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Tech pioneer Nolan Bushnell to keynote IPO annual meeting in SF

August 14, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

This year’s Intellectual Property Owners Association annual meeting will feature a presentation by the founder of Atari Computer and Chuck E Cheese’s Pizza Time Theater, Nolan Bushnell.

Another keynote will be presented by John Cabeca, Director of the Silicon Valley USPTO. More than forty service providers, law firms and IP holders will be exhibiting at the three-day even from September 17-19 at San Francisco’s Marriott Marquis.

Mr. Bushnell, an American electrical engineer and businessman, has started more than 20 companies and is a video game pioneer.

He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre chain. Mr. Bushnell has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the Nation’s Restaurant News “Innovator of the Year” award, and was named one of Newsweek‘s “50 Men Who Changed America.”

2017 IPO meeting highlights include:

  • Monday Patent General Session: Alice and the 101 Wonderland

The law on § 101 following the U.S. Supreme Court’s seminal Alice ruling has been a murky morass to navigate.

With district court, PTAB, and Federal Circuit decisions that are all over the map, and calls for the abolishment of § 101, IPO recently introduced a legislative proposal to address the lack of predictability in § 101.

Panelists will discuss these issues, whether the current state of § 101 is promoting or inhibiting innovation, and what if anything should be done going forward.

  • Two Corporate Panels at 11am on Monday
  1. Patent Session: In-House Best Practices: Strategies for Adapting to a Rapidly Changing Environment
  2. Strategic Partnering with In-House Trademark Counsel
    ___________

For the full program, go here. To register, here.

Image source: ipo.org

 

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“Turn and face the strange” – Patent values fall to earth; PIPCOs, too

July 31, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

Changes, or should we say “ch-ch-changes,” channeling David Bowie, who reinvented himself repeatedly, have decimated the performance of most publicly held patent licensing companies.

Public IP licensing companies (PIPCOs) are changing their names and restructuring in an attempt to reframe themselves. The move appears part of an effort to shed the past, given that many of these businesses have significantly under-performed the S&P 500 Index.

With patent values at historic lows, a fresh perspective is welcome. But can PIPCOs turn the corner and successfully adapt to changing times (and valuations) in the patent space? Only some are likely to succeed.

A fuller discussion of public IP companies, “PIPCOs adapt to ch-changing times,” can be found in my “Intangible Investor” column in the September IAM magazine, out today. Subscribers can find the piece here. It includes companies that have changed their name or issued reverse splits of their stock. or otherwise reinvented themselves as operating companies with product sales.

A Closer Look

A closer look at the IP CloseUp 30 reveals several significant developments. One trend which financial analysts tend to question is rebranding; another is a reverse split, where a $0.50 stock can suddenly become a $4 one when investors are provided with fewer shares at a higher price.

To casual observers, it can appear that performance has taken off, when in fact the weak stock price is merely being obscured by a diminished public float. Many PIPCOs were formed by a merging a private enterprise into a public shell, which while not disreputable, often comes with baggage.

While one can appreciate different patent strategies – the need to monetize good assets through different business models – the perils of public ownership are ill-suited for the majority of companies whose primary focus is licensing.

Still, there are public and private patent licensing company successes, including Finjan, which has successfully fended off multiple IPRs, Network-1, inventor-owned PMC (Personalized Media Communications), which continues to license, and colleges like Northwestern and NYU, which have scored big on pharmaceutical licensing.  

Stanford University’s patent licensing take in shares of Google are said to be worth more than $300 million.

Image source: wikipedia.org

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Apple is seeking to cut license royalties paid to record labels

July 2, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

While the share of revenue from streaming paid to record labels and recording artists is rising, Apple Inc., among the fairest licensees in on-line music, is now seeking to reduce record labels’ share of revenue from streaming.

Bloomberg reports that the record labels’ deal with Apple were expected to expire at the end of June, though they are likely to be extended if the parties can’t agree on new terms, according to the people who asked not to be identified.

