Article: IP for In-House Counsels

Via the WIPO SME newsletter, link to a 149 page long “Intellectual Property Primer: Patent, Trademarks, Copyrights and Trade Secrets: An Introduction to Intellectual Property for In-House Counsels” [PDF].

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Boise Blogger Dinner, May 15 (UPDATE)

Shel Israel and I are setting up a blogger dinner here in Boise on May 15, 2006.  If you are a blogger, want to be a blogger, or just want to chat it up with bloggers over dinner…we’d love to see you.  If you are coming, PLEASE email me and/or make sure your name/contact information is left in a comment to either this (current) post OR one of the prior three posts Shel and I have made (one, two, three).

ALSO!!!

We’ve moved locations.  Flying Pie Pizza contacted us and said “we blog too!”  So…we decided to move the dinner’s location to a fellow blogger’s establishment.

Time/Date:  6:30–8:30 pm, Monday, May 15
Place:  Flying Pie Pizza, 6508 Fairview, Boise (376–3455)
blog:  http://florathefoilball.blogspot.com/
Deal:  Pizza and soda for $4.00

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USPTO on FTC v. Davison

Court Halts Bogus Invention Promotion Claims, Orders $26 Million in Redress For Consumers; USPTO’s Director Jon Dudas Praises Court Decision

and

More on the $26 Million consumer redress decision against the Davison & Associates invention promotion operation

[Articles scraped from the USPTO “News and Notice” page]

[Update: See also, FTC v. Davison decided (http://inventblog.com/2006/03/ftc_vs_davison_.html) and http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_522191.html (Davison appealed, but appears to have come to a settlement with the FTC).]

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Art of the Start…read Chapter 1 on-line (for free)

I had the pleasure of being introduced to Guy Kawasaki (blog) a few months ago, resulting in me reading his best selling book:  “Art of the Start.”  The book covers starting, positioning, pitching, writing business plans, bootstrapping, recruiting, raising capital, partnering, branding, rainmaking and (whew) “the art of being a mensch.”  Upon reading the book I was left with the realization that EVERY inventor/start-up/small business I meet with should read it.  Mandatory reading!

Earlier today, I noticed that Guy has put Chapter 1 (and the table of contents) of Art of the Start (pdf) on the Internet for people to read.  Of the chapters in the book (probably due to that start-up called Rethink(IP)), this chapter was the one that most spoke to me. 

If you haven’t read it…DO (and then go buy the book).  This should be on everyone in my audience’s to do list.

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Number of in-house patent attorneys…list

A reader asked me whether I knew how many patent attorneys each of the top ten patent recipients (2005) employed (in-house).  Of course, I have no clue.

Maybe some of my readers can opine.  Comments are open.

Here’s the list:

1. International Business Machines Corporation
2. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
3. Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
4. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
5. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
6. Micron Technology, Inc.
7. Intel Corporation
8. Hitachi, Ltd
9. Toshiba Corporation
10. Fujitsu Limited

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Patent prosecution conflicts

Legal Ethics Forum on “Patent Prosecution Conflicts.”  Author David Hricik is looking for YOUR answers to questions like:

Lawyer in prosecuting application for Client A receives an office action rejecting a claim over a prior art reference.  Lawyer looks, and that reference is owned by another Client, Client B….What sayeth you?

Well…

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Another patent tool: FireFox Search Bar & patent searching

Larry Kasoff left a comment to my previous post on Greasemonkey patent scripts with a link to this set of three tools:  http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html?name=USPTO&submitform=Search

What does it do?  It modifies the “Search Bar” in FireFox to add USPTO searches for Number, Inventor and/or Assignee.  See the below snapshot:

Thanks Larry!

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Who owns whom?

Interesting tool (on an anti-corporation website) for researching what corporation’s parent/children corporations are:  http://www.badcorp.org/hierarchy.cfm?action=popular&searchType=Companies

In example:

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Patent related greasemonkey scripts

Surfing the ‘net earlier I stumbled on a Greasemonkey script called PatentHelper. PatentHelper:

• adds link from USPTO patent documents to the corresponding document on EPO, and vice versa.
• Adds links to the PDF’s (from EPO’s site)
• It adds EPO-links to all references on USPTO’s pages and fetches the titles of the USPTO references.
• Hyperlinks US patent numbers found on EPO’s pages, for instance on the description page
• Hyperlinks patent numbers in “also published as” box on EPO, and in other places that use the same syntax.
• Hyperlinks inventor names and applicant names to EPO searches.
• Tips: EPO’s site has PDFs, good classification links and nice layout. USPTO’s site has good reference lists and referenced-by search.

An image (click to make bigger) showing it in action (upper left hand corner):

Interesting! Anyone know of any other IP related Greasemonkey scripts?

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Got IP Lawsuit Mojo?

We have an interesting service at Rethink(IP) you may not know about.  It is called the “RSS Mojo” blog. What is it?

RSS Mojo currently has two components: (1) US Patent and Trademark Office News and (2) IP Lawsuit Filing Updates.

1. US Patent and Trademark Office News

Unlike the Copyright Office, the Patent and Trademark Office doesn’t yet have RSS feeds of their News & Notice’s page. We’ve done it for you. You can subscribe via RSS or via e-mail.

2. Lawsuit Filings

We also provide regular updates of recently filed patent, trademark and copyright lawsuits. They are currently provided for free, but [[will]] may move to a weekly (subscription only) and monthly (free) model in the next few months. You can subscribe via RSS or E-mail.

Interested?  Everything you need to know is right here.

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