Link: Mindjet recently announced its release of MindManager X5Pro v. 5.2. MindManager is a wonderful tool for brainstorming (see this prior PTP post). But, it goes farther than that. The program is one of those rare tools you enjoy so much that you seek new uses for it. I have spoken to several people that bought MindManager as a brainstorming tool, only to extend it to other uses because they find it so powerful.

This program is currently top on my list of favorite software. I updated my version to 5.2 last night, and am looking forward to exploring the improvements.

According to Mindjet, the primary benefits of Release 5.2 include

* Support for teams via large scale or server based deployment
* Usability Enhancements
* Information Management Enhancements
* Improved Performance
* Tablet PC “Lonestar” Support

During the weeks leading up to the departure of the 108th Congress from Washington, D.C., two bills were introduced that relate to the patent system and its effects on the prices charged for products. Seemingly unrelated on their respective faces, the bills look at the patent system in radically different ways.

H.R. 5036, introduced by Joe Baca of California, seeks to extend the term of US RE 38,014, which is directed to the MagLite flashlight. According to Representative Baca:

“this bill protects the investment of Mag Instrument’s patent, ensures the economic viability of the company and protects workers in the Inland empire…..In a time when many companies have shipped American jobs overseas, Mag Instrument has remained in the Inland Empire and created jobs for our community. We must protect Mag Instrument and its commitment to job creation in the Inland Empire.”

Apparently, Mag Instrument is worried that, once the patent expires, the flashlight will be subject to competition from foreign-made products.

Representative Baca sees the patent system as a tool to protect American jobs. Never mind the relatively high cost of a MagLite flashlight. It seems as if Representative Baca thinks that the public should be forced to continue to pay for the patented innovation within the MagLite simply because doing so will protect American jobs and despite the fact that the innovation has already enjoyed the benefits of the patent system.

In contrast, Representative Dennis Kucinich (from the Great State of Ohio), views the patent system as the reason for high drug costs. Representative Kucinich introduced H.R. 5155 to “lower the price of drugs.” The bill creates a new Institute at the National Institutes for Health (NIH) and greatly expands funding to NIH for drug research. The goal is to increase public-sponsored research so that privately-developed drugs would have to compete more with drugs developed with public money.

Kucinich cites eye-popping salary and stock option figures for drug company CEO’s, and states simply that “Patents make it possible.” He doesn’t mention anything about any research, manufacturing or other jobs that are made possible by the patent protection given to drugs.

An interesting contrast on the patent system.

India’s legislature has a looming deadline. The country is a signatory to the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs). Under the Agreement, India must amend its Patents Act by January 1, 2005 to make the Indian patent system TRIPs compliant.

India has taken the full benefit of the transition period provided by TRIPs, and now must complete its TRIPs compliance efforts.

India has made previous amendments aimed at satsfying portions of its TRIPs obligation. But, the most significant amendment has been saved for last. By January 1, 2005, the Indian Patents Act must be amended to extend product patent protection to food, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals.

This legislative issue stands to affect intellectual property interests worldwide. India has a strong interest in providing protection for its emerging research and development industry, but is also mindful of its extensive generic industry. Big pharma is likely to invest capital in India if appropriate protections are available. Socially, the amendment stands to have potentially profound effects on several fronts, including the cost and availability of medicines in India.

The Indian legislature is now in the spotlight of the international intellectual property community. Its standing in this community lost points several years ago in connection with another TRIPs-compliance amendment. Under the TRIPs Agreement, India was required to introduce a facility to receive and hold product patent applications in the fields of pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals until January 1, 2005 (the date on which patent protection for inventions in these fields is to be available). The facility was required to be effective on January 1, 1995. The Indian legislature created the facility, termed the “mail box,” but did not do so until 1999 (the “mail box” was made retroactively effective to January 1, 1995).

Similar delays on the current amendments will likely harm India’s reputation and credibility in the international intellectual property community. Also, a delay will create a legal vacuum for the applications currently sitting in the “mail box” (approximately 5000).

Link: Mark Cuban posted this interesting piece in his blog, blog maverick, yesterday. In it, Cuban outlines three ideas, all related to television programming, that “…are businesses I would be looking at starting, and software I would look at writing if I were so inclined.”

