to that time Sun was filing well over 1,000 patent applications per year. But, in 2005, we made the decision to reduce our patent filings to the point that we had about 700 patents issued last year. And this number may decline in the future. While this is still a sizable number for most companies, it is a significant decline for Sun and occurs during a period in which we have more innovation than at any point in Sun's history.

Why the change? Part of the reason is financial. On average, it costs more than $20,000 to obtain a U.S. patent and this figure grows significantly when you file around the world. Also, this amount does not include annual annuities required to keep a patent in effect. Being selective in what you patent can result in significant savings. However, the bigger reason for the change is that our focus has shifted from quantity to quality. To this end, we have completely re-architected the manner in which we determine the innovations we will patent. As part of this process, inventions are reviewed by a panel of the chief technology officers from across our different lines of businesses with input from distinguished engineers and other experienced innovators. We apply a significant amount of scrutiny to determine whether something is truly innovative before we submit it to the PTO. For us, it doesn't make sense to patent everything. Rather, our focus is on patents that represent significant technological innovation.

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

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

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

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

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

Whether or not you agree with her argument about issued patents, her idea of adding invention disclosures to the Commons would almost certainly benefit the initiative and its participants by increasing the value and utility of the available green technology. Of course, no independent or targeted donations to the Commons would be necessary because enabled invention disclosures are by definition in the public domain and available to everyone. Instead, to make the technology available to greentech firms, it would just need to be made accessible via the Commons. Broadly, Cronin’s idea could be implemented in one of three ways. Either companies who publish environmentally-beneficial technology in these disclosures could provide the publication information or citations to the Commons, the Commons itself could monitor the disclosure publications, or the publications could alert the Commons of relevant published disclosures. However it’s done, I can’t argue with increasing green idea and technology sharing.

US patent law is somewhat more restrictive in its definition of state of the art by excluding from patentability only those inventions that were “known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent” (US Patent Act, Section 102a). Public use in Europe would thus not be sufficient to establish prior art in the US. In addition, use or description of the invention must have taken place before the invention by the applicant or, as Section 102.b specifies, one year or more before filing of the application. This “first-to-invent” rule has an ambiguous effect on the attractiveness of defensive publishing. On the one hand, a DP may not pre-empt a patent application if the latter is filed less than 12 months after the DP and if it claims an earlier date of invention. In such a case, a DP might even trigger a competitor’s patent application. On the other hand, a DP can help to establish priority for an inventor, who maintains the option to file for a patent within the following year.

To compensate for these drawbacks and make the Eco-Patent Commons as useful and powerful as it can be, the initiative requires expansion to offer truly recent inventions that have not spent years in the patent application process. This involves widening the scope of the initiative to include non-patented inventions that have yet to be marketed and made public.

One way to make these inventions available is through enabled invention disclosures. An enabled invention disclosure (also called “defensive publication” or “technical bulletin”) is a written description of an invention that ideally has the same degree of detail as an issued patent. Therefore a well-written invention disclosure provides sufficient information to the reader to understand and use the invention.

Many companies successfully use enabled invention disclosures as part of their intellectual property (IP) strategies. Companies frequently have inventions that they do not wish to patent because the patent process is so expensive, including invention development costs, legal preparation and patent prosecution fees. However, companies also wish to prevent competitors from patenting those same inventions.

By using enabled invention disclosures to publish the invention, companies accomplish both goals: they save the cost of patenting but they also establish a “prior art bar” to obtaining the patent and make it impossible for competitors to claim it the invention as their own. Several Web site forums exist for publishing inventions, including www.ip.com and www.researchdisclosure.com.

The Eco-Patent Commons should be expanded to include these enabled invention disclosures. Many inventions that companies deem non-strategic for patent application and instead decide to publish may be excellent candidates to be donated to the Eco-Patent Commons. These published inventions would be truly new, fresh and useful -- a good first step to creating the true springboard for green innovation that the Eco-Patent Commons was meant to be.

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.

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.

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.”

Many of us at Sun are doing work that could change the world. We need to do a better job of telling the world. As of now, you are encouraged to tell the world about your work, without asking permission first (but please do read and follow the advice in this note). Blogging is a good way to do this.

As they'll tell you themselves, the opinions and interests expressed on IBMers' blogs are their own and don't necessarily represent this company's positions, strategies or views. But that doesn't mean we don't want you to read them! Because they do represent lots of business and technology expertise you can't get from anyone else.

Many other companies use blogs to connect better with their customers through blogs. Blogs that are written by living breathing employees, not the PR department.

1. A true weblog is a log of all the URLs you want to save or share.

 4. Being truly yourself is always hipper than suppressing a link just because it's not trendy enough. Your readers need to get to know you.

Many of us at Sun are doing work that could change the world. We need to do a better job of telling the world. As of now, you are encouraged to tell the world about your work, without asking permission first (but please do read and follow the advice in this note). Blogging is a good way to do this.


Advice By speaking directly to the world, without benefit of management approval, we are accepting higher risks in the interest of higher rewards. We don't want to micro-manage, but here is some advice.

It's a Two-Way Street The real goal isn't to get everyone at Sun blogging, it's to become part of the industry conversation. So, whether or not you're going to write, and especially if you are, look around and do some reading, so you learn where the conversation is and what people are saying.

If you start writing, remember the Web is all about links; when you see something interesting and relevant, link to it; you'll be doing your readers a service, and you'll also generate links back to you; a win-win.

• Patent Licensing and Enforcement Companies,
• Institutional Patent Aggregators/IP Acquisition Funds,
• IP/Technology Development Companies,
• Licensing Agents,
• Litigation Finance/Investment Firms,
• Patent Brokers,
• IP-Based M&A Advisory,
• IP Auction Houses,
• On-Line IP/Technology Exchanges/Clearinghouses,
• IP-Backed Financiers,
• Royalty Stream Securitization Firms, and
• Patent Rating Software and Services.

• Innovation Management Technologies

In fact, new players implementing the IP business models described herein will come into existence. And, new IP business models will also come into existence. Why? Quite simply, the business of IP (i.e., IP marketplace) itself is not immune to innovation!

• China has the largest population in the world.
• The Chinese educational system is heavily oriented toward science-based technical training.
• China graduates in excess of three times more engineers - electrical, industrial, bio-chemical, semiconductor, mechanical, even power generation - with bachelor's degrees than the U.S. university system.
• China consistently has graduated more engineers than the U.S., Japan, and Germany combined every year since 1997
• In terms of the size of their economy, China is on pace to overtake Germany in the next four years, Japan by 2015 and the U.S. by 2039

This publication and the articles and opinions on this blog are not legal advice, even if the author of any article published on this blog may have a legal education or be qualified to practice law in some jurisdictions. Writing articles in this publication is expressly not practicing law, and a legal relationship between attorney and client is not established by reading or commenting on this blog, or by sending an email to the author of anything posted on this blog.

If you need legal advice, you should hire a lawyer, not read books, magazines, or heaven forfend, browse the Internet looking at blogs.