“Part of negotiations is to revise the iPhone maker’s overall relationship with the music industry.”

The negotiations would bring number two Apple closer to the rate industry streaming leader Spotify Ltd. pays labels, and allow both sides to adjust to the new realities of the music industry. Streaming services have been a source of renewed hope following a decade of decline in the digital age.

Patent holders may believe there is an element of deja vu taking place in music content. Once rock solid copyrights are now subject to renegotiation and diminished revenue because of lost leverage due to lower valuations and easier access. A key will be finding what will make copyrights more relevant again, and creating more competition among streaming services for content.

More Optimistic

Record labels are now more optimistic about the future health of their industry, which grew 5.9 percent last year worldwide thanks to paid streaming services Spotify and Apple Music. They recently negotiated a new deal with Spotify further lowering their take from the service, provided Spotify’s growth continues.

“Apple initially overpaid to placate the labels,” says Bloomberg, “who were concerned Apple Music would cripple or cannibalize iTunes, a major source of revenue.”

For the full Bloomberg article, go here.

Sales vs. Streams 

Though online sales of music have plummeted over the past few years, they still account for 24 percent of sales in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Vinyl record sales also are up but they are still limited to a specialty audience, while CD sale are way down.

According to Billboard, streaming led the U.S. music industry to its first back-to-back yearly growth this millennium and in the first half of 2016 was the single ­highest source of revenue in the U.S. recorded-music industry, ­bringing in $1.61 billion. All three major labels — Universal, Sony and Warner — posted streaming-driven double-digit percent boosts in earnings throughout the year.

The Trichordist, a publication devoted to “Artists for an Ethical and Sustainable Internet,” reports that Spotify was paying .00521 back in 2014, two years later the aggregate net average per play has dropped to .00437 a reduction of 16%.

                     Apple Music generates 7% of all streams and 13% of revenue

YouTube now has their licensed, subscription service (formerly YouTube Red) represented in these numbers as opposed to the Artist Channel and Content ID numbers we used last time. Just looking at the new YouTube subscription service numbers isolated here, they generate over 21% of all licensed audio streams, but less than 4% of revenue! By comparison Apple Music generates 7% of all streams and 13% of revenue.

Apple sits in the sweet spot, generating the second largest amount of streaming revenue with a per stream rate .00735, nearly double what Spotify is paying. But, Spotify has a near monopoly on streaming market share dominating 63% of all streams and 69% of all streaming revenue.

The top 10 streamers account for 99% of all streaming revenue.

New Technology, New Values

IP rights holders, including those with patents and trademarks, need to think through where they fit in the current digital scheme of things, and how much should be expected in a world that finds not paying for others’ intellectual property increasingly acceptable.

For patent holders, the streaming/copyright battle could be the proverbial canary in the mine.

Image source: fortune.com

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Passage of STRONGER Patent Act is likely to spur innovation and jobs

June 26, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

A bi-partisan bill introduced by Senators Coons, Cotton and others is one of the most important pieces of legislation for American competitiveness and innovation to come along in recent memory.

So why has it gotten almost no coverage from the leading business, technology and general news media? It may have to do with perspective, as well as how the media and its constituents wish readers to regard more certain patents, which are potentially more expensive to license.

Washington Examiner, IP Watchdog and a few others, who are generally pro-strong patents, provided extensive coverage. Others did not cover the STRONGER Patent Act at all.

The Hill ran the following headline: “Senate Dem Offers Patent Reform Bill.” It’s actually a bi-partisan effort, between Chris Coons (D-Del), and Tom Cotton (R-Ark), Dick Durbin (D-Ill), and Mazie Hirono (D-Hwi), and is supported by conservative members of the House, as well as business groups, like the Innovation Alliance, the Chamber of Commerce, inventors and others.

From 1st to 10th Place

The U.S. patent system is now ranked tenth worldwide by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a tie with Hungary. Until this year, it had always been ranked first.

