Patent Law

Would YOU Have Let Bill say: "That All Depends Upon What Your Definition of "Is" "Is"?

Posted on March 08, 2009
Take the Art of the Deposition at Solo Practice University!    

The British are Coming the British are Coming . . . to Blawg Review #s 202 and 203

Posted on March 06, 2009
Nobody does it better (Colin Samuels aside)

Victoria Pynchon Joins ADR Services, Inc.

Posted on March 06, 2009
Mediation is all about story, even when everyone thinks it's only about money. Here's the story of ADR Services, Inc., which I joined today, and its dynamic founder and CEO, Lucie Baron. From ADR Services' Website, one of those stories that you must meet the hero of to believe...

Need Money? Patent It

Posted on February 27, 2009

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What Do IP Clients Want? Rocket Science!

Posted on February 26, 2009
Here's the good news fair IP client -- your legal problem is Rocket Science! From Anne Reed's indispensable Deliberations this morning (If it's difficult it must be important) we learn “Perception of high effort arising from subjective difficulty of processing the means makes it appear highly instrumental for goal achievement...

Outline for Today's ABA-ALI Presentation on IP ADR

Posted on February 18, 2009
How to choose between litigation and ADR The most successful strategies for guiding your dispute into the best ADR forum at the most productive time. •    Case management order •    Settlement counsel (inside or outside) •    Full time mediator consultant with IP specialty The five basic rules of “distributive” or “fixed sum” bargaining that will give you the “edge” in all future settlement negotiations...

Be the Stimulus You Want to See in the World

Posted on February 18, 2009
It's ALL ADR because those of us over 50 are already living in our own future.  How to keep up?  Here's a good place to start - How to Seed Your Own Stimulus from Harvard Business Publishing  by Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media Lab, a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and firms experiment with, craft, and drive radical management, business model, and strategic innovation...

Certainty vs. Fairness? Must We Choose?

Posted on February 11, 2009
Thanks to @IPStrategist (Jackie Hutter of the IP Asset Maximizer Blog) for calling our attention to Duncan Bucknell's intriguing post at the IP Think Tank, Certainty or fairness - what would you choose?  If you had to choose between business certainty and fairness, what would you choose?  If the intellectual property laws could be codified so that the result in intellectual property disputes is always certain - even though it might not be fair - would that be ok?  Or would you prefer that the legislative guidelines remain broad and the fine details in each circumstance be worked out in context - in litigation?  (As happens today?) Link on the title above to continue reading...

Hard Times? Learn How to Negotiate the Best IP Litigation Resolution

Posted on February 10, 2009
Live Telephone Seminar ADR in IP Litigation from ALI-ABA Wednesday February 18, 2009 from 1:00-2:00 pm EST Why Attend? In a difficult economy, intellectual property protection and assertion is more important than ever. The combined stressors of a poor fiscal climate and shrinking legal budgets place a significant strain on any business dependent upon IP assets...

Negotiation Bargaining Chips: The Value of Goodwil

Posted on February 09, 2009
The more goods and services you have to "trade" to negotiate a deal, the more likely you will achieve the most optimal settlement possible.  Remember, litigation is simply a business negotiation being conducted in the courts (Google's Eric Schmidt)...

Because its more cost efficient to play nice . . . .

Posted on February 07, 2009
Softening Up Opposing Counsel in the midst of the recession from the brilliant Charles Fincher (who kindly permits me to post his work so long as I link and attribute.  Thanks Charles!  You're a model of 21st Century collaborative and reciprocal IP sharing!)   For more laugh out loud funny lawyer cartoons, go immediately to LawComix...

"Patent Troll" Study at Stanford to Get Underway

Posted on February 05, 2009
From the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch, Famed patent firm backs study on touchy subject; Myhrvold, Lemley's study aim for academic neutrality, but some are skeptical   By John Letzing, MarketWatch   SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Nathan Myhrvold, a former high-ranking Microsoft Corp...

Settling IP Litigation with Cross-Licenses

Posted on February 03, 2009
Because this is how most intellectual property disputes will end, the only question is:  how much mutual warfare do the parties actually need to endure before they're ready to come to the peace summit.  Though the collateral damage of litigation does not cause actual bodily injury, the corporate "body" and its members will suffer in lost productivity, translating into fewer revenues, causing lower profits...

IP Legal Services Going the Way of the Buggy Whip?

Posted on February 02, 2009
I found the IP Strategist on Twitter, justification alone for the time I spend there getting to know people inside and out of my market whose experience, wisdom, education and training expand my understanding of my clients' concerns on a daily basis. (post card from Hugh McLeod's Gaping Void post on Buggy Whip thinking) I talked to IP attorney Jackie Hutter this morning, author of the IP Asset Maximizer Blog and found that we shared a passion for focusing on business solutions to commercial problems rather than adversarial answers to justice issues...

A Year of Living Frugally with the Texas Lawyer

Posted on January 30, 2009
Thanks to the National Arbitration Forum Blog for this reminder about IP ADR: Involved in an Intellectual Property Tiff? Consider ADR In their article Keep a Lid on Costs in IP Disputes (Texas Lawyer, 1/26/2009), Ted D. Lee and Miguel Villarreal Jr...

Two Hours to Download Newspaper to Computer? Let Us Take You Back to 1981

Posted on January 30, 2009
Thanks to @StephanieDube for circulating this timeless piece of computer history, making 1981 (my second year of legal practice) look more like 1948. The best thing about receiving the San Francisco Examiner on computer says one satisfied user, is being able to COPY IT!!  Courtesy of Faith & Geekery.

