A small start-up company fighting one of the great giants of all time: it’s a classic story of David vs. Goliath, or in this case, David vs. Googleliath (a.k.a. VSL vs. Google). Many small companies have claimed that Google misappropriated trade secrets or other IP, but rarely has Google graciously (and accidentally) cooperated in providing …
My latest post here at Innovation Fatigue lamented the actions of the USPTO in their apparent war on patents involving natural products. New information makes the story even more troubling than before, indicating that more than just judicial error and bureaucratic blindness was involved. The steps taken appear much more deliberate and political than that, …
America’s Anti-Patent Revolution: Stoking the Engines of Innovation Fatigue Read More »
In response to recent court cases, the USPTO has dramatically revised its approach to dealing with a wide variety of patents. Its new guidelines to patent examiners on subject matter eligibility for inventions involving natural products seem to go way beyond the legal decisions on which they are allegedly based, adding extremely high barriers to patentability. …
Excluding Natural Products from Patent Protection? Read More »
Breaking news from the Province of Shandong in northern China: A Chinese paper company, Quanlin Paper (also called “Tralin Paper”) has successfully used its portfolio of patents and trademarks to secure a huge loan of 7.9 billion RMB (about $1.3 billion). Potentially significant story for those tracking IP and innovation in China. The story was …
Chinese Company Relies on IP to Gain Giant Loan: Lessons from Quanlin (Tralin) Paper Read More »
The hysteria against software patents continues around the globe, threatening to hinder the most important aspects of the knowledge economy in favor of clinging to old industrial age paradigms. The real problem with software patents has been the large number of poor quality patents issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office due to bad …
One of the most serious factors contributing to innovation fatigue in the U.S. and many other nations can be the failure of government to protect and enforce property rights, including intellectual property rights. When the fruits of invention can be plucked by anyone without benefit to the inventor, when the risks and costs of innovation …
Now the Fed Joins the Attack on Intellectual Property Rights Read More »
Innovators need to recognize that there are numerous IP risks that their new products and services may face. Sometimes a little attention to your supply chain, packaging, and business model can greatly reduce those risks. An excellent resource on this topic, from which I have drawn a couple of suggestions, is “IP risk assessments – …
On Sept. 16, President Obama signed the Leahy-Smith “America Invents Act” which supposedly will strengthen innovation and improve our patent system. It’s a radical change in our patent system–one that seems to have been drafted by people who don’t fully understand patents or innovation. Does this bill promote innovation as advertized? What about that 15% …
One of the troubling trends in US patent law, a trend I first heard about roughly a decade ago in a course “Drafting and Crafting Winning Patents” from Patent Resources Group, was the tendency for courts in patent litigation to twist the claims to limit their scope. Among the many examples of courts finding language …
Subtle Corruption? The Weakening of US Patent Rights Read More »
Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly on Twitter) had a recent tweet about the Nobel Laureate Andre Geim who discovered graphene and many potential uses for the super strong two-dimensional material. His tweet was “Puts the lie to the claim that patents help small inventors: Why Geim Never Patented Graphene http://bit.ly/9QrEC3“. The link is to a discussion on …