Mostly, the business, technology and general news media have been silent on the best thing to come out of Washington in support of U.S. competition and jobs in a decade. Conservative groups are supporting the bill. Internet and some large tech companies who favor weaker, less challenging patents are not likely to support the bill in its current form, and may try to oppose it.

“This bill is totally worth getting behind,” a Washington observer told IP CloseUp. “Reforming the PTAB and restoring injunctions, what’s not to like? Frankly, just the injunction issue alone gives Coons great leverage over all other legislation.”

Key points in the STRONGER Patent Act in its current form include:

  • Restore injunctive relief for infringed inventions
  • Reform unfair Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) reviews
  • Allow the USPTO to retain its fees for faster, higher quality examinations
  • Protect consumers and small businesses from patent abuse

This STRONGER bill is a more robust version of the Coons-proposed STRONG Patents Act that was introduced in 2015.

The Washington Examiner article can be found here. The IP Watchdog piece by Brian Pomper of the Innovation Alliance, here. For the Hill article go here.

“Coons wants to get ahead of Goodlatte in the House and Grassley in the Senate,” the IP CloseUp contact said. “He would like to seize the momentum from TC Heartland (driving more patent litigation to Delaware) and encourage Republicans to join the cause. During last year’s campaign, Trump voiced pro-patent sentiments, a change from Obama.  Cotton is on board, and I hear that Kennedy [Louisiana] and others are interested and willing to go against Grassley.”

For a one-page summary of the bill, go here.

For a section-by-section review, here. 

For more on the subject of media coverage of patents, see the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding report, “Patterns in Media Coverage of Patent Disputes,” here.

Image source: cpip.gmu.edu; ipwatchdog.com

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Gene-editing break-through: can a collision of science, ethics and (patent) ownership be avoided?

June 19, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

The USPTO decided in February that the rightful intellectual property owner of CRISPR in eukaryotes, a time-saving tool that makes it cheaper and easier to edit gene sequences, should be Feng Zhang, Ph.D., and The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, not Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., and the University of California, Berkley, who had conducted the earlier research.

However, Doudna and her team, which included Emmanuelle Charpentier, now with Max Planck Institute in Berlin, are on track to obtain a European patent for CRISPR. They recently filed an appeal against the USPTO’s decision, setting the stage for a showdown.

CRISPR will allow an organism’s DNA to become “almost as editable as a simple piece of text.” Using CRISPR, scientists will have the capacity to alter, insert and delete genes in plants, animals and, even in humans.

The implications are very big indeed, both in terms of science and profits, and, especially, ethics. Universities and businesses stand to generate potentially billions of dollars. Medical research will never be the same.

[For a good description of how CRISPR-Cas9 works, go here. ]

The battle lines are being drawn to determine the rightful owner of aspects of the development: Berkeley and Dr. Charpentier vs. Broad Institute/MIT and Harvard. It could mean an eventual pay-out of billions of dollars.

World-Changing

In 2012, Cal biochemistry and molecular biology professor Jennifer Doudna and microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, now of the Max Planck Institute, changed the world. They invented CRISPR-Cas9 (as opposed to eukaryotes, which is any organism with a nucleus enclosed in membranes), a gene editing tool that uses a protein found in Streptococcus bacteria to chop up and rearrange viral DNA with precision.

“The implications of the technology were immediately apparent, astonishing, and perhaps just a wee bit scary.” 

“The implications of the technology were immediately apparent, astonishing, and perhaps just a wee bit scary,” reports California Magazine. “Ultimately, CRISPR applications might be developed to wipe out genetic diseases, produce bespoke bacteria that could pump out everything from hormones to biofuels, and engineer exotic animal chimeras.”

It is one thing to use an editor to eliminate genetic mutations, such as those found in sickle-cell anemia, writes the Wall Street Journal, however, “it is quite another thing to edit the germ line—that is, to make changes that would be passed on to future offspring.

