| Newsletter - January 2010 |
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This newsletter is for the benefit of: our customers both current and past, our workers , board members and friends including those of you we haven't talked to recently. Please feel free to forward to others that might be interested in our activities
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Businesses Need a Patent Strategy
There is much more to protecting your intellectual property than simply applying for patents. Far too many firms simply turn these important business decisions over to their patent attorneys and hope for the best..
While the attorneys are well suited to filing and defending patent applications once the technology needing protection is identified, they are not nearly so well suited to making the business decisions surrounding patents such as :
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What shall we patent and what shall we ignore?
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In what countries shall we file patent applications?
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How long shall we keep paying maintenance fees to the government for patents we aren't using -
The new book Iproperty (find on my blogs booklist) lays out how to impliment a patent strategy in graphical format. Take a look at the following two figures. The figures can be found by following this hyperlink. Iproperty Graphics . Figure 10.1 describes the "Capture" phase of a patent strategy. It is a suggested method for finding the key patentable ideas within a company and bringing them forward for management review to determine which should form the basis of patent applications. IProperty makes the point that a patent strategy must rest on an underlying business strategy which addresses such issues as; what kind of technology to protect, in what countries, and what to spend on such protection.
The second figure, Fig 11.1 suggests the process to be followed once ideas have been selected for patenting. This includes the preparation of preliminary documents such as what we call an Invention Report and Iproperty calls a "Formal Document". At BML we do one thing differently than Iproperty suggests. We recommend that a patent search be done prior to drafting an Invention Report. This allows the inventor and the attorney to focus on those elements of the invention that are truely unique and distinguish them clearly from what is shown in the "Prior Art"
If you want to know more about how BML does patent searches and invention reports , log on to our patent website, AlaCarte Patents.com |
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Mining Wastewater for Valuable Minerals
ITTr has recently been asked to find buyers for a set of six patents from Syracuse University on special catalysts for treating waste water. The set of seven consists of three groups of patents each pair containing a patent on the catalyst and a process using it. The unique feature of these catalysts is that each targets a specific substance. The markets include water treatment and mining. Substances removed include Germanium, Chromium, Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, Noble Metals and Rare Earths.
When dispersed in wastewater, these metals are viewed as pollutants which must be removed to meet environmental requirements. But beyond that many of the metals are of high value. Ordinarily the value would not cover the extraction costs but with these new tools , new revenues can be generated for mining operations from what had been considered waste.
To learn more about these patents and other offerings from ITTr log on to the ITTr Website |
Meet our Business Penguin 
Dave Bassett is the business member of the Penguin team. Dave runs Bassett Statistical a company that specializes in business planning and patent work. Dave is a licensed patent agent. This gives him a unique perspective where intellectual property issues are concerned. For those who are not aware of what a patent agent is, he has passed the same bar exam as a patent attorney but does not have a law degree. He is licensed to practice infront of the patent office but not in court. Thus, he can write and defend patent applications.
Dave graduated from the Simon School with an MBA in 2004 winning the prestegious Hugh Whitney prize. But Dave's career also includes former roles as a chemical engineer at Zotos giving him a technology edge many attorneys and agents lack.
At Penguin Dave was a the key developer of the First LookTM, due diligence product. He took a 130 item list intended for a full due diligence analysis of a business and abridged it to contain only the most essential features and those that could largely be accessed from publicly available documents.
This gives First Look users the ability to study potential acquisitions without them being aware of it and also to simultaneously review several candidates at a reasonable cost.
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