Interesting stuff here!

I'm fascinated to see how my little IP transactionalists' blog is growing and how authors are exchanging some really neat stuff here. I thank you all for your contributions and ask that you keep posting and spread the word to our colleagues! There is still room for more authors here (GOOGLE puts an arbitrary limit of 99 authors on these blogs; we're at around 30 authors, I believe).

I think a new requirement for authorship privileges on this blog may become important in time, and I ask for feedback on this. If an author has not posted something of value and relevance for a period of time -- say, 6-9 months -- that author loses authorship privileges. Given GOOGLE's limits, I think that may be the only way to keep people active on the blog and not waste the authorship slot on someone who is not making use of it, to the detriment of someone who might make very good use of it indeed if an authorship slot were opened.

I obviously won't do anything about this until we're at capacity in terms of numbers of authors.

Comments?

=======================
Nancy Baum Delain, Esq.
Registered Patent Attorney (USPTO) admitted in New York
Delain Law Office, PLLC
Email me

Business Method Patents - are the controversies over?

The division of Patent World into US and Non-US is not new. One of the big element of this difference has been the US Class 705 Patents - called the Method of doing business patents.

I have been following these for some years now - trying to make sense. Please look at following posts for last three years

2005 Post: BUSINESS METHOD PATENTS IN US, EUROPE AND INDIA –
A Critical Appraisal

2007 Post: Business Method Patents - A Strategic Awakening Call for Indian Software Companies

2007 Post: Outsourcing Patents

Would like the readers to comment and may be post what are their thoughts, views and inputs?
-----------------------------------------
Thanks a lot to Nancy Baum Delain - for creating this blog of Open exchanges - I feel this blog is going to become most talked about blog in Patents world in a very short time! - Thanks - Navneet Bhushan (www.crafitti.com)

Holistic Patent Strategy - an article that may be of interest

Implement a Holistic Patent Strategy for Maximum Value



"Among different types of intellectual property (IP), patents offer the most potential for value; correspondingly, organizations have started to devise patent strategies to create, protect and exploit IP (in the form of patents and patent portfolios) for business benefit. At the core of patent strategy is the ability to define and understand the value contained in the IP, in the form of value determinants. These value determinants cover multiple dimensions of IP value – alignment with organizational needs and strategy, how good the patent/patent portfolio is, opportunity window and customer value. Viewing and analyzing these elements together offers a holistic view of IP value paving the way toward the creation of a comprehensive, structured and informed patent strategy."

Interesting Patent related Articles

Technology Portfolio and Market Value


Patients and IP - Should We Care?

Intellectual Property: The Practical and Legal Fundamentals

Inventions on Keyboard Illumination - A TRIZ Based Analysis

'Obvious to Try': A Proper Patentability Standard in the Pharmaceutical Arts?



More

The Concentration of Technological Progress

A good article by Gianluca Carnabuci. The aritcle states that, the size distribution of the domains of US-patented technological knowledge obeys an exponential law, revealing a disproportionable concentration of progress among larger domains. Mr. Gianluca's analyses suggest that this phenomenon is explained by a combination of two factors. First, domains' trajectories of growth have inherently different potentials. Second, differences in domains' potentials are magnified by a mechanism - domains' self-hybridization - endogenous to the process of knowledge growth. Mr. Gianluca conclude that the observed concentration of progress reflects dynamics of knowledge growth that are more general than the specific case analyzed, and should be factored in investment decisions and policies. Read full article

Advanced Patent Analysis Workshop Using TRIZ

CRAFITTI CONSULTING (http://www.crafitti.com/) is offering two days of Innovation Ignition workshops on our world-class frameworks developed and practiced to solve business and technical problems in large global organizations. These comprehensive frameworks are being offered for the first time in India in workshop settings.

Workshop 1: Lean Inventive Systems Thinking – A Framework for transformationSeptember 26, 2008 Hotel Ramanashree, Richmond Road, Bangalore, India

Workshop 2: Advanced Patent Analysis using TRIZ and other conceptsSeptember 27, 2008 Hotel Ramanashree, Richmond Road, Bangalore, India

Advanced Patent Analysis using TRIZ and Other Techniques

Patents are the most comprehensive source of information and knowledge. In the rapidly globalizing world of continuous change and cutthroat competition, every enterprise searches for competitive advantage. Patent information although realized by many as highly informative are not really tapped by enterprises at large, simply as the understanding of patents as a source of information and trigger for inventing the next are still in infancy. Although there are many open tools and databases to make patent data visualization, there doesn’t seem to be enough awareness of using patents for inventing next!

Altshuller, a Russian navy patent officer after Second World War, started a systematic study of patents – his aim was to find out what makes a successful invention. Can there be an algorithm for inventing? His search led him to develop a unique methodology called Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (acronym TRIZ in Russian). In the process he also developed a methodology to analyze and study patents. Crafitti Consulting has developed on the TRIZ way of doing patent analysis and reinforced it with other techniques to build a comprehensive framework for Patent analysis. For the first time this framework is offered in India. The delegates will be exposed to
Understanding the level of an invention and a patent
Finding out the key contradictions the invention is solving
Looking at the claims hierarchy of the patent
Function Diagrams of a patent/invention
Pruning or Trimming as a means of inventing
System Complexity Estimation
These techniques will help in
Finding Technological Alternatives to a Patent
Writing Future-proof claims of a Patent
Understanding the evolution of an invention compared to prior art
Finding white space in a field to leverage

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Questions or comments? Email us at info@crafitti.com or call at +91-80-41688077 .