“Would it be permissible, Ms. Doudna asks, to lower an unborn child’s risk of Alzheimer’s disease? If so, would it also be permissible to edit for greater intelligence or athleticism or even, say, for a particular hair color? While all such uses would ultimately require regulatory and institutional review, it is the notion of building a social consensus that is particularly fraught.”

The three main researchers involved in these patent cases have developed their own companies that focus on CRISPR: Doudna developed Intellia Therapeutics, Zhang developed Editas Medicine and Charpentier, now at a Director at Max Planck’s Infection Biology, developed CRISPR Therapeutics. So, both universities and businesses stand to benefit.

These university-based cases often result in sharing through cross-licensing. Remicade, for example, a highly successful biologic for treating auto-immune responses like Crohn’s disease which has generated over a $1 billion so far, has multiple university participants, but is primarily owned by NYU.

Who Benefits?

Yet another question that is raised: Is it right for highly endowed universities like Harvard to get richer as a result of government-funded research? Almost 70% of university research is provided by the U.S. government. Harvard’s 2016 endowment was $36.4 billion.

With the potential impact on society so great, patents may play much more than a financial role. They depending who controls them, they may turn out to be the lynch-pin for ethical application of advanced gene-editing.

In the most interesting chapters of her new book, “A Crack in Creation,” Ms. Doudna wrestles with her ambivalence about the tool she has helped create. She concludes that she no longer feels comfortable operating inside her “familiar scientific bubble”: She must take on a role as a public citizen and address not just the power of gene editing but the ethics of it. At stake, she believes, is “nothing less than the future of our world.”

Image source: bloomberg.com; rsb.org.uk

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Startup mentored by Brody/Berman and Center for IP Understanding (CIPU) is LES Business Plan Winner

May 24, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

Takachar, a small business working with farmers in Kenya to develop an inexpensive, ecologic method for turning biomass (waste) into fuel, is the Global Winner of the 2017 Licensing Executives Society (LES) Business Plan Competition.

The company, led by Kevin S. Kung, an MIT doctoral student, was mentored in the Business Plan Competition by Bruce Berman, CEO of Brody Berman Associates and President of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding (CIPU), an independent, non-profit.

Takachar’s unique IP strategy provides farmers free open-source technology, followed by patents licensed to the company exclusively by MIT, trade secrets and trademarks. The goal is to provide affordable franchises in Africa, India and other parts of the world, where economical sources of fuel are crucial to the success of small farms and disposing biomass is a challenge.

The Global LES Business Plan winner receives a $5,000 cash award and in-kind IP support. For more information about Takachar, go here.

Second Global Winner

Berman also mentored the 2016 LES Business Plan global winner, Fruti-Cycle Project, an Ugandan start-up that provides affordable, portable refrigeration for delivering produce to market faster and with less spoilage. For more information about Fruti-Cycle, go here.

“It is a privilege to work with innovative and ambitious young people, like Kevin and Nelson,” said Berman, who has 25 years of IP consulting experience. “They have the right combination of vision, technical skill and tenacity to turn original ideas into businesses that provide timely products and solutions. Takachar and Fruti-Cycle Project are good examples of utilizing integrated IP rights strategies in diverse parts of the world.”

Takachar Strategy

Image source: Takachar

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Michelle Lee to keynote “Patents for Financial Services Summit,” 7/19

May 22, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

The 14th Annual Patents for Financial Services Summit being held July 19-20 at the Sheraton Times Square Hotel will examine recent developments affecting banks and other financial institutions. 

The featured speaker for 2017 is Michelle K. Lee, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director, United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Ms. Lee will address “The Current State of U.S. Patent Law.”

IP CloseUp readers can save $200. Use code IPCNYC. 

