Wealth of Ideas, February 2010

In these tough economic times, business owners must learn to do more with less, stretching the resources they have to meet their needs while they try to grow their businesses. Truly effective managers find more efficient ways to manage cash, receivables, inventory and other assets.

But some businesses may be ignoring – or underutilizing – an important source of revenue. Perhaps worse, corporations of all sizes are not utilizing "wasting assets" that are decreasing in value every year, and will eventually become worthless.

Wealth of Ideas, January 2010

By Alexander Poltorak

(An earlier version of this essay was published in Making Innovation Pay - Turning IP into Shareholder Value, ed. B. Berman, John Wiley & Sons Publishers, Inc., 2006.)

“Wealth of Ideas,” December 2009

UPSTO Director David Kappos first announced a new program in his opening remarks at the Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) annual meeting this past September, then discussed the initiative further last month at the Independent Inventors Conference, held at the USPTO’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

From Wealth of Ideas, November 2009

By the time oral arguments began November 9 before the US Supreme Court in the Bernard L. Bilski v. David J. Kappos case, more than 70 separate industry and policy groups had filed amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs, seeking to bring various issues to the Court’s attention.

These groups have different reasons for opposing or supporting a ruling in favor of Bilski, but many share the opinion that business method patents have the potential to stifle innovation, free trade and maybe even free speech.

from Wealth of Ideas, October 2009

By David Wanetick

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.

From Wealth of Ideas, September 2009

Did the landmark Supreme Court decision in the eBay v. MercExchange case make it more difficult for patent owners to get injunctive relief in patent infringement cases? Without a doubt! And it mostly depends on who you are – and more specifically, what you do with the patent you own.

A Brief History of the eBay Case

From Wealth of Ideas, August 2009

The “cheap Chinese knockoff” is a stereotype that isn’t going away anytime soon, and with cheap labor and often questionable quality control practices, the reputation of Chinese goods is unlikely to improve unless major changes are made.

But Chinese manufacturers are beginning to turn from imitation to innovation. They’re applying for United States patents in droves – and, in an interesting twist, they’re starting to sue each other and the US retailers that sell the infringer’s products in US courts.

From Wealth of Ideas, July 2009

Who but a patent attorney would look for a lawsuit under the lid of his morning cup of coffee? That’s exactly what Washington, DC-area attorney Matthew Pequignot did – and he found that the patents marked on his Solo cup lid had expired almost 20 years earlier.

Although the expired patent numbers were probably the result of old cup-lid molds that were never updated rather than an actual intent to deceive, Pequignot took legal action – on behalf of the government!

Qui Tam Statutes: Suing for the King

David J. Kappos Enjoys Wide Support from Big Tech to Big Biomed

From Wealth of Ideas, June 2009

On June 18, President Obama ended months of anxious speculation when he nominated David J. Kappos to be the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The response by the IP community to the nomination has been generally positive.

Wealth of Ideas Newsletter, May 2009 - On April 2, 2009, the Senate Judiciary Committee met to continue discussions of the Patent Reform Act of 2009 (Senate bill S.515). The Committee changed several sections, including those on damages, willfulness, inequitable conduct, best mode, post-grant review, interlocutory appeals and venue. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the major amendments to the Senate version of the bill as reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee: