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Abolish Patents?

Questions and Answers

Caller Questions- Cats and Drapes

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Our Blog

ITTR

Penguin

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Newsletter - February 2013

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 who might be interested in our activities.

Should Patents Be Abolished?

By Richard Blazey with Input from Tracy Jong

"Two economists at the St. Louis Federal Reserve [recently] published a paper arguing to abolish the American patent system, saying there's "no evidence" patents improve productivity and that they have a "negative" effect on "innovation."

"The historical and international evidence suggests that while weak patent systems may mildly increase innovation with limited side effects, strong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side effects,"

Boldrin and Levine wrote in their book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" .

"More generally, the initial eruption of innovations leading to the creation of a new industry-from chemicals to cars, from radio and television to personal computers and investment banking-is seldom, if ever, born out of patent protection and is instead the fruit of a competitive environment."

Reported in The Huffington Post

I strongly disagree with their conclusions and not just because I'm in the patent business.

To be sure there are problems with abuses of the current system from "trolls" who don't ever plan to commercialize their inventions but simply parisitize those who do , to drug companies who use patents to stifle innovation to protect their expensively generated technology for far longer than is reasonable. These are some of the examples cited by the economists.

However, this "cherry picking" of examples of the misuse of patents is being used as an argument for throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Patent attorney Tracy Jong supplied two counterarguments- the first is her own opinion based on a report from IP firm Ocean Tomo followed by an argument from the Case of The Association for Molecular Pathology vs the US Patent and Trademark Office

"Commercial market relies on IP, abolishing it would cause chaos in the system". - Tracy Jong

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY INVESTING TRENDS FOR

2013
TUE, 01 /08/2013 . 5:26PM - MICHAEL FRIEDMAN

2012 marked an important stage in the evolution of the intellectual property industry and the recognition of IP as a catalyst for economic growth. In the coming year, we expect IP's value as an asset class to be even further revealed, monetized, and extracted. Michael Friedman. a Managing Director overseeing Ocean Tomo's Investments practice, reports his top predictions for IP-Investing in 2013

"A. Abolishing Gene Patents Will Deter, Not Promote, Innovation

Contrary to Plaintiffs-Appellees short-sighted view, abolishing patents on genetic inventions will have more of a dampening effect on research and development ("R&D") in relevant medical fields than any patent right could ever

have.

Abolishing patent rights for genetic technology will certainly, at minimum, deter "translational" research and innovation. A closer examination of the position of Plaintiffs-Appellees at the district court indicates it to be a relatively narrow one, i.e., that abolishing gene patenting could stimulate, or at least will not deter, some basic research performed at the bench at universities and non-profit research institutions. Plaintiffs-Appellees scientists, for example, wish to ensure that their specific research in the laboratory or clinic is not deterred.

Plaintiffs-Appellees fail to consider or acknowledge, however, the astronomical costs and inherent large risks associated with translating basic science to something actually used by patients.[1] The reality is that most "translational" aspects of genetic innovations (i.e., going from laboratory to market to bedside) are not funded or even performed by scientists or clinicians at nonprofit entities. These entities usually do not have the finances or know-how needed to obtain FDA-approval, to scale up for mass production and clinical use, or to properly commercialize and distribute therapeutic products. Thus, without patent protection, gene based products "in many instances would not have reached the public."[2]"

[1] See, e.g., Skolnick Decl., A4803:10, A4804:15, A4805:17 and A4805- 6:18; Critchfield Decl., A3657-8:41 (both cited in district court opinion).

[2] Id. at 3-4.

The US patent system was created by the framers of the US Constitution , and enshrined in Article I, Section 8, instructs the Congress:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

The patent system exists to protect the innovations of countless inventors inside and outside of large corporations. By in large the misuse of the patent law is by those same monster corporations but as these elephants battle in court over Billions they can easily distract the public from the small inventors who need the protection of the patent system to raise money to start their fledgling businesses and protect them from predation by those same large corporations.