2017 program highlights include:

  • Consider the impact of recent and pending Supreme Court cases, including TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods (venue and forum shopping), SCA Hygiene Products AB et al. v. First Quality Baby Products LLC (the availability of the doctrine of laches as a defense in patent litigation), and of Impression Products Inc. v. Lexmark International Inc. (patent exhaustion)
  • Evaluate best practices in oral argument before the PTAB and pinpoint the necessary information to communicate in an efficient and complete manner
  • Identify where changes have occurred in patentability and if additional clarity is available
  • Provide practical advice for weighing the costs and value of opinions of counsel, including when they should be obtained and from whom
  • Review the law of patent eligibility as it relates to FinTech in a number of jurisdictions outside of the U.S., including Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, and China
  • Earn CLE: This program was designed to satisfy approximately 13 hours of Continuing Legal Education credit requirements and is appropriate for both newly admitted and experienced attorneys

For a full list of speakers, go here; for the conference agenda, here.

To register as an individual or group, please go here.

Image source: worldcongress.com

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10th Intl Legal Alliance Summit in NY, June 15, will confer IP awards

May 5, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

The International Legal Alliance Summit & Awards will celebrate its tenth anniversary in New York on June 15, 2017 with approximately 500 in-house counsel and law firms from around the world.

Attendees will discuss such hot topics in domestic, cross-border and M&A intellectual property issues as IP strategies, patent eligibility and IP portfolio management. They will also be present to see honors awarded to the best legal departments and law firms in their respective fields.

Organized by Paris-based Leaders League, the interactive one-day program provided participants with networking opportunities by way of one-to-one meetings, expert-lead roundtables, and seated lunch and dinner and cocktail receptions.

The General Counsel Awards recognized the best legal, tax and intellectual property in-house departments, while the Law Firm Awards Ceremony in the evening will celebrate the best performing independent law firms. For nine years, the International Legal Alliance Summit & Awards has supported the players of the legal industry in the search of expertise, networking and achievement.

Fifty legal department from large international companies will run for the victory during the networking lunch and 150 law firms from more than 25 countries during the gala dinner.

Corporate IP Counsel

Speakers include senior counsel and IP executives from IBM, Philips, Microsoft, Mondelez, Caterpillar, Samsung, Canon, L’Oreal, Total, Lufthansa, MetLife, UBS, Open Invention Network and The Clearing House associations of banks. For the full list of speakers, go here.

The International Legal Alliance Summit & Awards is pleased to present its 10th edition of the Expert Insights conferences. Over 70 outstanding international speakers debated on the latest issues the industry is facing and highlighted the new challenges to overcome with their experiences, knowledge and analysis

Traditional conferences, say the producers, leave to chance finding the best networking opportunities. By using the internet platform, attendees can schedule one-on-one meetings of their choice.

The Expert Insights Conferences are the opportunity to benefit from 60+ experts of the legal industry. The ILA Summit will feature 14 panel discussions

For the 2017 program, go here;

To register, go here.

Image source: www.ilasummit.com

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New book: tech elites’ disregard for privacy & IP must be managed

May 4, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

Can Internet monopolies – adept at providing at providing information – be prevented from violating the rights of individuals, businesses and IP holders, and impeding innovation?

They can if they are regulated like utilities, says Jonathan Taplin in his new book, Move Fast and Break Things.

In 2009, Mark Zuckerberg told Business Insider publisher and former Wall Street analyst Henry Bloget, “Move fast and break things is Facebook’s prime directive to developers. Unless you are breaking stuff,” Zuckerberg said, “you are not moving fast enough.”

Eight years later, this Facebook mantra has taken on a darker meaning. A new book by Hollywood producer and former USC Annenberg Innovation Lab director, Taplin (Mean Streets, The Last Waltz), offers a portrait of technology giants without restraints, routinely violating the rights of creatives, consumers and innovators, and propping up their own shares at the expense of investing in the future.

Subtitled How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Under-mined Democracy, Move Fast and Break Things dissects the inordinate power of a handful of the popular companies and their founders, and what it means for culture, innovation, and personal freedom.

