In order to pro­ceed fur­ther, we have to step back for a moment and revisit our explo­ration of patents; specif­i­cally, we need to look in more detail at what a patent actu­ally is. And I don’t mean that in any … Con­tinue read­ing →

Despite var­i­ous para­noid the­o­ries to the con­trary, patent offices are only infre­quently omni­scient.  On the other hand, they cer­tainly do know how to search, and one of the first things they search for is art that the inven­tor or inven­tors … Con­tinue read­ing →

In my pre­vi­ous post I dis­cussed key­word, clas­si­fi­ca­tion and ambi­ent knowl­edge searches, and promised to pro­vide a con­crete exam­ple, specif­i­cally an exam­ple of a USPTO search. So let’s get right down to it, using as our exam­ple US patent num­ber … Con­tinue read­ing →

I pre­vi­ously pro­vided a quick overview of patent­ing, and specif­i­cally of patentabil­ity, freedom-to-operate (FTO), and the impor­tance of search­ing — espe­cially patent search­ing — in both of those processes.  As I pointed out, in deter­min­ing whether or not you pass … Con­tinue read­ing →

In my pre­vi­ous post, Catch­ing Whales, I set out the bit­ter­sweet story of a small startup king­dom that over­came star­va­tion by enlarg­ing its cri­te­ria for what counts as food.  Or to para­phrase the moral I pre­sented in that post, while it’s … Con­tinue read­ing →

A Short Fable For Our Time1 Once upon a time there was a small king­dom that had recently been started in what the land-brokers swore was an “always green and fer­tile coun­try­side with great promise of future fecun­dity.“2 The peo­ple … Con­tinue read­ing →