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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 investigations initially directed toward something wholly different from battery charging.  Put simply, Evgentech’s technology would not have been found if anyone--outsider or not--would have been looking for it.  We are now bringing to market the first truly new battery charging paradigm in over 100 years.  To put things in perspective, with Evgentech's technology, you will be able to charge your batteries in a fraction of the time possible with existing battery charging methodologies, which means you can charge your iPhone to "full" in as little as 20 minutes, as compared to the about 3-5

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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 the individual) where the basis of the action is the mis-marking of a product with an incorrect or expired patent number.  Like a gold rush, these lawsuits have resulted in a number of legal entrepreneurs seeking out products that are incorrectly marked--usually by identification of expired patents, which is an easy thing to find--and their bringing suit against the offending companies.  Indeed, there were over 500 false marking lawsuits filed in 2010, making this cause of action seem almost like a

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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 fact which I think dictates that clients insist that their lawyers adopt electronic filing systems.  I have also written about the money wasted as a result of the inability of many clients to judge the value provided by their patent lawyers, which I believe is a result of information asymmetry. Another waste of money comes from the time needed to review patent filings during the drafting process.  The highly technical nature of patent application and claim drafting requires detailed review of an application on multiple occasions prior to filing.  Each review requires the time

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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 (this one is illustrative).  At the end of the day, these articles likely do not look very "urgent" to business people like yourself because most business people do not engage themselves with patent law generally, let alone something as arcane as false marking.  So, even though the subject excites us a patent experts, we really cannot expect you to get excited about something that does not seem to affect your ability to conduct business today. However, if your business is a likely target of a false marking lawsuit it will cost you big bucks almost immediately. 

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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 thought that has been rattling around in my head since I arrived here. Anyone who has spent time in this part of the U.S. will be familiar with the presence of the Amish as part of the cultural landscape.  My children, as city kids, are fascinated whenever they see a carriage with families traveling along the side of the roads.  However, I invariably consider about how stifling I would find it to not be able to interact with the outside world in the way that is familiar to me.  In short, I wonder what it

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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 about such things online are in agreement that we may be operating in an unprecedented favorable environment of patent allowances.   The data bear out this anecdotal evidence:  patent issuances are up 35%  this year over last year. My sense of what is happening, which has been confirmed by other experienced patent folks to whom I have spoken, the perspective of the Patent Office has changed.  The consensus is the U.S. patenting process is much less adversarial today.  In recent years, examiners were effectively told by the Patent Office administration that "there needs to

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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

Misalignment between patent and business functions is the underlying cause of false patent markingIt 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 usually substance-free local paper in my mother's Southwest Florida community reported about the flood of patent mis-marking lawsuits.  And, it is no wonder that the undoubtedly arcane issue of patent marking has reached the status of "news" in a small-town paper given the huge number of cases currently pending in the federal courts.  It seems as if patent marking litigation may be the new business model for trial lawyers who are

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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 each (and every) of the below criteria:

1)  The patent directly or indirectly protects a product or technology that is being sold in the market today;

2)  The patent covers a product or technology where there is or likely will be viable competition in the marketplace such that a patent is needed to legally restrain competition; and

3) The patent owner is ready, willing and able to bring a patent infringement suit against an infringer or it is likely that your competitor believes that it will possibly do so.

Unless

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Success in Innovation Requires IP Counseling on the Front End: Here’s How to Make it Happen

The 2009 Open Innovation Summit was held in Orlando two weeks ago.  The event was attended by corporate practitioners of Open Innovation, including people from P&G, GSK Consumer, Cisco, Whirlpool, J&J, HP (here are Phil McKinney's slides), Clorox, and many others.  Leading consultants in Open Innovation also attended, including Stefan Lindegaard of Leadership+ Innovation, Braden Kelley of Blogging Innovation and Robert Brands of Innovation Coach.  A number of vendors of services were there, too.  I thought this was a great knowledge share event, and a must do for folks wanting to learn more about Open Innovation.  Another Summit is planned for August 201o in Chicago. At the Summit, we spent much of the 3 days hearing how the attending companies, many of which include those in the Fortune 100, view Open Innovation as a critical aspect of sustainable growth and profits.  We also heard about

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Want to Obtain Patents to Protect You from Competitors Knocking Off Your Innovative Products or Technology? It’s Easy-Don’t Be "Selfish"

Recently the CEO of a start-up asked me for the most important advice I could give before she filed a patent application directed toward protecting her company's core technology. In response, I said "don't be a selfish patent applicant." Few patent applicants obtain such counsel from their advisers and it shows: the vast majority of patents are written from a selfish perspective. (Note that I am using "selfish," in the context that the term is used in marketing i.e., thinking that others see the same things in your product or technology as you do. When one selfishly markets her product or technology, she assumes that others will buy it for the benefits she sees, not for the reasons upon which consumers will base their purchasing decisions. So when I say that most patents are written "selfishly," I mean that applicants (both individual and corporate inventors alike) approach the patenting process with