Many hold strong opinions on the value of patents to business. Both in person and online, there are any number of “experts” who stridently insist that without patent protection, a company’s business goals are doomed. With about 350,000 new patent applications filed in 2012, there is no question that many agree that patents create, and [...]
Posts under ‘ip’
Lean Startup Methodology: How Patenting Decisions Fit into this New Business Framework
One of the first questions start up entrepreneurs usually ask sounds something like this: “Is it worth the effort and expense to get a patent on this business idea?” In countless conversations with clients in my years as a patent attorney, I could usually articulate multiple reasons why the person seeking to to start [...]
False Marking Lawsuits are Real Problem for Business and Make Little Sense When Applied to Expired Patents
The threat of false marking lawsuits has garnered much attention in the IP business press in the last couple of years. Companies of all sizes have been hit with qui tam actions (that is, suits brought by an individual or company on behalf of the US government to right wrongs done to the government, not [...]
Clients Save Money and Get Better Patents When Attorneys Use This Solution
As a “recovering patent lawyer,” I now realize that I wasted a whole lot of my clients’ money over the years because of the inherent inefficiencies that have been built into patent practice. In this regard, I wrote about the money wasted by old fashioned patent filing systems in this post a while back, a [...]
Business Can’t Hide from False Patent Marking Lawsuits: Here’s How to Predict If You Might be Sued
The take home message: If your company sells a product that bears a patent number, you need to read this post in its entirety. Much has been written in recent months about false marking lawsuits, most of these in the form of “urgent legal alerts” by law firms that calmly deconstruct the appellate court rulings [...]
How the Northeastern Indiana Amish Serve as a Business Lesson about Patents
I have been spending time in Northeastern Indiana–the land of my roots–to introduce my children to their aunts, uncles and many, many cousins. Catching up with extended family has made it difficult to formulate a post in the past couple of weeks, but I have a few moments this morning and wanted to capture a [...]
Have a Pending US Patent Application? There’s Never Been a Better Time to Make a Deal with the Patent Office
The US Patent Office is in a deal-making mood. Really. Ever since Director Kappos told his examiners last Fall that “patent quality does not equal rejection,” I have heard many stories about how patent applications that appeared to be stuck in the limbo 0f serial rejections are now being allowed. Those of us who talk [...]
Much Ado About Patent Marking: Why It is So Hard for Corporations to Get It Right and Why False Marking Lawsuits Might be a Good Thing Overall
It is fairly rare for patents to make hit the radar screen of mainstream news outlets but, recently, there has been much space allotted to the issue of patent mis-marking and lawsuits being brought by third parties for “violation” of the law requiring that products cannot be marked with an incorrect patent number. Indeed, the [...]
9 Out of 10 Patents are Probably Worthless: Why and How to Prevent this from Happening to You (Part 1 of 4)
I decided to start 2010 with a controversial premise: what if 9 out of 1o patents–or 90 %– issued in the US were worthless? Believe it or not, but this probably is not too far off the mark. By “worthless,” I mean that it is likely that only 10% of patents in force today meet [...]
A Startup Company’s Experiences with Open Innovation-Part 1: Dealing with a Large Company Having Small Innovation Goals
For the past several months, I have been at the helm of Evgentech, a startup company with game-changing battery charging methodology. Our technology was developed by young men who did not come from a traditional engineering background and, even then, their discovery was a serendipitous result of the co-founders’ recognition of a new principle stemming from [...]