Posts Tagged: "ipwatchdog blog"

Happy Birthday to Us! IPWatchdog turns 19!

It is almost difficult to believe that 19 years ago today IPWatchdog.com first launched… There will no doubt be changes in the future. In fact, we anticipate big new things for IPWatchdog in 2019, which is when we will celebrate our 20th anniversary. With whatever changes happen, whether substantive or to the look and feel, IPWatchdog.com will continue to grow and evolve with the industry and the times. We are just getting started! 

Celebrating 15 Years of IPWatchdog.com

On October 10, 1999, I remember sitting at my desk in my apartment in Winter Park, Florida. I had just starting teaching as a full time law school professor several months earlier. So many things have changed since then. I’ve moved all over the country, I’ve traveled all over the country, I’ve gotten married, we navigated the near collapse of the U.S. economy and like so many, the near collapse of our personal economy. My mother passed in 2012, which was undoubtedly the lowest moment in my entire life. A year later my father-in-law also passed. While there have no doubt been trying times, we have shared many great moments personally, and with those in our community who have become our friends. But since October 10, 1999, the one constant for me has been IPWatchdog.com, which went live for the first time 15 years ago today.

An IPWatchdog Year in Review: A Look Back at 2013

The first piece of business it to announce that we were notified earlier today that IPWatchdog.com was selected as the #1 IP by the Journal of the American Bar Association for 2013. That makes it 3 out of the last 4 years we were voted #1, and the 5th year in a row that the ABA Journal selected us to be in the Top 100 Blawgs. But as great a feeling as that is, perhaps the bigger news this year was that the ABA Journal selected IPWatchdog.com to be in the ABA Blawg Hall of Fame. This is an honor currently shared with only 19 other blog, including Dennis Crouch’s PatentlyO… In 2013 our traffic increased to an average of 118,095 unique monthly visitors, representing 43% growth in 2013 compared with 2012. We also averaged nearly 139,000 unique monthly visitors during Q4 of 2013.

Consternation Over Inability to Copy and Paste

For some time I have known that we have been experiencing what seemed to be a rather large copyright infringement problem. For example, I know of very large entities that routinely would copy and paste our articles, remove links and any advertisement and then mass distribute just the text of our articles. This is obvious, blatant and willful copyright infringement. What was particularly disheartening was that this was going on within the intellectual property community. Disappointing because if those who are in the industry and working with content creators and inventors on a daily basis are all to willing to engage in that type of copyright infringement what hope do we have as content creators? Those whose livelihoods depend upon content creators and inventors should be the ones who most understand the damage that is caused by widespread copyright infringement.

An IPWatchdog Year in Review: Looking Back at 2012

Although we have not been officially notified by the ABA, the vote totals are now viewable on the ABA Journal Blawg 100 page and it seems that we have been voted the top IP law blog for 2012! We have now been honored as one of the top 100 legal blogs by the American Bar Association for four years in a row, and the top IP law blog in 2010 and again in 2012. In terms of website traffic, during 2012 we had our best year ever. For 2012 we averaged 82,632 unique visitors per month (compared with an average of about 71,000 for 2011). We also finished 2012 with our top three monthly totals for unique visitors, with 90,656 in October 2012, 89,541 in November 2012 and 87,583 in December 2012.