Mexico’s Secretary of Economy Bruno Ferrari deposited his country’s instrument of accession to the Madrid Protocol for the International Registration of Marks with WIPO Director General Francis Gurry on November 19, 2012, bringing the total number of members of the international trademark system to 89. The treaty will enter into force with respect to Mexico on February 19, 2013. The Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks (Madrid system) offers trademark owners a cost effective, user friendly and streamlined means of protecting and managing their trademark portfolio internationally.

In a 1972 court decision, United States Supreme Court Justice Stewart wrote: “Property does not have rights. People have rights.” Accordingly, Blacks must be diligent in making sure that they are aware of their intellectual property rights, like any other civil right, and seek IP legal counsel to secure and enforce these rights for economic gain, the avoidance of economic exploitation and the creation of wealth in the new millennium and beyond. That will only be achieved with the help of those (of all races and other categories that divide us) who work within the IP community. Until then, in a society where innovation is the key to individual wealth and national economic prosperity and where IP attorneys who represent innovators should be the “next generation civil rights lawyer,” I (and many like me) will have failed to live up to my mother’s dream.

We pick up our conversation with where many inventors stumble as they attempt to move from idea person to small business person. We also discuss lessons learned from a Big Bang Theory episode, as well as the important of taking reasonable risks, protecting your innovations (Key is a fan of provisional patent applications to start) and the importance of knowing the market for your product.

These IP5 Offices together handle approximately 80% of the world’s patent applications. The IP5 began meeting in 2007 and have since worked together to explore ways to further optimize their joint efforts to improve quality and efficiency of the examination process and to explore and optimize work sharing opportunities between the Offices.

Acacia announced that the Company’s Board of Directors has authorized a program for repurchasing shares of the Company’s outstanding common stock. The stock repurchase program will be put into effect immediately. Under the stock repurchase program, the Company is authorized to purchase in the aggregate up to $100 million of its common stock through the period ending May 15, 2013. Meanwhile, HTC settles with Apple and more.

Prior to joining Stradling, Mr. Kong was Senior Corporate Counsel for Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC. While at Sony PlayStation, he was the lead attorney for the US R&D and Strategic Business Development Groups for the Sony entity responsible for Sony PlayStation matters in North and Latin America.

Whether you are just getting your feet wet in the wild world of inventions and patents, or you already have your business up and running, social media can help expand your business. Everywhere you look, there are Facebook “Like” buttons, LinkedIn “Share” buttons and Twitter “Tweet” buttons. Even Google has entered the social sharing game with Google+ allowing you to “+1” content. Social media can help catapult your business into overdrive – if you know how to use it effectively. Here are some tips to using social media to expand business.

All of these accomplishments would be more than enough to fill out a lifetime spent in the law, but upon leaving the Department of Justice, Waxman has become nationally recognized and highly sought after as one of the preeminent appellate attorneys in America. He has also developed a particular niche in the area of patent law and litigation. Simply stated, if you have a patent case before the Supreme Court and you want to win, Waxman will be on your short list of attorneys to call. In fact, he should be right at the top.

The stars, who included Alabama, Sheryl Crow, CeeLo Green, Billy Joel, Maroon 5, KISS, Ne-Yo, Katy Perry, Pink Floyd, Megadeath and many others, praised Pandora, saying: “We are big fans.”  But with massive growth in revenues and a successful IPO under its belt, the artists are wondering why Pandora is pushing Congress to slash musicians’ pay.  “That’s not fair and that’s not how partners work together,” the open letter explains. The Internet Radio Fairness Act Pandora is promoting would get them out of their 5 year old negotiated deal. Doesn’t Congress have more pressing matters?

The Clickbooth affiliate network has agreed to pay $2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that its affiliate marketers deceived consumers through bogus weight-loss claims on fake news sites about acai berry supplements and so-called “colon cleansers.” The FTC will seek to use the $2 million judgment announced today to provide refunds to consumers who were allegedly deceived by the defendants’…

A lot of inventors and entrepreneurs might come up with an idea that solves a problem, but I’ve always took a different approach. I would let the market tell me what it’s looking for or what it needs or what’s missing. And I like to refer to it as looking for a sleeping dinosaur. By that I mean something that is old and tired. Don’t reinvent the wheel but come up with a small change in existing products. So number one, you’re guaranteed that there’s a market for it. And number two, the technology exists.

The American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) bestowed its highest awards on professionals in the IP industry during the 2012 Annual Meeting, October 25-27 in Washington, DC.

Like so many other popular science fiction books, movies and franchises, Star Trek has inspired many innovators to ask the question “why not?” Although Star Trek did not have a monopoly on inspiration for cloaking devices, a technology that was first awarded a U.S. patent earlier this year, it is hard to imagine a more powerful motivation for the pursuit of deflector shields. And earlier today the company that owns the first patented cloaking device claims to have successfully created a deflector shield body armor suit.

One of the more indelible images of the civil rights movement are those from the Spring of 1968 as Black sanitation workers went on strike in Memphis, Tennessee holding signs that read “I am a Man,” in their fight for economic equality. (This is the reason that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was visiting Memphis when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.) Now those signs should not only read “I am a Man Who Thinks,” but “I am a Man Who Thinks and My Thoughts are Valuable.” Thus, a skillful IP attorney can be a modern day civil rights attorney by aiding Blacks to create IP rights in order to preserve their exclusive right to economically exploit the fruits of their creativity.

The financing commitment Kodak received is composed of new term loans of $476 million, as well as term loans of $317 million issued in a dollar-for-dollar exchange for amounts outstanding under the company’s pre-petition second lien notes. The financing, however, is predicated on certain conditions and Kodak’s achievement of certain milestones. Perhaps the main pre-condition, and one that may be quite difficult for the company to meet, is that Kodak must successfully complete the sale of it’s digital imaging patent portfolio and the sale much fetch no less than $500 million.