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."