But, Cuban isn’t so inclined. Instead, he has decided to “…throw them out ? free for all.”

Before giving the details of the ideas, Cuban criticizes the patent system, stating:

If I were a patent terrorist like some, I could probably even patent these ideas. Isn?t it a shame that in this country today, you can have nothing more than an idea, do nothing with it, but still have a chance to make money?

All you have to do is be the first to file and get approved on a patent for your idea or process. Then send it to the lawyers to steal money from companies that have enough brains to come up with the idea independently of you, with no idea of who you are, or what you did. They are able to do what the patent terrorists couldn?t ? turn an idea into a product or service and make a business out of it. That?s a crime in and of itself?but I digress.

He finally describes the three ideas, which are all very interesting, and invites any interested reader to “patent away.”

Cuban no doubt knows that derivation, under 35 U.S.C. 102(f), would prevent blog readers from patenting his ideas. But, I digress…

Link: I noticed this patent .pdf service the other day. Order a patent, and get a .pdf as an e-mail attachment. Patents of 10 pages or less are delivered for just US$1. Additional pages cost ten cents each.

As an alternative, I have installed the pat2pdf script on my Windows XP laptop, and am downloading .pdfs of US patents and applications for free. See this prior PTP post.

The USPTO is holding its next Independent Inventor Online session TODAY at 2:00 PM EST. The USPTO offers these sessions regularly as a question-and-answer resource for independent inventors.

Today’s session will follow a new format in which USPTO experts will take detailed questions for a half hour and provide answers later in a posting on the USPTO website as soon as possible following the October 19 online.

Future sessions will alternate between this format and an interactive format.

Visit the USPTO website for details on participating in today’s session.

Robert J. Ambrogi, author of The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web, recently compiled a listing of intellectual property blogs (registration required) in Law Technology News.

The listing is great for anyone interested in getting started with intellectual property blogs. To make it even easier to get started, I have compiled the listed blogs (minus one for which I couldn’t locate a feed) into an OPML file (a standard file type for sharing blog lists).

For an off-the-shelf, get-me-started-quickly approach to reading intellectual property blogs, do the following:

1. Download and install a news reader/aggregator. Make sure the program can import OPML files. I use and recommend FeedDemon from Bradbury Software.

2. Download this OPML file. Make sure you preserve the .opml file extension (your browser may want to save it as a pure .xml file — change this in the “save as…” dialog).

NOTE: As an alternative to downloading this file, you can simply point your reader/aggregator to the following URL during the importation process: http://www.promotetheprogress.com/files/IPBlawgs.opml

3. Import the OPML file into your reader/aggregator. In FeedDemon, choose File | Import OPML File…. Follow the importation instructions for your software. You’ll either need to navigate to the downloaded file, or enter the URL above.

4. Begin reading. You may have to mark posts as read and update the channels a few times to get up to date.

Welcome to IP Blawging!

Link: The Chief Information Officer at the United States Patent and Trademark Office is leaving after three years on the job. Douglas Bourgeois is leaving the USPTO to take a position in the Department of the Interior’s National Business Center.

The USPTO has made huge strides in information technology under Bourgeois’ watch, particularly in its e-government efforts. Hopefully the progress will continue despite his departure.

After working through the weekend and on the Columbus day holiday, the members of the 108th Congress left Washington to break for the upcoming elections. Several bills relating to intellectual property have been left on the table and now have little chance for passage by this Congress. The members are expected back following elections in a lame-duck session for passage of the remaining appropriations bills, and possibly the intelligence overhaul bill. The odds that an intellectual property bill not related to (or dumped into) an appropriations bill will be passed are slim at best.

Here’s a quick run-down of some of the major patent and trademark bills Congress is leaving behind:

1. H.R. 1561 — The United States Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act. This bill is the legislative workhorse behind the United States Patent and Trademark Office 21st Century Strategic Plan. It includes provisions for the new fee and examination structure, and also includes the controversial anti-fee diversion provisions that prevents the diversion of funds from the Office. The new fee structure has been incorporated into S.2809 (the appropriations bill for Commerce, Justice and State) without the anti-fee diversion language. Consideration of S.2809 appears to be the most interesting bill to watch in the upcoming lame-duck session.

