On September 16, 2011, President Obama signed The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act into law. One of the key, and most controversial changes, is a shift in the patent priority rules from the “first-to-invent” system. Professors David S. Abrams and R . Polk Wagner performed a study on the effect of this change on entrepreneurs and individual inventors.

Here are my new podcasts about software intellectual property and software development relating to IP issues. I believe you’ll find them useful. The Software IP Detective’s Handbook About Software Copyrights About Software Trade Secrets About Software Patents The Software Clean Room Process

In August I debated the impact of software patents at the Computer History Museum (you can watch the debate here). I asked members of the audience how many were programmers or had  written software. A large number of hands went up. I then asked  those people to put their hands down if they thought what [...]

People have been asking me lately what I think about those organizations that buy up patents and license them or sue infringers. Kindly known as non-practicing entities (NPEs), patent licensors, or patent aggregators, they are disparagingly called “patent trolls.” However, there is a much more troubling entity out there that I want to bring to [...]

My book on software intellectual property has just been published by Prentice-Hall.

Peter Huber at the Manhattan Institute argues in the Wall Street Journal that software patents discourage innovation and must be disallowed or restricted. Dr. Huber’s facts are wrong and his conclusion is wrong.

The Peer-to-Patent program seems like a good idea. In order to speed up the granting of good patents and quickly eliminate the bad ones, allow people from everywhere and anywhere to submit prior art. If that’s actually the way it worked, it would be a great resource for finding prior art and making the patent office more efficient. Unfortunately my experience is that the program creates more problems than it fixes.

The Report Generator (“RPG”) is a new program from SAFE that automatically generates draft expert reports and declarations for litigation.

The Supreme Court has decided that Bilski loses his patent, but not because of the machine-or-transformation test. They also ruled that business methods are patentable, as long as they are not abstract ideas.

Forrester Consulting just put out a report that I found interesting. According to Forrester, chief information security officers (CISOs) face increasing demands from their business units, regulators, and business partners to safeguard their information assets. Security programs protect two types of data: secrets that confer long-term competitive advantage and custodial data assets that they are compelled to protect. Secrets include product plans, earnings forecasts, and trade secrets; custodial data includes customer, medical, and payment card information that becomes “toxic” when spilled or stolen. Forrester found that enterprises are overly focused on compliance and not focused enough on protecting their secrets.