Your Jury Doesn't Care About Patent Infringement if the Defendant Didn't Copy It

Posted on January 27, 2009
I'll never forget watching an ABTL mock trial with two juries equipped with focus group dials.  The mock trial concerned an allegation of copyright infringement and the two juries were comprised of the people likely to be hearing the evidence (regular people) and the people likely to be presenting it (lawyers)...

Failure is the Key to Success

Posted on January 26, 2009
Thanks to Rex Hammock's RexBlog for calling our attention to this fabulous Honda commercial on failure.  Favorite quotes:  Indy car driver:  You're constantly on the brink of crashing, because that's the fastest. Edison:  I never failed...

Random IP Media Historical Note

Posted on January 23, 2009
From Wikipedia: The theme music [to the Lone Ranger] was the "cavalry charge" finale of Gioacchino Rossini's William Tell Overture, now inseparably associated with the series, which also featured many other classical selections as incidental music including Wagner, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky...

Whether Litigating or Negotiating, Persuasive Skills Paramount

Posted on January 22, 2009
From Six Ways to Get People to Say "Yes" at Copyblogger 6 Powerful Compliance Triggers Here are six common compliance triggers identified by psychologists along with my suggestions for applying them to copywriting: Reciprocation — There is an overwhelming urge to repay debts, to do something in return when something is done for us...

The Unbearable Density of the RIAA on the Change-iest Day of the Year

Posted on January 20, 2009
From Wired: The Recording Industry Association of America is objecting to the webcasting of pretrial arguments in an upcoming file-sharing trial. The RIAA claims that the re-runs "will be readily subject to editing and manipulation by any reasonably tech-savvy individual...

International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution Gives Writing Awards

Posted on January 19, 2009
Mediator blah blah receives Honorable Mention!!  Congratulations to New Zealand's master mediation blogger Geoff Sharp! NEW YORK, NY, January 16, 2009 – The International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR Institute), a membership-based, nonprofit alliance of global corporations, law firms, scholars, and public institutions dedicated to the principles of commercial conflict prevention and alternative dispute resolution, announced the winners of the 26th Annual CPR Awards Program at a dinner held at New York’s Barclay InterContinental on January 15...

Thinking Outside the Box to Deliver Greater Client Satisfaction During Hard Economic Times

Posted on January 13, 2009
Live Telephone Seminar ADR in IP Litigation from ALI-ABA Wednesday February 18, 2009 from 1:00-2:00 pm EST Why Attend? In a difficult economy, intellectual property protection and assertion is more important than ever. The combined stressors of a poor fiscal climate and shrinking legal budgets place a significant strain on any business dependent upon IP assets...

Blawg Review #194 Celebrates Innovation at Build a Solo Practice

Posted on January 12, 2009
This week, Susan Cartier Liebel (@SusanCartierLiebel) she of Build a Solo Practice and Solo Practice University, hosts Blawg Review #194 on our favorite theme:  innovation, using the Phoenix as her inspiration.  As Susan explains: The Phoenix represents to many the life cycle: birth, growth, death and re-birth because from the ashes life arises anew often strengthened through reinvention...

ReMix: Larry Lessig Subjects Himself to Stephen Colbert

Posted on January 10, 2009
Larry Lessig on The Colbert Report Deeplink by Tim Jones from Electronic Frontier Foundation. Last night, Larry Lessig, a close ally and former board member of EFF, chatted with Stephen Colbert about Lessig's new book Remix, and how America's broken copyright laws are criminalizing our kids:       Colbert:  Isn't that like saying that arson laws are turning our kids into pyromaniacs?? They're breaking the law! You can't just throw the law out the window! Lessig: "Totally failed war...

Make Yourself a Lean Mean Patent Litigation Machine

Posted on January 09, 2009
Check out Chicago IP Litigation this morning on patent litigation wisdom from the bench. Chief Judge Michel: The State of Patent Law by R. David Donoghue Making good on his promise to turn his IP Colloquium into National Public Radio for IP law, Doug Lichtman's newest offering is an extended interview with Federal Circuit Chief Judge Michel...

Blawg Review # 193 Takes IP Where It's Never Been Before: Into the Heart of Darkness

Posted on January 05, 2009
Being a British Barrister Blogger, Charon QC, the Host of Blawg Review #193 is nothing if not Bold, Bawdy, Brazen, and Bodacious without being at all Blustery or Bullying. For my IP ADR Readers, I'll highlight the IP Deadly Sins which IP disputes might fit comfortably inside -- including  luxuria (extravagance, later lust), gula (gluttony), avaritia (greed), acedia (sloth), ira (wrath), invidia (envy), and superbia (pride)...

Mediator Prospective Liability Waivers and Mediator Malpractice

Posted on December 30, 2008
Yesterday I posted excerpts from a Los Angeles Daily Journal article about the ethics (and enforceability) of a mediator-client agreement in which the client waives any right he or she might have to pursue the mediator for malpractice. Before moving into those waters here, let's brainstorm a little about how mediators might fall "below the standard of care" in a profession that so many claim has no standard of care...

The Daily Journal on Mediator Waivers of Prospective Potential Liability

Posted on December 29, 2008
(CPR, right.  Are mediators like fireman as Straus Institute's Peter Robinson suggests?) Excellent article on mediator liability waivers in a recent Los Angeles Daily Journal Article (excerpted below).  I have much to say about this topic, particularly as to mediators who hold themselves out as possessing expertise in niche areas, such as the resolution of intellectual property disputes...

"Happy Lawyers" is Not an Oxymoron

Posted on December 26, 2008
From today's Los Angeles Daily Journal FORUM COLUMN For Lawyers, the Pursuit of Happiness Involves a Return to the Basics By Victoria Pynchon "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...

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