Emeritus Stanford Computer Science Professor Gio Wiederhold provides in the January 2011 issue of Communications of the ACM (1) (the monthly journal of the professional society for Computer Scientists) an article titled Follow the Intellectual Property. The theme of his paper is that the offshoring of IP (actually domiciling the IP for sheltering royalty purposes in an off-shore tax haven such as the Cayman Islands) works to the disadvantage of US employees. Profits sheltered are not repatriated, but instead are used to seed and hire other offshore developments for the patent owners. Read more about Gio Wiederhold Follows the Intellectual Property Money
In reviewing the statistical tea leaves of IP litigation trends for 2010, one aspect that now stands out is the number of cases involving auctioned patents. There are 15 such cases asserting 20 auctioned patents. Some of the highlights of these 15 cases are:
• US 6,526,219 for “Picture-based video indexing system” had a projected auction price of $250,000, but ended up sold for $700,000. InMotion Imagery Technologies, LLC asserted this patent in three cases in the Eastern District of Texas. Read more about Auctioned Patents Emerge in Litigation in 2010
In an earlier technical life I was in the 'Library Automation' biz, where I designed and built library information systems and public online catalogs, and was a VP of Software Development for a major vendor. Central to these systems are bibliographic records - a standard description of a work, such as author, title and subject (which gets more arcane from there.)
The above case was just filed in the Northern District raising antitrust and unfair competition issues. Read more about SkyRiver v. OCLC Ohio College Library Center (CA ND 10-3305) - A case that was waiting to happen.
I received a link to a fascinating site (http://www.aturingmachine.com) and video of a working model of a Turing Machine (TM). Turing Machines are named for British mathematician Alan Turing after a 1936 paper where he proposes a computing machine. The machine is a finite state automaton, being a area of study of the fundamental aspects of theoretical Computer Science. Read more about Turing Machines and Bilski
A way of wringing the value out of expired patents is in play.
Seven patent infringement cases have been filed during the past two weeks in the Northern District of Texas by the Patent Compliance Group, Inc. Suing on behalf of the United States, they intend to share 50% of the damages with the United States: Read more about New Game in Town: Qui Tam False Marking Cases in Texas
This morning I received an email from ICAP - Ocean Tomo informing that they are the exclusive broker for about 700 patents in the Walker Digital portfolio. Presumably in the portfolio is the Priceline 'name your price' patent. I wonder if William Shatner, television advertising persona for Priceline and formerly Captain Kirk of Startrek, is going to be doing some 'patent price chopping.' Read more about Name Your Price? Walker Digital places IP portfolio for licensing/purchase.
Last week a stream of cleantech related events emerged onto my radar is several ways. First, Bruce Abramson simply but profoundly commented on Facebook that he
“just realized that of all the activities he has ever undertaken, the one whose consequences contributed most to his carbon footprint was probably protesting against nuclear energy and nuclear research in the 1980s.”
He has a good point. It's time to revisit the risks and benefits of nuclear technology and how it fits in to current Cleantech thinking. Read more about Cleantech IP Thoughts
Security expert Bruce Schneier today posts about the taxonomy of social networking data. He describes five types of data:
"1. Service data. Service data is the data you need to give to a social networking site in order to use it. It might include your legal name, your age, and your credit card number.
2. Disclosed data. This is what you post on your own pages: blog entries, photographs, messages, comments, and so on. Read more about Taxonomy of Social Networking and Privacy
It is with anticipation that I receive the Ocean Tomo auction catalogs, looking for suprises. There are three lots of patents directed towards Social Networking. CIS speaker and Harvard law prof Jonathan Zittrain ( a great speaker) is the first named inventor of two patents (6,998,984 and 7,324,000) at the March auction. The patents are entitled, “State adaptation devices and methods for wireless communications”, but the catalog summarizes them as a “Non-verbal Wireless Communication System.” One of the claims of the ‘000 patent provides for Read more about Social Networking Patents at Upcoming Ocean Tomo Auction
Quito Enterprises filed a patent infringement suit in Florida against Netflix, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Slacker, Pandora Media, Strands, Veoh Networks, Realnetworks, Hulu, NBC Universal, News Corp, Last.fm, and CBS Corp on December 26th. Other than filing on Boxing Day, another unusual fact is that this patent was sold at auction last April for $975,000 ($1,072,500 with buyer's commission). Read more about Quito Enterprises Asserts US 5,890,152 on Boxing Day
With increased interest in global warming, green building and ecologically friendly behaviors, I initially observed that there was fairly little chatter concerning intellectual property aspects. This prompted me to examine the extent that IP issues that consume us in other technologies, like the Internet or e-commerce are also affecting progress in the ‘green’ world. Unlike the debate over ‘software patents’, I wasn’t hearing the similar criticisms that IP protection in green technology was inhibiting innovation. Read more about Survey of Eco / Green Intellectual Property
Last week I attended the Israeli Venture Association conference in Tel Aviv. Featured was a demonstration pavilion presenting progress on 30 startups seeking venture capital. The big eye catcher (for me) was 'Ticket2Final', an online marketplace where you can purchase options on a ticket to a future sports event. For example, you can buy an option today for a ticket to Stanford in the Final Four. Should your pick be successful, you can buy a ticket at the face price, avoiding the scalpers’ mark-up. However, how does this relate to online gambling? Read more about Report from Israeli Venture Association: some future Internet applications
