Posts Tagged: "President Barack Obama"

Counterfeiting is a far bigger story than loses to big companies and the associated loss of downstream economic activity. Those that support counterfeiters by buying knock-off goods are also increasingly supporting organized crime, including drug cartels, who are increasingly looking to the generous profits that can be earned and exceptionally low jail terms even if they do get caught. In fact, the largest Italian organized crime group is estimated to receive 10% of its annual $25 billion from counterfeited and pirated goods.

Indeed, more then 80 percent of most companies net value consists of intangible assets such as intellectual property. There is an increasing need to protect these assets in order to mitigate risk and avoid litigation. Even the most powerful companies in the world have a need for protection of their IP portfolios. In order to help defend themselves against patent litigation, Google put in a bid of $900 million for the patent portfolio of Nortel Networks which includes over 6,000 patents.

So why would large companies be such supporters of first to file? What if first to file was the Trojan Horse that carried prior user rights? Prior user rights will not benefit the individual or the small business. Prior user rights unambiguously will benefit the large corporations who innovate and then shelf technology for one reason or another, or those who exploit the technology in secret. Perhaps they choose not to pursue a patent because it isn’t perceived to be a meaningful innovation, or worth the cost and time of pursuing a patent. Perhaps the innovation gets weeded out along the way, never getting green-lighted past a certain point. These trade secrets today are not prior art thanks to 102(g). Remove 102(g) and insert a prior user rights regime and all those secrets that large companies hide, fail to pursue or willfully keep from the public will allow them to ignore the patent rights of those who innovate and actually disseminate that information to the public.

Those who live inside the beltway know that rumors swirl left and right, and it is sometimes extremely difficult to cut through the rumor-mill, which sometimes seems more like a “wishful thinking mill” than a true rumor-mill. Notwithstanding, there is one name that I have heard from multiple sources as likely to become the next Secretary of Commerce — Ambassador Ron Kirk.

Because of sufficient funding not linked to the current fiscal year, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will remain open for business and will continue to operate as usual through the close of business on Monday, April 18, 2011 even in the event of a government shutdown.

April 6, 2011, senior Obama Administration officials will visit St. Paul, Minnesota to meet with entrepreneurs and hear directly from them on ideas and suggestions for reducing barriers and improving regulations to build a more supportive environment for entrepreneurship and innovation. These roundtable events are a part of the“Startup America” initiative, which will also infuse up to $1 billion over the next five years in underserved communities and emerging industries.

President Obama reportedly asked McNealy to prepare a report on how the federal government could employ open source software, but as yet, some 26 months later there has been no mention of the report or across the board government adoption of open source software. The fact that open source software is given away to be used freely demonstrates the problem with finding a sustainable business model and may explain why the Obama Administration hasn’t yet presented the report on how the government can use open source software to decrease costs. You really have a hard time staying in business and focusing on the research, development and product advancements when the product you offer is given away to be used free, or the underlying code that makes it work can be copied and used by competitors without consequences.

Little impacts cascading together can have a large impact, but for the time being we need to realize that the technology is not where it needs to be to leverage alternative and renewable energy in an impactful way. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but it does mean we need to be perfectly honest with ourselves and realize that a silver-bullet green technology is unlikely. In the meantime as we incentivize innovators we need an all-of-the-above series of solutions.

Staffers worked with us to coordinate the interview with Congressman Chaffetz, which took place earlier today. I was told I would have 15 minutes with the Congressman, and graciously he allowed the interview to go a little long. We talked about the President’s States of the Union address, patent reform, the USPTO budget, innovation generally, manufacturing, job creation, China and more. I think many will find what Congressman Chaffetz has to say quite interesting and very encouraging. I myself found him to be well informed and refreshingly candid.

Many people assume that there’s no way American manufacturers can compete with cheap Chinese labor. It’s just basic economics, right? Wrong. It’s the U.S. government’s myopic policy, not China’s lower payroll costs, that make our nation uncompetitive in the all-important solar and other high-tech manufacturing sectors. With manufacturing friendly tax policies and a permanent 20 percent R&D tax credit equal to what other nations offer China’s advantage drops to 1 to 2 percent, and that the U.S. can compete with.

Earlier this evening President Barack Obama delivered the 2011 State of the Union Address to a live audience in the House Chambers at the Capitol. Not surprisingly, President Obama mentioned “innovation” repeatedly. The use of the “innovation” rhetoric is to be expected any more from our elected leaders, but it is typically little more than rhetoric. Perhaps that is how this speech will ultimately go down in history, but I must confess near complete shock that President Obama did utter the word “patent” during his speech this evening.

While New Mexico is not the only institution fostering growth, they do on average participate in the start up of 5 to 8 new companies a year. Kuutilla said that STC.UNM has participated in licensing technology to start-up companies that have created multiple hundreds of jobs at an average annual salary of $80,000 per job, which is $30,000 higher than the average private sector salary in the United States. There is no doubt that jobs in the innovation economy are high paying and exactly the type of jobs we need to be fostering.

In looking at the cases filed at the Federal Circuit during 2010, 42% of the docket for the CAFC were patent cases. At the moment, the three judges who are patent attorneys on the Federal Circuit are all on active status, and by that I mean are not on senior status. Judges Newman and Lourie, however, currently qualify to move to senior status or retire, and in a matter of a few years Judge Linn could elect senior status, or to retire, as well. Thus, moving forward in the not too distant future there could be a time when none of the judges active on the Federal Circuit would be patent attorneys by training and experience. This, in my opinion, would not be at all wise.

At this time of the year all typically sit back and reflect on the year that has been, spend time with family and friends, watch some football and set a course to follow into the new year. So here are the top 10 events that shaped the patent, innovation and intellectual property industry during 2010 — at least according to me, and with a heavy patent emphasis. What did you expect?

Judge Kathleen O’Malley was confirmed by the United States Senate earlier today. O’Malley’s confirmation, along with the confirmation of 18 others in recent days, is the result of a deal between Senate Democrats and Republicans that ensured passage of 19 nominations in exchange for an agreement not to move forward with other controversial nominations, including the hotly challenged nomination of Goodwin Lui, who is Associate Dean and Professor of Law at University of California Berkeley School of Law.