What Taplin does best is connect the dots by distinguishing between true break-through ideas and the ability to provide and mine data, especially personal information, for profit and dominate markets. The confluence of vision, ego, and wealth is for Taplin a dangerous mix that needs to be carefully watched if not closely monitored. Copyright and patent holders need to be especially wary.

Don’t Ask Permission

“The co-founder of YouTube, Chad Hurley, was a PayPal alumnus, schooled in Peter Thiel’s philosophy,” writes Taplin. “He built his company on the same ‘don’t ask permission’ ethic the Larry Page had embraced… ‘Who will stop me?’ [A phrase which can be found in Ayn Rand’s controversial novel, The Fountainhead.] This became the center tenet of Internet disrupters, from Thiel’s PayPal right up to Travis Kalanick’s Uber.”

Taplin writes that Google, who championed the tagline for its corporate code of conduct, “Do no evil,” controls 88% of online searches and search advertising, while Facebook has 77% market share in social media and Amazon a 70% share of e-book sales. He does not consider Apple a monopoly because its main hardware business has many competitors.

“The tech elites jealous guarding of its own monopoly platforms,” says Taplin, “is built upon a blatant disregard for the artist’s intellectual property.”

“More people than ever are listening to music, reading books, and watching movies, but the revenue flowing to the creators of that content is decreasing while the revenue flowing to the big four platforms is increasing. Each of these platforms presents a different challenge for creators. Google and YouTube are ad-supported ‘free-riders’ driven by a permission-less philosophy.”

Permission-less free-riding, or “efficient infringement” in has also come to dominate other parts of the IP workplace, rendering simple patent licenses more arduous than ever.

Consent Decree

How does Taplin propose we prevent Internet monopolies from violating the rights of individuals, businesses and IP holders, and impeding innovation? You regulate them like utilities.

It would be very difficult for many people and businesses to live without Amazon, Google, YouTube and Facebook, but it is becoming impossible for many who produce intellectual property to live with them.

This is not something that their founders and shareholders want to hear, but it may be inevitable. Europe is more apt to regulate BigTech than the U.S. – and it is not mere jealousy. If Google, for example, is indeed a monopoly, Taplin, a former tour manager for Bob Dylan, asks, would a consent decree like the one that the government made Bell Labs enter into in 1956 work? He believes it would.

Easy Ride is Over

The Guardian, the British daily, said “Move Fast and Break Things is a timely and useful book because it provides an antidote to the self-serving narrative energetically cultivated by the digital monopolies. They have had an easy ride for too long and democracies will, sooner or later, have to rein them in.”

It would be very difficult for many people and businesses to live without Amazon, Google, YouTube and Facebook, but it is becoming virtually impossible for many who produce intellectual property to live with them.

My full review of Jonathan Taplin’s new book can be found here, on IP Watchdog.

For more information or to buy Move Fast and Break Things, go here.

For a free preview chapter (via Google), go here.

Image source: jontaplin.com

 

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Fixing the patent system/ promoting jobs is focus of Capitol Hill event

April 20, 2017 by Bruce Berman 2 Comments

An increasing number of experts say the U.S. has lost its edge in the battle to secure and defend meaningful patents that stimulate competition.

It is with making U.S. patents important again that “Promoting Innovation, Investment and Job Growth by Fixing America’s Patent System” is being held on Monday May 8 at the United States Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.

The invitation-only event hosted by the U.S. Chapter of the International IP Commercialization Counsel (IIPCC), will feature an all-star list of presenters from business, government and law.

