Posts Tagged: "schecter interview"

Whenever there is interesting IBM news of a patent variety Schecter has been gracious enough to make time to chat. The news of IBM’s patent supremacy wasn’t just any run-of-the-mill news, at least not in my opinion. The commitment to innovation and belief in the patent system has served IBM well for many decades, and twenty years as #1 at anything is astounding in a world dominated by parity and antitrust regulators that don’t want any single company to succeed too much. We discuss the commitment to excellence required to stay #1 for twenty years, the process for deciding which patents to keep paying maintenance fees on, what may change once the U.S. converts to first-to-file on March 16, 2013, how Watson is being put to use and the parting of USPTO Director David Kappos.

We talked about Peer to Patent, Watson on Jeopardy, where the Supreme Court is heading with patent law, the usual fun questions to get to know Schecter on a personal level and more. As we moved into the “fun stuff” you will learn that one famous IBM invention was tested out in the early stages by the inventors on a Thanksgiving turkey one year, proving that innovation never takes a holiday! We also learn that Schecter is something of a James Bond fan, and selected one recent Academy Award winning film as his favorite movie.

On April 4, 2011, I had the honor to interview Manny Schecter, the Chief Patent Counsel for IBM Corporation. I met Manny in October 2010 when I did a CLE presentation at IBM’s offices in Armonk, New York. Since that time I have worked to schedule a time to chat with him on the record, and we were recently able to coordinate and chatted on the record for approximately 60 minutes. During our conversation we talked about numerous topics, including patent reform, Microsoft v. i4i, Patent Office initiatives such as the Three Track initiative and Peer to Patent. We also discussed David Kappos, his former boss, as well as Watson’s Jeopardy triumph, the new IBM IP blog and the usual fun questions.