Please feel free to comment on this topic and if

you need more help or advice , contact us. just send us an email to rblazey@businessmetamorphosis.com or give us a call at (585) 520-3539

Questions and Answers

Prospective buyers often want to know more about an invention than the information contained in a patent before they will seriously consider buying or licensing a technology. Often this information is hard to come by particularly when the patent is based on technology which was developed some years ago.

Samples may have disappeared or degraded, demos may not longer exist or function. Key documents may be lost or otherwise unavailable. Even inventors may have moved on to other jobs or to retirement in other locations.

Thus its important to store away someplace these important documents and objects while the work is still going on so they will be available when needed. Contact should be maintained with inventors who have moved on to greener pastures elsewhere.

If , as often happens, the materials are lost or discarded anyway there needs to be a quick and low cost way to generate them again. We have seen a number of cases where the results of an expensive development effort, such as a chemical synthesis that were lost or discarded were needed to convince a buyer of the inventions value.

While the inventor may think its easy to reconstruct these items from the formula or designs, its very rare for a potential buyer to be willing to fund such efforts. Thus if you are going to ditch these potentially valuable materials you had better be prepared to put up the funds to replace them.

Sometimes results that are published in a referred journal can substitute for data requested by prospective buyers. Thus another route to protect valuable date from loss is to publish it as soon as you are allowed by your institution or patent attorney.

So, in summary. Find a way to keep that data and samples that supported your patent application. It is very likely that you will need them if you expect to sell or license your invention when the patent is granted.

To learn more contact us at the address below

Email : rblazey@ittrifecta.com

Phone: (585) 520-3539

www.ITTrifecta.com

Penguin Logo

Questions to Get Started

When Penguin starts to do market research for a customer its important to establish at the outset what the customer is trying to do and what the boundaries and limitations of the project will be.

As an example, lets start with Market-Sonar. In this Voice of the Customer calling system, the first thing we need to identify is the groups of customers who we need to call. Those may be current customers when we wish to assess the reaction to a given product or service, but often what we are trying to do is find out the reaction to a product not yet on the market.

In that case existing customer databases may not be sufficient.What we need to know is the characteristics of the potential buyers for the product. If the sale is to an end customer we would use demographics such as age, gender, location, etc. A good place to find some of those characteristics listed is on InfoUSA.

Often however it is businesses that we wish to target. Then a good reference to use is the SIC and NAISC codes.

Its rare that a customer will know the SIC codes of their target markets. What needs to be done is to think about several possible target groups and then explore how they are listed in the SIC/NAICS databases. Penguin can help you with that task.

When you have identified several target groups either by demographics or by SIC/NAICS code, a lists of targets can be purchased from a list broker. The group can be narrowed by any number of parameters such as Geography.

So if you wanted for example to find all the cat owners in Connecticut you could target that group and, if it was too big you could limit it to for example female cat owners between the ages of 18-35 living within 50 miles of your store in Danbury.

The next task Penguin performs is to create a calling script, but to do that what is needed is a set of questions. You can't simply ask a customer "do you like our new product", because they have no idea what the product is, and to describe it would take too long and be confusing as well.

Better is to realize that all inventions solve a problem and to ask about whether the customer has that problem and how they are currently solving it.

So in our Cat example, if the problem is cats sharpening their claws on the drapes, we might start by asking if the person has a cat and whether the cat does in fact attack the drapes.

If so, we ask what their current solution to the problem is (like a scratching post.) Then we ask how well the scratching post works to protect the drapes.

This series of questions is built into a calling tree that is used by Penguin's callers to determine the customers reactions.

After all the calls have been made and the results tallied our client should know how many people in the target group are likely to be receptive to a new product that keeps their cats from wrecking the drapes..

To learn more about how Penguin can help you study your customers preferences to log on to our website Or you can call me at (585) 520-3539 or email at rblazey@rochester.rr.com

We appreciate your responses to our newsletters. Please send us your comments. We are always interested in what you want to know.

Sincerely,

Richard Blazey
Business Metamorphosis LLC

Disclaimers

Please realize that this newsletter contains only our opinions on patent matters. We are not authorized to give legal advice. If you are seeking such advice please contact an attorney.

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