For news on upcoming events at Crafitti, do visit http://www.crafitti.com/.

http://www.crafitti.com/webtest/html/iiw_tabs.htm

with warm regards,

Navneet

Navneet Bhushan,

Co-crafter Founder Director Crafitti Consulting Pvt Ltd www.crafitti.com

+91-9902766961 +91-80-41688077 skype: navneet.bhushan Blog: http://innovationcrafting.blogspot.com/

US provisionals

Dear Nancy,

Thanks for organising this blog. I hope to be going to use this for typical day-to-day typicalities. I will be able to inform you on European and Dutch patent law and the pecularities of working with these systems.
I hope that I will be able to learn from you all on the prosecution details in other countries.

One thing that annoys me more and more lately, is the habit of the US examiners to issue restriction requirements. Especially in the biotech field, I am always getting these, and it seems that the frequency is going up dramatically. Not only regarding to the number of applications that meet with such a restriction requirement, but also the 'depth' of the restriction is increasing: where it used to be that the examiner found two or three inventions in one application, now regularly I have applications with 8 or more inventions.
The problem is, that I am happy to divide out my application if there are indeed more than one invention, but most often in the PCT application from which the US application did originate no lack of unity has been mentioned, nor is there any problem with the corresponding European application.
Is there any explanation for this behaviour of the examiners? Do they get more credits for a restriction requirement than for a normal office action or grant? Do they need to increase the number of (divisional) application to get more income for the USPTO?

Also, I have found it useless to file a protest to these restriction requirements. One of the latest examples is a case where initially a restriction requirement was issued because there was some prior art that allegedly took away the novelty or inventive step of the general claim(s). Luckily, the cited prior art was either only published after the priority date or it was arguable not anticipating the invention. So, in our response (in which we also filed some minor amendments in the claims) we protested against this restriction requirement. To my surprise, I recently received a new restriction requirement, wherein the examiner basically defined the same 8 inventions as in the earlier restriction requirement. However, he now based this restriction on the provisions of the MPEP. No word was spent to the earlier restriction requirement and/or to our response. And in this case in both the original PCT application and in the European equivalent application we do not have any problems with unity at all.

I recently posted a general question on LinkedIn and in one of the answers it was suggested to bring MPEP 1893.03(d) to the U.S. Examiner's attention. Although I know that many of my US colleague attorneys agree with me that protesting is useless, has anyone any experience with bringing this argument?

Thanks for any comments in advance.

...and growing...and growing...

On July 21, we had 13 members. We now have 68. Welcome to all. Feel free to use this blog to exchange ideas, practice tips, information about IP transactional practice. I'm hoping that we'll have contributors from many countries (so far we're in India, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the Arab world, ...) and many concentrations (we have generalists, corporate types, firm partners and associates, solo practitioners, patent and non-patent IP attorneys).

This isn't a litigators' space; we don't particularly care about trial or appellate tactics here. Dave Barrett runs the LinkedIn IP Litigators group (I, in fact, started this Transactionalists' group because I try very hard NOT to litigate so Dave's IP litigation group wasn't really a perfect fit for me) and he has provided his contact info here (scroll down). This blog is for discussions about getting the application to mature into registration and about the methods and means and international concerns regarding capitalizing on and commercializing existing IP.

=======================
Nancy Baum Delain, Esq.
Registered Patent Attorney (USPTO) admitted in New York
Delain Law Office, PLLC
Email me

This LinkedIn Group is Positioned for Growth

Thanks for inviting me to post on the blog Nancy.

There are so many IP Transactionalists all over the world, I think this group serves a great function.

Let me know if you have interest to add this legal LinkedIn group to my family of lawyer and legal LinkedIn networking groups at www.mylinklaw.com

All members of this group are welcome to directly connect with my network at - www.davidbarrett.mylinkinvitation.com

Best,

David Barrett
Boston, Massachusetts
www.LinkedInLawyer.blogspot.com

EFS Web with Firefox 3?

Has anyone tried using EFS Web or PAIR with Firefox 3? I hesistate to upgrade because the USPTO help pages are silent w.r.t. Firefox 3.

Phil Decker

IP Transactionalist Group is growing!

Welcome to all our new LinkedIn IP Transactionalists! If your LinkedIn profile is set so that you are visible to everyone, everyone in the group knows you're there. If not, not.

At this point, we have 13 members. That seems like a nice, round number, so I have set each email address given in the LinkedIn listing as an author on this blog. Feel free to post items of interest to IP transactionalists. Blatant advertising is not appropriate, but sharing information is (and if that info just happens to include your contact info and expertise, that's fine).

=======================
Nancy Baum Delain, Esq.
Registered Patent Attorney (USPTO) admitted in New York
Delain Law Office, PLLC
Email me

Welcome!

This blog is for intellectual property transactional practitioners (those of us who make most of our living not from litigation) to exchange ideas, practice tips, information and networking contacts. It is open to members of the LinkedIn IP Transactionalists group; it may open to other groups in the future.

If you would like to become an author on this blog, enabling you to make original posts (in addition to comments), please email me; be sure to include in your request:

• your GOOGLE login ID (if you don't have one, click here to go to GOOGLE's sign-in page)
  
• your interest in IP (patent attorney, patent agent, "soft" IP attorney; that is the complete persons to whom authorship is open; this is NOT a forum for law students or the general public to make original postings, although we welcome relevant comments from anyone)
  
• if you're an attorney, please include your state or country of admission
  
• if you're a patent prosecutor, please include your USPTO or foreign agency registration number or information.
  

Note that you must have a GOOGLE ID to become an author on this blog. There is room for 99 authors other than me on this forum.