IP P®OSPE©TIVE

Today, the last day of the IP Business Congress 2010 in Munich, the CIPO Clinic is being held. This appears to be an interactive event with question-and-answer sessions and an opportunity for Chief Intellectual Property Officers to tell the IP world about this position and the tricks to building a successful IP profit center. If any IP Prospective readers attended the CIPO Clinic and have feedback or comments on the event, I would love to know how it went and ... Read More

The insolvent Nortel Networks Corp. has a very valuable patent portfolio.  But because so many suiters may be in the market to purchase the portfolio, the question has become how valuable?  Bloomberg ran a report about the portfolio, speculating that it may go for as much as $1.1B.  Joff Wild at the IAM blog has a good post on the validity of this figure, as well as an interesting comment from Andrew Watson of ipVA regarding possible interested parties.  This will be ... Read More

Kenan Patrick Jarboe, President of Athena Alliance, has partnered with graduate student Ian Ellis to author a great paper on innovative options for financing innovation.  It is a great read for anyone looking into ways to monetize their intellectual capital or intangible assets, or simply to raise capital in order to turn their idea or intangible asset into reality or a product.   See Intangible Assets:  Innovative Financing for Innovation at the Issues in Science and Technology website. Read More

According to a recent Bloomberg article titled "How Leibovitz Found New Partner for $24 Million Debt, Archive", Anne Leibovitz has apparently left her financial troubles behind with Art Capital and has solicited a new creditor, to the tune of $24 million, for her lifetime catalog of copyrights.  According to the article, L.A.-based private equity firm Colony Capital, LLC is willing to take on her $24 million debt to Art Capital, and the contract will be collateralized by Leibovitz's archive of about 100,000 ... Read More

Things have been warp-speed at the office lately, so I apologize for being about 3 weeks late on this. Better late than never. Ocean Tomo was asked by Bloomberg Business Week to use their PatentRatings platform to rank the 25 most inventive companies in the world. OT's patented program ranked companies based on the most valuable patent portfolios. Read more about the rankings and the results at Ocean Tomo's press release. A good James Malackowski quote from the release: "The ultimate value of a patent ... Read More

At a town hall meeting in Elyria, Ohio on Friday, President Obama took questions from the audience.  One local businessman asked the President about patent protection, expressing his frustrations that large corporations are holding large patent portfolios simply to stifle innovation.  The following is Ohio.com's report of the President's response: ''We need a patent system that encourages innovation and doesn't lock in big monopolies from trying to get another 10 years on a patent that prevents new products into the system,'' Obama said. The ... Read More

Word comes from the IAM blog that the Annex on Intellectual Property to UNCITRAL's Legislative Guide on Secured Transactions, about which I have been regularly posting for almost a year now, may be solidified as soon as February (the next session for Working Group VI, charged with the responsibility for the Annex), and offered for adoption at the next Commission session in June/July 2009.  The Legislative Guide will be a guide on secured transactions offered to all member states of the UN in an ... Read More

The Intellectual Property Exchange International (IPXI) has announced that it has hired a new President, Gerard J. Pannekoek.   This looks promising for IPXI, as Pannekoek was the former President and COO of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the world's first multi-national and multi-sector exchange for reducing and trading greenhouse gas emissions.  His leadership there led to a successful IPO within twelve months of his employment. The Intellectual Property Exchange International explains itself as follows: The Intellectual Property Exchange International provides an innovative approach to ... Read More

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is the appointed non-profit and independent governor of the internet.  On September 30th, ICANN announced the signing of the Affirmation of Commitments, a document confirming the mission and duty of the corporation in regulating and defining the internet for the rest of the world to use.  ICANN's latest project is the unleashing of New Top Level Domains to be used alongside .com and .net for website domain locators.  Among those soon to be allowed ... Read More

China's Standardization Adminstration (SAC) recently posted a draft patent regulation titled "Regulations for the Administration of the Formulation and Revision of Patent-Involving National Standards."  After reading some analysis of the draft standard-setting regulation, it seems that these standards are not far off from many Western patent-office standards and patent regulations.  There are, as expected, a few concerns.  One of the major concerns is found in Article 8 of the draft regulation, which purports to deem any company which fails to satisfy disclosure ... Read More