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Great Domain Name on Laurie articles

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The blog Great Domain Name - An Invention and Intellectual Property Blog has a recent post invoking "patent troll tracker":

A report co-authored by Ron Laurie titled ?A Summary of Established & Emerging Business Models? (courtesy of Patent Troll Tracker) was instrumental to my understanding of these business models. This is also recommended reading for those of you that tuck yourself in bed reading about IP law.

The allusion to "patent troll tracker" is a reference to the link: http://trolltracker.googlepages.com/Established2007.pdf. [cited for example by Patently-O on 14 Feb. 08. Other links include http://trolltracker.googlepages.com/Saffran_Final_Judgment.pdf; http://trolltracker.googlepages.com/7321783.pdf. See also http://www.randomcube.co.uk/track-a1fef83.html]

The Laurie article includes the text:

Given that IP feudal lords no longer rule, one can say that we are now in an era of ?IP for the
masses,? where the IP marketplace operates according to the Golden Rule -- those with the gold
(i.e., IP rights) can now make the rules.

Necessarily, the evolving IP marketplace has been accompanied by a change in the players
within the marketplace. Traditionally, in the ?feudal lords? period, such players were
overwhelmingly patent lawyers and large patent owners (with a few smaller or individual players
making the occasional appearance and splash). Today, however, the cast of players has grown.
That is, this new era is characterized by the rise of ?market-maker? intermediaries who seek to
make IP a liquid asset class and, of course, profit from it.

Who are these new players? Well, these new players are generally referred to as ?IP
intermediaries? because they are neither the IP creators nor the IP ?consumers,? e.g. licensees
and purchasers. These intermediary business models, however, attempt to perform one or more
services or offer one or more products that connect the IP creators and the IP consumers.

Query: Chester Carlson as feudal lord? Orville Wright as feudal lord?

The Laurie piece concluded:

It is clear that the players, and their attitudes, that dominated the ?feudal period? will no longer
carry the day. The newly-established and emerging IP business models (and the players
exercising such models) are not going away. That is, neither U.S. Supreme Court decisions such
as eBay, nor any of the so-called ?anti-patent troll? legislative proposals floating through
Congress, will make such intermediary entities such as PLECs, IP outsourcing companies,
licensing agents, merchant banks, exchange operators and the like go away. With as much as
three-quarters of the value of publicly traded companies in America coming from intangible
assets, and global IP licensing revenue now being measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars,
there is simply too much economic justification for such entities to exist. In fact, new players
implementing the IP business models described herein will come into existence. And, new IP
business models will also come into existence. Why? Quite simply, the business of IP (i.e., IP
marketplace) itself is not immune to innovation!

There was also a link to a post on Philip Brooks blog, which post included:

I did a fair amount of research today and was unable to track down a comparison of Ocean Tomo to alternative solutions, but I did find an interesting presentation from a competitor in the IP Investment/Merchant Bank space -- Inflexion Point. Art Monk and Ron Laurie of Inflexion Point Analytics, LLC made a presentation titled, "Business Opportunity Alternatives to Assertion-Based Patent Monetization" at the November 6, 2007 IP Society Seminar.

*****

A different post on greatdomainname mentions twitter:

In fact, I did something even more ?unprofessional? this week - I joined Twitter. As a result of such ?unprofessional? behavior, Dennis Crouch of PatentlyO found my blog and posted a link to Great Domain Name in a list of blogs that were new (to him at least).

So when I got an email from Jeff* this week with a link that explains how a blog can save your career during the economic downturn?perhaps he was right all along. Dammit.

Text on the linked post included:

Your blog is your resume. It's that simple.

10. If starting a blog is too much work short term, you can contribute to or comment on the blog or podcast of the person (and thus, company) you'd like to be working for next.

Also: Blogging = market research. In my experience, blogging keeps me smart. and In the game of Cubicle Survivor, there's no prize for second place.

Of course, returning to the "patent troll tracker," the blog proved to be the/a reason for not staying with the job, although the blog did generate a lot of "market research." Incidentally, the "patent attorney roster" places troll tracker Rick Frenkel at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati on Page Mill Road, consistent with an August 4 blog post:

Former Patent Troll Tracker blogger Rick Frenkel has left Cisco Systems and moved to Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a top Silicon Valley law firm, where he is of counsel. Today is his first day at the firm.

"We were impressed with his breadth and depth of experience," said Michael Barclay, an IP litigation partner at Wilson Sonsini and a PTT reader, natch. "Rick has developed a lot of knowledge and insights about patent trolls that will be helpful to our clients who have to deal with them."

Barclay described the PTT defamation litigation as "a private matter" that had no influence on the hiring decision. Frenkel's bio is up on the Wilson Sonsini website. A Cisco Systems spokesman said the company doesn't generally comment on personnel matters, adding only: "Rick voluntarily left Cisco to pursue an opportunity with a prestigious Silicon Valley law firm. We wish him well in his new endeavors."

{Barclay incidentally got a physics undergrad degree at Berkeley and a JD from the UCLA School of Law. He wrote an article on the Patent Local Rules of ND Cal in 2008. Frenkel has an undergrad degree from UMichigan and has a law degree from Loyola Law School

Further to the post on blogging, anonymous blogs aren't much better than anonymous resumes. Anybody can write comments on a blog, but whether people pay attention may be a different story. The attention span for readers of blogs and blog comments is remarkably short.

Full post as published by IPBiz on November 30, 2008 (boomark / email).