Posts Tagged: "ipwatchdog"

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.

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.

On May 9, 2013, IPWatchdog’s very own Gene Quinn will be attending and presenting at the Business Development Institute’s Social Media Marketing Summit for Law Firms in NY. The summit was put together as a result of increased awareness of social media by law firms and how these platforms can be used to attract new clients and to expand business with existing clients. According to the Summit’s Event Summary, “Most lawyers use social media networking tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter and most firms have at least one blog. Many firms now recognize that blogging and social networking have helped produce new client leads.”

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.

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.

If there is anything that is frustrating about blogging it has to be that sometimes the articles you feel best about in terms of quality and content are the ones that are read by the fewest number of people. Titles impact article reads a lot, but so does daily life, holidays and weekend timing. With that in mind I thought I would end this IPWatchdog year in review with a list of some of the articles that I most enjoyed writing during 2011, in reverse chronological order. My creative juices are flowing and I can’t wait to jump into 2012! I hope you enjoy the ride with us!

At IPWatchdog.com we had a splendid 2011. Our number of readers has again grown year to year. During 2011 we averaged over 71,000 unique visitors a month, compared with 67,640 unique visitors a month during 2010. During 2011 we also published 447 articles, including 98 guest contributions, 34 articles by Renee Quinn — The Social Media Diva™ and 292 articles (or interviews) by me. The remaining posts were largely press releases from the USPTO or AIPLA. What follows is a look at the top 20 articles (in terms of traffic) published by IPWatchdog.com during 2011.

The holiday season is about having fun, spreading cheer and spending time with family and friends. So in that spirit we put together a few video Christmas cards for our readers. From our family to yours – Merry Christmas! Thank you for reading IPWatchdog.com!

Hello everyone. I am writing today to provide an update to our readers on several matters (i.e., Renee’s surgery and our server issues), and to make a plea for votes in the ABA Blawg 100 contest — IPWatchdog is in the IP Law category. So please vote for IPWatchdog and if you could help spread the word to family, friends and co-workers and get them to vote that would be greatly appreciated.

In cooperation with the Practising Law Institute, I will be giving away 1 free PLI Patent Bar Review Course to one lucky individual. Entry is free, but to be eligible you must vote for IPWatchdog.com and tweet the vote count after your vote.