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Must Read Post on Innovation from Blogging Innovation: Steve Shapiro of Innocentive on Three Distinctions of Innovation

(Happy belated Holidays to readers of the IP Asset Maximizer blog.  The dearth of postings on this blog lately is due not only to my hectic holiday schedule, but also the death of my aged Grandfather.  Thanks everyone for your patience--we'll be up and running on a regular schedule after the New Year.) I just came across this post from the Blogging Innovation blog, hosted by Braden Kelley.  (Anyone interested in innovation MUST subscribe to Braden's blog.)  The post, entitled "Part 1:  Three Innovation Distinctions" is by Steve Shapiro of Innocentive, distills what innovation is down to words which are placed in counterbalance with the standard model of product and technology development.  Specifically, Steve contends that innovation is about:

  1. Challenges not Ideas
  2. Process not Events
  3. Diversity not Homogeneity
As I posted in a comment, I believe that this is a remarkably simple way to highlight the

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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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The NY Times is Wrong: Patent Auctions Do Not Provide Indendent Inventors with “Protection”

Patent auctions will do little to help independent inventors sell their patents
Patent auctions will do little to help independent inventors sell their patents
Those seeking ways to generate revenue from their patentable ideas will find the recent NY Times article entitled "Patent Auctions Provide Protections for Inventors," written by Steve Lohr, to be an interesting read.  However, as someone who works with entrepreneurs and corporations wishing to monetize their patent rights, I find it necessary to comment on the assertion that patent auctions can operate to "provide protections" for independent inventors, as well as the underlying premise that these it is generally possible for non-corporate inventors to generate value from their patent rights irrespective of the underlying subject matter of the patents.*  As an initial matter, the NY Times article states that "[independent inventors] can often find themselves in court, battling

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Investors in the Green Economy: You Could Lose Your Investment in Green Innovators by Failing to Identify the Green Inventors that Came Before Them

With President-Elect Obama's announcement that he will establish an "Apollo Project" to develop a Green Economy, there is no doubt that "the Green Technology train has left the station." Indisputably, investors will start to invest heavily in companies that appear to possess commericializable Green Technology that will enter the marketplace as the US embraces the Green Economy and develops the necessary infrastructure to make this happen. Before staking a claim to one or more of these companies, however, investors should understand whether existing patent rights owned by third parties could undermine the investment potential of even the most promising Green Technology innovators. Anyone seeking to capitalize on the Green Economy and its attendant Green Technology must recognize a fundamental reality of US patent law: in granting a patent, the Patent Office cares only that an invention is useful, novel and nonobvious. Significantly--and this is the rub for investors in Green

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Investors Can Predict the Winners of the Alternative Energy Race: Follow the Patents

It seems that in just the last few months, reduction of US dependence on foreign oil has moved from an occasionally discussed aspirational goal to becoming a critical public policy mandate. Indeed, there is much talk about the energy policies of both John McCain and Barack Obama, each of which focus substantially on increasing the amount of energy obtained from within the borders of the US. As an interested observer, it appears to me that the publicity associated with The Pickens Plan announced in July 2008 (which I previously wrote about here) served as a significant impetus for increased public awareness of alternative energy as a public policy concern. There can be no doubt that the alternative energy "train has left the station" and that we will begin seeing an ever-increasing amount of corporate investment in both wind and natural gas technology. This investment will be directed toward

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Recent BusinessWeek Article Confirms that Energy Innovation is Rampant: Why These Innovations Should be Patented

This current BusinessWeek article entitled "The Real Question: Should Oil be Cheap?" confirms that innovations directed toward energy savings are rampant in these days of high energy prices. Specifically, the article states that "[h]igh energy prices [] water the flowers of innovation, making investments in alternatives pay off . . . ." As I wrote in this blog previously, along with such innovations comes the opportunity for savvy corporate managers to obtain exclusive rights to these energy usage improvements by developing and executing on patent strategies that prevent their competitors from benefiting from their investments in innovation. Moreover, as I wrote in this blog post, I believe that The Pickens Plan will open the floodgates of patenting in the area of wind energy and turbine technology. I realized after writing these blog posts that some people might find the idea of patenting energy innovations distasteful. Such a perspective

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Corporate Managers: Are You Failing to Obtain Maximum Value from Your Energy Savings and Green Innovations by Ignoring Patent Issues?

In this world of ever rising energy costs, your company likely has one or more teams of people working to reduce energy consumption and improve the efficiency of your company's processes. Your company is also probably working diligently on ways to make your operations more "green." For example, if your company exhibits a large carbon footprint in its manufacturing processes, someone in your organization is likely thinking about ways to reduce your carbon emissions in advance of the possible adoption of government-mandated carbon cap and trade system directed to fight global climate change. However, because the external forces of energy costs and possible governmental regulation are driving these and green innovations inside your company, it is quite likely that these efforts are occurring outside of normal R&D channels. That is, your company's Manufacturing, Operations and Logistics personnel are likely responsible for developing and testing these potential new innovations, and for