Posts Tagged: "ip"

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.

Many may initially wonder what IP has to do with civil rights. After all, IP rights (IPR) have always been understood in terms of individual economic incentives for creating society-wide public good in the form of cultural works, like art and music, and scientific knowledge such as medicines. The interrelationship initially seems odd because, regardless of political leanings, many are turned off by any mention or use of identity politics. Yet, as one leading scholar observed, “we cannot understand intellectual property today without recognizing the identity struggles embedded within it. Intellectual property’s convergence with identity politics reveals links between cultural representation and development, which traditional economic analyses of intellectual property overlook.” Thus, I ask should IPR be the new focal point of the civil rights movement in America?

Innovation and how to foster next generation technologies is a topic of very active discussion within businesses across the country. But how can America continue to be one of the most innovative countries in the world? The rapid adoption of IP management and licensing platforms built around social collaboration seems to lead us to one answer – open innovation. Indeed, with today’s technology allowing for the seamless transfer of information – R&D departments have little to no choice but to begin to embrace the open innovation model and use it to their advantage. Understanding your intellectual assets and being able to capitalize on them in order to generate more revenue must be an important part of managing IP and fostering innovation.

Protecting trade secrets is critically important if for no other reason than making sure that the time, money and energy you spend building your business is not wasted. If your employees could simply leave without having any contractual obligations that would prevent them from taking information, stealing employees away and/or soliciting your existing customers then they would be able to set up a business and compete with you for a fraction of what it cost you to do the same. After all, you were the one who spent the time and money for marketing to attract customers in the first place, and you were the one who spent the time and money necessary to train your employees. Without the cost of acquiring new customers and the costs associated with training employees that new business set up by your former employee would compete with you and have only a fraction of the start-up and overhead costs you faced. That can make it difficult for any business to keep the doors open.

As far as I can tell none of these goals is forwarded by the sale of computers to North Korea. Sure, North Korea is the exact type of country that WIPO has historically sought to help. Not because they are a rogue nation, aspire to have a clandestine nuclear program or because they support terrorism, but rather because the people of North Korea suffer so much and there is so little economic activity that it is misleading to even call what they have an economy. Such horribly mismanaged countries is where WIPO has done its best work, to encourage the adoption and respect of IP rights, which leads to international investment and economic development.

When copying has occurred, much of the code may have changed by the time it’s examined due to the normal development process or to disguise the copying. For example identifiers may have been renamed, code reordered, instructions replaced with similar instructions, and so forth. However, perhaps one comment remains the same and it’s an unusual comment. Or a small sequence of critical instructions is identical. Correlation is designed to produce a relatively high value based on that comment or that sequence, to direct the detective toward that similarity. If correlation were simply a percentage of copied lines, the number could be small and thus missed entirely among the noise of normal similarities that occur in all programs.

As the second largest economy in the world, China is emerging to the center of the world’s economic stage. This emergence has been accompanied by constant changes in its legal and economic sectors. The intellectual property sector also has witnessed numerous recent changes. There have been significant new advances in China’s national innovation policies. New trends in Chinese patent filings have emerged. A growing number of Chinese companies are creating their own IP and increasingly filing infringement suits against foreign companies and their local competitors in China. China’s third patent law amendment has materially changed patent practice and procedures in that country.

There is much to write about the event, but I will start my week long coverage with an overview of the event. As the week progresses I will delve into some interesting substantive discussions that took place over this Intellectual Property weekend in the Granite State, including: (1) Chief Judge Rader tell me during the Judges’ panel: “You aren’t making any sense…”; (2) Chief Judge Rader daring anyone to come up with proof that the Supreme Court’s decision in KSR did anything to change previous Federal Circuit case law on obviousness (I’ll take that challenge!); and (3) Jon Dudas, the former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, succinctly (and correctly) explaining that the funding of the United States Patent and Trademark Office is similar in ways to a Ponzi scheme.

Indeed, the new Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property at the University of New Hampshire School of Law will formally open with a bang! Chief Judge Randall Rader of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will deliver remarks at a dinner hosted by UNH Law on Friday, September 30, 2011, and will participate in a Judge’s panel on Saturday, October 1, 2011. Rounding out the Judges’ panel will be Judge Pauline Newman and Judge Arthur Gajarsa, both also of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Three Federal Circuit Judges at the opening event for the new IP Center is a great way to start.

As an aside, and somewhat related to the boring concept, is the idea that intellectual property practitioners are all basement-dwelling nerds. OK, maybe we’re a little nerdy in some ways, but I swear I do not live in a basement, my summer reading did not include the cheat guide to World of Warcraft, and I have NEVER been to Comicon. So what if I have the blueprints to the Millennium Falcon on my office wall and my favorite TV show is “How it’s Made”? You gotta admit some of the stuff we get to do and see in our professional lives is pretty freaking cool. The seediest infringement cases. The bleedingest edge of technology. The next rival to the power of McDonald’s logo or Coca-Cola trade secret. I wear my nerd moniker proudly.

The search for innovative ideas has never been easy, but the advent of crowdsourcing technologies and powerful players willing to embrace new methodologies seems to be paying dividends. Rather than rely on traditional innovation that comes from one individual or a small group of individuals or those working for or with a single entity or as part of a joint venture, crowdsourcing technologies take problems to millions of people and capture the most creative solutions, allowing them to be pursued and developed. “Opening up the conversation and searching for solutions among a broad, but qualified, audience has allowed us to find unique, innovative ideas in a short period of time,” said Matthew Bishop, U.S. business editor and New York bureau chief for The Economist.

In addition to a diverse international faculty focusing on “Enhancing IP Rights in a Time of Erosion” and other innovative IP topics, AIPF offers its Brand of Excellence programming which will include topics like eLawyering, Mentoring, Legal Project Management and Social Media for the Attorney. PWatchdog’s own Renee Quinn, the Social Media Diva™, will present at 11:35am on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 on “Marketing, Brand Building and Social Media for the Attorney.” Renee will also be covering the AIPF Annual Meeting for IPWatchdog.com.

We conclude that the FTC has not identified sufficient evidence to raise serious doubt about the current efficiencies of the IP marketplace. Indeed, the available empirical evidence suggests that these existing rules and practices work well. The interests of consumers are well represented by standard setting organizations and competition among technology implementers who at the end of the day must make goods and services that people wish to purchase.

IP concerns range from highbrow to hilarious. It’s time to wake up, do your due diligence, and make sure you have the comprehensive IP protection you need in place when you start a business so you can stay on track creatively without fear of being derailed. Securing IP protection should now be at the top of your “to-do” list – not just an afterthought.

One of the costliest mistakes a startup can make is mismanaging intellectual property rights. A company needs to not only manage its own IP rights, but also avoid those of third parties, including competitors. To be on the safe side, therefore, intellectual property management should include efficiently protecting the startup’s IP rights while also avoiding the IP rights of others.