House ‘Trolls’ For Patent Letter Abuse Solutions

By: John Eggerton – The issue of reining in patent assertion entity demand letter abusers (“patent trolls” in the lingo of their critics) took on the metaphorical tenor of a garment industry sweat shop Thursday (May 22) as both sides said it might be helpful to lock themselves in a room so they could thread the needle of coming up with legislation that would hammer abusers without harming legitimate patent protection. more> http://tinyurl.com/pbffwt3

Related>

• Patent reform hits dead end in Senate, Erin Mershon, and Tony Romm, politico.com
• Patent Reform Legislation Off The Table — For Now, Andrew Williams, patentdocs.org

Google’s Giant $1 Patent Victory

By Susan Decker – Google paid to license the patents at issue in those cases on its own behalf as well as its users’.

Even so, the legal assault by Beneficial, a so-called patent troll that files infringement suits in search of settlements, continued. So Google sued for breach of contract.

On Jan. 23 a jury in Marshall, Tex., agreed with the Mountain View (Calif.)-based company that the terms of the 2010 deal had been breached.

The nominal damages—$1—were more than enough in this case, since Google’s real objective was to enforce the terms of the deal and not back down. more> http://tinyurl.com/pjyzts4

R&D Investment Pays Off

An Innovation Competence Process Coming From Knowledge Management
(Photo credit: Alex Osterwalder)

R&D – Annually, Thomson Reuters analysts look at all companies around the world that file patents and perform a deep dive analysis of those with 100 or more unique inventions over the last three-year period. They measure each patent holder according to the number of its unique inventions, its success of applications to grants, the global nature of its patent portfolio and its influence on future innovation.

Another finding from this year’s Top 100 is that governments that incent innovation and R&D with tax credits and pro-innovation policies, have greater representation on the list. One can make the correlation between government policies, innovation, R&D and economic success. more> http://tinyurl.com/lg77ct8

Related articles

• The Intellectual Property System Is an Impenetrable Maze (theneteconomy.wordpress.com)
• Software patent reform just died in the House, thanks to IBM and Microsoft (washingtonpost.com)
• Patent legislation threatens innovation, investment (jsonline.com)
• Patent Reform Takes a Hit From the Tech Industry (motherjones.com)
• Senators water down patent law (news.techeye.net)
• Prominent Independent Inventors Unhappy with Innovation Act (ipwatchdog.com)
• Patent Holders Urge Comprehensive Patent Reform (eff.org)
• Raising Maintenance Fees for Non-Practiced Inventions (patentlyo.com)

The Intellectual Property System Is an Impenetrable Maze

By Richard Jefferson – Patents are teachings, true recipes for enterprise. By law they are fully open documents that exist for the purpose of enabling innovation. The idea—historically, at least—is to tell the world exactly how to create or implement whatever new, nonobvious and useful tool or process the patent covers. In exchange for this full disclosure the patent’s owner acquires a right to control its use for a specified time and within a set jurisdiction.

These problems are compounded for true innovations—economically impactful products and services built on new science and technology. Real innovations seldom, if ever, depend on a single invention or even a small number of them. On the contrary, modern innovations generally spring from hundreds of discrete items of intellectual property (IP). more> http://tinyurl.com/mw82fnu

Related>

• Patent Trolls Are The Economy-Suffocating Exception To The ‘No Free Lunch’ Rule, Charles Duan, Forbes
• Absent Patent Troll Reform, Silicon Valley’s Innovation Leadership Could End, Morris Panner, Forbes
• Patent trolls spell trouble for America’s economy, Curt Bramble, Reuters

Related articles

• The Intellectual Property System Is an Impenetrable Maze (scientificamerican.com)
• Intellectual Property (visual.ly)
• India Weathering Doubts About Its Approach To Intellectual Property (ip-watch.org)
• Medical and food intellectual property tackled (parlyreportsa.co.za)
• Intellectual property summit targets IP ‘trolls’ (watchdog.org)
• Secret Trade Agreement Released by Wikileaks, Shows U.S’s Controlling Stance on IP Rules (ipbrief.net)

IBM Tops U.S. Patent List for 20th Consecutive Year

IBM – IBM (NYSE: IBM) today (Jan 10) announced that it received a record 6,478 patents in 2012 for inventions that will enable fundamental advancements across key domains including analytics, Big Data, cybersecurity, cloud, mobile, social networking and software defined environments, as well as industry solutions for retail, banking, healthcare, and transportation. These patented inventions also will advance a major shift in computing, known as the era of cognitive systems.

This is the 20^th consecutive year that IBM topped the annual list of U.S. patent recipients.

“We are proud of this new benchmark in technological and scientific creativity, which grows out of IBM’s century-long commitment to research and development,” said Ginni Rometty, chairman and CEO, IBM. “Most concretely, our 2012 patent record and the two decades of leadership it extends are a testament to thousands of brilliant IBM inventors — the living embodiments of our devotion to innovation that matters, for our clients, for our company and for the world.” more> http://tinyurl.com/affyvfs

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• IBM Tops US Patent List, Again (hispanicbusiness.com)
• IBM dominates 2012 patent count with Google, Apple surging (networkworld.com)
• IBM Granted Most U.S. Patents for 20th Straight Year (bloomberg.com)
• IBM (IBM) Remains Patent Colossus for 20th Straight Year (PC) (MSFT) (streetinsider.com)
• IBM Got The Most Patents In America For The 20th Straight Year (businessinsider.com)
• Undisputed patent king IBM sets its scientists to work on ‘Big Data’ (venturebeat.com)
• Microsoft Ranked Among The Top 10 U.S. Patent Winners of 2012 (microsoft-news.com)
• IBM filed close to 6,500 patents in 2012 (siliconrepublic.com)
• IBM Tops U.S. Patent List for 20th Consecutive Year (sacbee.com)
• IBM tops patent list for 20th year, Craig Wolf, Poughkeepsie Journal