Posts Tagged: "interview"

In Pursuit of the Hardest, Riskiest and Most Valuable Innovation

As IBM was preparing to announce yet another milestone achievement, this year receiving 9,100 U.S. patents in 2018, I had the opportunity to sit down for an on the record conversation with Mark Ringes, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for IBM, and Manny Schecter, Chief Patent Counsel for IBM. Our conversation was wide-ranging, but what appears below specifically relates to IBM’s innovation leadership and quest to patent as much of its technology and innovation as possible. We discuss how IBM’s commitment to innovation and how the company is unafraid of pursuing the hardest, riskiest innovations because those will be the most valuable innovations in the future. Of course, even IBM is constrained with a budget, and must report to shareholders, so the philosophy is to obtain patents in a variety of areas and allow the research, technology and market realities dictate where future resources, and company efforts, are placed.

Exclusive with Roberta Romano-Götsch, Chief Operating Officer of Mobility and Mechatronics at EPO

I recently had the opportunity to go on the record with Roberta Romano-Götsch, the chief operating officer of Mobility and Mechatronics at the European Patent Office (EPO). In a wide ranging, two-part interview we discussed the new technology areas at the EPO, autonomous driving, engineering education, examiner training, what quality means to the EPO and more.

Exclusive Interview: PTO Director Andrei Iancu and OED Director Will Covey on Practitioner Dues, CLE and Unauthorized Practice

The focus of this interview was OED generally, but more specifically why they Office felt it was necessary to begin charging annual dues to practitioners and what those funds would be used for. I indicated leading up to the interview that I would specifically like to discuss the issue of unauthorized practice of law, explaining that I personally was not philosophically opposed to dues but that as a registered patent practitioner myself I would like to see OED do more than just reciprocal discipline, which appears to be the overwhelming portion of their work, at least if you look at the OED Reading Room of published decisions. Director Covey came with statistics and followed up after the interview with the chart included below. While it may appear OED focuses overwhelmingly on reciprocal discipline, that is a tiny fraction of what they do.

12 Questions with Karin Seegert, COO Healthcare, Biotechnology and Chemistry, EPO

Karin Seegert studied pharmacy and received her PhD from the University of Munich in 1985. Following several years working in R&D in industry, she joined the EPO in 1991. During her time at the EPO, she has worked as Examiner and then beginning in 2002 as Director in the pharmaceutical area and as Director in Patent Administration. In 2010, Karin became Principal Director with responsibility for various technical fields, mainly in Electro Physics and Chemistry, before being appointed as Chief Operating Officer in 2017 she was leading the cluster Technical Chemistry (TeC).

Director Iancu worries current state of Section 101 ‘weakens the robustness of our IP system’

Director Iancu: “But for our purposes what I know for a fact is that in order to incentivize American innovation whether it’s artificial intelligence, DNA processing, or anything else we need to have a robust predictable reliable intellectual property system here at home. And I do worry that the current state of Section 101 in patentable subject matter weakens the robustness of our IP system in the affected areas. And if industry cannot predict in a relatively reliable way whether their investments will be protected from an intellectual property point of view I think that will result in less investment, less growth, fewer jobs created in the affected industries. So I do think it is critically important for our economy. And again whatever industry we’re talking about and whatever industry we want to grow it’s critically important to have a strong reliable and predictable intellectual property system.”