Posts Tagged: "Marc S. Kaufman"

What Will Happen When the USPTO Releases its APIs to the Wild?

Recently, United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Michelle Lee talked about releasing its APIs for patent data into the wild. What does this really mean? “The release of open APIs will be a huge boon for the IP and patent industries as it will draw on the crowd for building tools to improve the patent process,” says Kurt Collins, director of technology evangelism and partnerships, Buillt.io, a technology provider that enables organizations to create, integrate and scale applications. But the results of how open-source programmers will build these tools remain an open question.

The Business of IP: Choosing Between Patents and Trade Secrets

In the field of Intellectual Property (IP) attorneys have options when counseling clients on how to protect their IP. However, these options remain subject to constant forces of change. For example, IPWatchdog readers will remember the latest version of the PATENT Act that the U.S. Senate worked on for months in 2015, which proponents say would strengthen enforceability of U.S. patents, but not as much as some would prefer. Then in 2016, the IP landscape changed again with the passage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DSTA) that President Barack Obama later signed into law, which federalizes civil actions in trade secret disputes.