2. S.2192 — The Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) Act. This bill amends 35 USC 103(c) to clarify the intent of Congress that patenting of inventions that result from collaborative or “team research” efforts be permitted. Under current obviousness law, inventions arising from such efforts may not be patentable.

The bill is a direct response to the Federal Circuit’s 1997 decision in Oddzon Products v. Just Toys [html]. In that case, the Court found that the sharing of confidential information by members of a research team could render an invention obvious if the researchers did not have an obligation to assign their rights to the invention to a single entity in advance of making the invention. The CREATE Act responds by extending the “safe harbor” provisions of current law that apply to “common owner inventors” to “joint research agreement inventors.”

Under the Act, such “joint research agreement inventors” must identify the parties to the applicable agreement in the application for patent. This can be done via amendment practice.

The practical effect of the bill is to allow patentably indistinct claims to be separately owned, which is not permitted under current law. To protect the public from the effect of this newly-permitted obviousness-type double patenting, the patentably indistinct patent must include a disclaimer that will require the owner of that patent to waive the right to enforce that patent separately from the first-issued patent. The disclaimer will also tie the terms of the patents together.

3. S.1191 — The Intellectual Property Protection Restoration Act. This bill responds to decisions of the Supreme Court in Florida Prepaid v. College Savings Bank and its companion case, College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid. In these cases, the Court ruled that States and their institutions cannot be held liable for damages for patent infringement and other violations of the federal intellectual property laws.

The bill responds to these cases by giving States a choice: it gives States reasonable incentives to waive their immunity in intellectual property cases, but does not require them to do so. States that choose not to make such a waiver cannot recover any money damages in suits for infringement.

4. S.2796 — a bill to clarify that service marks, collective marks, and certification marks are entitled to the same protections, rights, and privileges of trademarks. The bill responds to the decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Idaho Potato Commission v. M&M Produce Farm and Sales [.pdf] (335 F.3d 130, 2d Cir. 2003). In Idaho Potato Commission, the court interpreted the Lanham Act as requiring that certification marks be treated differently than trademarks with respect to “no challenge” provisions in license agreements. Under an agreement that includes a “no challenge” provision, the licensee acknowledges and agrees not to challenge the validity of the mark.

See this prior PTP post for an overview of S.2796 and Idaho Potato Commission.

5. H.R. 4358 — The Stop Counterfeiting in Manufactured Goods Act. This bill is aimed at strengthening trademark law used to prosecute counterfeiters. The bill provides for the mandatory destruction of equipment used to manufacture and package counterfeit goods, clarifies that the law prohibits trafficking in counterfeit labels, patches, and medallions that are not attached to any goods, and offers greater protection for famous marks by removing the requirement that a spurious mark be used in connection with the goods or services identical to those for which the famous mark is already registered.

S.2809, the appropriations bill for the Departments of Commerce, Justice and State, includes several provisions relating to domestic efforts to enforce US intellectual property interests abroad.

The bill includes an appropriation of $20M for the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council (NIPLECC), an interagency body charged with coordinating domestic and international intellectual property law enforcement. S.2809 gives NIPLECC its first-ever seperate appropriation. The bill creates the position of Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Law Enforcement, a presidential appointee that will serve as the head of NIPLECC. Of the $20M appropriation, the bill mandates that NIPLECC transfer $6M to other agencies for intellectual-property related purposes.

The bill also includes language that clarifies the mission and authority of NIPLECC, stating that NIPLECC shall:

(1) establish policies, objectives, and priorities concerning international intellectual property protection and intellectual property law enforcement;

(2) promulgate a strategy for protecting American intellectual property overseas; and

(3) coordinate and oversee implementation by agencies with responsibilities for intellectual property protection and intellectual property law enforcement of the policies, objectives, and priorities established under paragraph (1) and the fulfillment of the responsibilities assigned to such agencies in the strategy described in paragraph (2)

According to Senate Report 108-344, which accompanies S.2809, “[t]he establishment of NIPLECC as a force for intellectual property protection is an unprecedented and necessary step towards better coordination of this Nation’s efforts to protect its intellectual property.”

S.2809 also creates the position of Chief Negotiator for Intellectual Property Enforcement within the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Funding for this position is by way of transfer of $5M from the NIPLECC appropriation described above.