Idea Lawyer Blog

Well, I confess I got drawn into the "fray" on the "Patently-O" website created by newcomer Dennis Crouch (given the backlog at the patent office, no case he's written in his short 3 years as a patent attorney will even see the light of day for a year or two-ouch!)
He started with the non-topic of "women patent holders and innovation"- http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2006/12/women_as_patent.html - and cited USPTO statistics from 1790 forward. Eschewing scholarship no doubt to meet the crush of weekly content, he failed to point out that prior to well into the 20th century, married women could not apply for a patent in their own name or without their husband's permission as being married made them , and their property, "his" property. So "her" ideas were "his" ideas in the eyes of the law. But as far as "innovation" today, as one reader posted "Who cares?"
But I could not resist a post in that thread, so here it is :
Having 20 years in as a full service IP attorney- patents included - and 30% of those years at a Fortune 5 global corp, I've had a wide look at the many splendored world of creativity and business. Throwing about the term "innovation" seems to invite measuring some role in commerce and the attendant marketplace(s). A "patent", absent more, is just a piece of paper with red ribbon & some wax (I date myself!) In the 90's the USPTO published a report saying, in effect, that the forlornest folks are patent holders who have failed to make money. And the cause, the report concluded, was "inablility to work well with others." Patentees are not all gifted in the panoply of skills necessary to "commercialize." So, notwithstanding the popular press banality du jour of gender jargon, numbers associated with revenue generation are more meaningful when associating "intellectual property" to "innovation." The growing numbers of other than XY types in the VC community is a number I'm watching. More post bubble companies with little in the way of IP other than mailing lists seem to be seizing their 15 minutes of fame. "Follow the money" is still a useful approach, and so is "play (well) with others."

Today, for something completely different,
log in to Internet Radio
http://womb.mixerman.net/showthread.php?t=487
Mixerman, author of the underground hit, Mixerman Diaries, is a growing force in the land of - - not sure the best handle here..internet forum for working musicians and collaborative projects?
Check it out...

Intro: it is 8:30 a.m.- I sit cross-legged (seiza is for the first hour; I've been here for 3 hours now - serviant (is that a word- if you take off the oft pre-pended "sub"? Google spell checker says no, but no time now to check the OED. mea culpa.) to clients whose faces turn to their own chariot-drawn suns, their own glowing monitor altars).
My thoughts want "out" like the dog I wish I had - so let's go for a little stroll. And let's have a story!. I relish allegory and metaphor: plots that teach, don't you? Blame, if you will, my indulging before retiring at night in the Gutenberg Project's human read audios of Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" (www.gutenberg.org) who blames Marley's ghost on a undigested bit of beef. Or blame my parochial education and the tradition of Aesop's Fables and parables of Loaves and Fishes, decades before our friend, the warmly remembered Julia Childs, before the congregated faithful studio audience, hoisted a poultry carcass, eyes to the camera and not precisely heaven-ward, leading the prayer "First you take a chicken...". Or specifically blame the snow storm in Schenectady in the winter of, hmm, 1976 when my three teenage brothers and I each had bookmarks in a single copy of three volume paperback Lord of The Rings from the public library - scout's honor not to move your sibling's marker when their turn to shovel snow for fun and profit- and to share if other's were free to read and you were "hogging it" or getting too far ahead.
Ah, the warm slush of nostalgia in the sulci of my wetware ...back to - (or should i say "on with" ) the story:
If Tolkein wrote Lord of the Rings with intellectual property in mind, how would the characters shake out? Try this: let's assume for a blasphemous and profane moment that patents are one or THE ONE "Ring of Power'. (Sorry JRR). Yes, the common household patent - the revered or reviled 20 year exclusive right to prevent others from making, using, or selling any "thing" that falls within the scope of the patent "claims" [bored yet?- not nearly shining enough, is it?]. Why would we imagine such a hideous chimera of (arguably) edifying literature and commecial vulgarity? Why, to backlight by absurdity and to throw into relief the silhouette of the thorny ethical questions faced by companies genuinely interested in the best possible position in relation to intellectual property rights. Because true leaders in business know their values are visible not only by what their website says, but by their actions. So what does applying for a patent say about a company whose Values are grounded in, for example, the principles of Open Source?
,,,,Readers: here's the abrupt finish for today (conference call with another client I don't type and talk - mono-tasking is the new multi-tasking!) ....
If patents are a/the "ring of power" : will you be Boromir: well-intended but self deceived; thwarted from his noble intentions by his impotence in harnessing the power of the Ring, and, consequently, destined to be corrupted by it?
Or can you be (n.b. this is not in the movie) Tom Bombadil? The Ring cool and harmless in your palm....to do with as you choose - safely outside the control of the corrupting power of the object of power itself?
........To Be Continued......Bye for Now! dn

See the NYT coverage of the Supreme Court justices discussing the nature of the inventive act. You can read for yourself the age old discussion of "how much creativity is enough" to qualify for the limited 20 year monopoly- a "patent right." Should the standard of what qualifies as an invention be changed? A reader wrote to me about the article, and pointed out at least one legal voice predicting business chaos from any change in the current test for what is "obvious" versus what is "invention", where "business" means "patent holders" and presumably "big business". Now Dear Readers: Should this discussion - or decision- affect those entrepreneurs or venture funded companies as they pursue the time-honored tradition of bolstering their chances of economic viability by applying for intellectual property rights? Absolutely not. Neglecting to allocate some resources for identifing company-created patent prospects is tantmount to instructing your CPA to stop seeking tax advantages because its not clear what the IRS may do. Stay bold! Keep creating; keep applying for proprietary rights.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/business/29bizcourt.html?ex=1165899600&en=8a9d5bd559b34ac8&ei=5070&emc=eta1