As my consulting practice becomes ever more busy, blogging must be relegated to times when client work is not pressing--that ever-elusive free time. But now that Summer is here, free time has been hard to come by--it's hard to write when at the pool with the kids or driving to Grandma's house--but I haven't been totally giving up my outreach. I recently participated in 2 radio interviews where I discussed the value of IP Strategy for entrepreneurs and inventors. Here I was on the 40 Year Old Business Virgin Radio Show with Dave Savage, Leader and President of The Inventors Association of Georgia and a person named Mohamed who has a really cool entrepreneurial story (sorry I didn't get his last name). The hosts of the show, Kile Lewis and Ted Jenkin, are irreverent business advisors, and you should enjoy the show. (I appear in the first half).
IP Strategist on the Radio: 2 Recent Interviews
Innovation is Sprouting in US Patent Office: A Plea for Flexibility from Patent Practitioners and Interested Parties to Allow the Necessary Changes
Anyone who has practiced IP law for a few years can attest to the transformations happening in the US Patent Office over the last year. In my opinion, Director Kappos is more than a breathe of fresh air over his predecessors, he actually knows what he is doing! Also, regardless of what one may think of President Obama's other policies and actions, one cannot question that his leadership is resulting in real attempts at innovation in the arguably previously moribund Patent Office. As a experienced patent practitioner, the last several years have been very demoralizing. I actually made the decision to stop working as a patent prosecutor because, quite simply, I became weary trying to educate junior examiners about the deeply nuanced intricacies of patent law. Worse was trying to explain to clients why their patent application covering an important commercial innovation could not get approved in the Kafkaesque environment of
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 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
The News is Out: We Now Have an Intangible Asset-Based Corporate Economy
(Ed. Note: A family emergency has been keeping me away from the office. The good news is that I have been catching up on my RSS feeds and reading some really interesting stuff, albeit a bit late. One of these interesting reads is a David Brooks piece dealing with corporate intangible assets. Since this was published Christmas week, others may have missed it, too. And, when pundits pick up on what you have been talking about for years, I means that the public is finally "getting" it!) David Brooks’ Op-Ed in the December 22, 2009 New York Times raises some interesting points about our new intangible economy. In this piece, entitled “The Protocol Economy,” Brooks recognizes that we have moved from an economy that makes “stuff” –that is, a physical goods economy—to one that deals in “protocols.” (I think it would be more appropriate to call our evolving intangible
Guest Blogger: How Patent Vulnerability Impacts Valuation by David Wanetick of IncreMental Advantage
(This week, David Wanetick, Managing Director of IncreMental Advantage provides readers if the IP Asset Maximizer Blog with an excellent overview of the various factors that he believes affect patent valuation. Please let me know if you would like to be a Guest Blogger.)
How Patent Vulnerability Impacts Valuation by David Wanetick of IncreMental Advantage As I often tell business leaders who attend my course on Valuing Early-Stage Technologies, valuing patents isn’t rocket science. It is much more difficult. Or to paraphrase Winston Churchill, valuing patents is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Measuring even a well-delineated permanent entity is much more difficult than may be imagined. As Neil deGrasse Tyson (a renowned astrophysicist) and Benoit Mandelbrot (the father of fractal geometry) have discussed, no one really knows what the circumference of the coastline of the United Kingdom is. The tides will cause varying
Guest Poster David Boundy: A Detailed Examination of What the Proposed First to File Legislation Means to Business
(Editorial Note: Last week, I posted my thoughts on the proposed changes to the US patent laws from a first to invent to a first to file system. In response to my post, I received an exceedingly detailed and substantive comment from David Boundy, Vice President, Ass't Gen'l Counsel, Intellectual Property at Cantor, Fitzgerald. (David wanted me to say that this post his personal view, and does not reflect the views of Cantor, Fitzgerald.) David's viewpoint on what the proposed legislation will mean to business deserves a forum, and he has graciously allowed me to post his comment in total on the IP Asset Maximizer Blog. Anyone who works with business to generate patent assets should be concerned about the proposed changes.) About guest poster David Boundy: David Boundy has spent over a decade on Wall Street, first in several of New York's most prominent law
A Closer Look at the Patent Office’s New Conversation about Adoption of a “First to File” Rule and a Proposal for a Win-Win for the Patent Office and Inventors
(Editorial Note: Regular readers of the IP Asset Maximizer Blog might find this post an departure from the usual topics discussed on this blog. In the almost 2 years I have been blogging, I have consciously avoided talking about specific aspects of patent law, both in the form of case law, patent reform efforts and the US Patent Office itself because I believe there are many great blogs that do a great job that frequently discuss these topics and that I can likely add little to the already substantive discussions occurring elsewhere. However, given the great significance of the so-called "first to invent" system to the interests of individual and corporate inventors alike, I felt it appropriate to weigh in on the conversation. Put simply, any changes in the first to invent rule must clearly flesh out and respond to the resulting effects to businesses of all sizes, as well
For Inventor of 21 Patents, Patent Troll Litigation Not Very Lucrative
Recently, I wrote a post on why I think that patent litigation is not a viable business model for inventors. Given a realistic deconstruction of the costs and possible damage awards, I concluded that, in most situations, it is not realistic for an inventor to presume that she will "hit the jackpot" by suing infringers and extracting settlement or damage awards. I obtained some pushback from this post, mostly from patent litigation lawyers, who contend that I am wrong in my view that patent litigation does not pay for inventors. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I respect the views of others, however, no one who objects to my (somewhat) negative view of patent litigation as a business model, has provided me with numbers to discount my economic analysis of patent litigation. This recent post from The Prior Art blog entitled "Revealed! How Much Money a
The Coming Explosion of the Patent Monetization Market: Brought to You by Open Innovation and What Needs to Happen in Order to Speed Up the Process
This week, I got a call out of the blue from a very senior business development person at a Fortune 10 technology company "wanting to know more" about patent licensing and monetization. This was a bit strange: his company has literally dozens of patent professionals on staff, files 100's of patents a year and, as I found out, has 35 or so business people working on patent licensing and monetization efforts for the organization. So, why would he (let's call him "Bob") need to talk to me these topics? Certainly, there is a veritable army of highly-paid smart people to answer IP and patent questions at his beck and call, and I was interested in finding out what Bob sought to find out from me that he could not get from his own people. I was not surprised to find out that Bob did not want to learn more about buying and selling
An IP Strategist’s Economic Forecast for 2010: An Outsider’s View and How One Can Outperform the “Experts”
In remembrance of the 1 year anniversary of the Financial Meltdown, Forbes.com has included me in a list of bloggers asked to provide an economic forecast for 2010 and also to provide some insights as to what economic markers I use in my work. This is an interesting assignment for me: few who know me would consider me to be an economist and, indeed, such training was wholly absent from my many years of college, graduate and law school. This might actually be a good thing, however, because, as discussed in this recent Robert Lezner StreetTalk post, none of the so-called "experts"--even those at the highest levels of power and prestige (except perhaps Dr. Nouriel Roubini)--predicted the financial instability that would result from Wall Street's increasing reliance on innovative, high yield financial instruments. Notwithstanding the vast reliance put on financial expertise, based on the results of the last couple of years, it now seems