Speakers Include

Dr. Carl J. Schramm, University Professor, Syracuse University; Former President of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurship; Board Member IIPCC; David Kappos, Partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP; Former Under-Secretary of Commerce and Director of the USPTO; Q. Todd Dickinson, Senior Partner, Polsinelli, PC; Former Under-Secretary of Commerce and Director of the USPTO; Judge Randall Rader, Former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; Board Member IIPCC;  Judge Paul Michel, Former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; Charles Henry Giancarlo, Former CTO and Chief Development Officer Cisco Systems and former Managing Director Silver Lake Partners; Phil Johnson, Former Senior VP, Intellectual Property Strategy & Policy, Johnson & Johnson; Marshall Phelps, Vice-Chairman, Center for IP Understanding; former VP IP for Microsoft, IBM, Bob Pavey, Partner Emeritus, Morgenthaler Ventures; former Chairman of the National Venture Capital Association;

Manny W. Schecter, Chief Patent Counsel, IBM Corporation; Laurie C. Self, VP and Counsel, Governmental Affairs, Qualcomm; Bill Elkington, Chair & President Elect, LES USA and Canada; Senior Director, IP Management, Rockwell Collins; Orin Herskowitz, SVP of IP & Tech Transfer, Columbia University; Executive Director of Columbia Technology Ventures; Teaches ‘IP for Entrepreneurs’ in Columbia’s Engineering School; Professor Adam Mossoff, Director, Center for Protection of Intellectual Property, George Mason; Professor Jeffrey A Lefstin, Associate Academic Dean and Professor of Law, UC Hastings; Robert B. Aronoff,  U.S. Executive Director, International IP Commercialization Council; Managing Partner, Pluritas; Damon Matteo, CEO, Fulcrum Strategy; Robert P. Taylor, President, RPT Legal Strategies; Venture Advisor, New Enterprise Associates, Bruce Berman, Chairman, Center for IP Understanding; Publisher, IP CloseUp; Principal, Brody Berman Associates; Elvir Causevic, Managing Director, Houlihan Lokey Tech+IP Advisory, Art Monk, VP IP Transactions, TechInsights; Rob Sterne, Founding Director at Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox

Opening Panel

IP CloseUp publisher and editor, and Center for Intellectual Property Understanding Chairman, Bruce Berman, is moderating the opening panel at 2:00 pm: The business impact of IP uncertainty and negative attitudes. Panelists include:

  • Manny W. Schecter (IBM)
  • Phil Johnson (J&J)
  • Marshall Phelps (Center for IP Understanding)
  • Laurie Self (Qualcomm)
  • Bob Pavey (Morgenthaler Ventures)

“Our patent system may no longer be providing the protection and incentives necessary to entice investors and entrepreneurs to assume the enormous risks that inhere in the creation of many new technologies and new companies,” said Rob Aronoff, IIPCC U.S. Chapter Chair.

“In recent years patent reform initiative have resulted in significant unintended consequences, including a decline in the reliability of patents is contributing to a waning of entrepreneurial energy and a decline in the risk tolerance of American investors and entrepreneurs.

Profound Implications

“This shift has profound implications for the long-term U.S. economy, as China, Korea, Germany and other countries expand the role that patents play in their economies with ambitious plans to displace American dominance of technology in the years to come. This program will explore the direct and essential role that strong and enforceable ‘good patents’ play in allowing investors and entrepreneurs to justify the high levels of risk that drive innovation.”

Conference sponsors include Houlihan Lokey, TechInsights, Qualcomm and Pluritas.

Partners include IAM Magazine, the Licensing Executives Society, the Center for IP Understanding, USIJ Alliance for Startups & Inventors for Jobs and IP CloseUp.

For more information, go here.

Those interested in attending can request and invitation, availability permitting, by emailing rob.aronoff@iipcc.org.

Image source: iipcc.org; west-windsor-plainsboro.k12.nj.edu

 

 

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Philanthropist & patent licensing pioneer, Eugene Lang, dead at 98

April 17, 2017 by Bruce Berman 2 Comments

One of America’s most successful and charitable patent licensing strategists passed away last week. 

Eugene M. Lang, describe as “an American folk hero” for his generous philanthropy, grew up on Manhattan’s East 83rd Street in a $12 per month railroad flat.

He went on to donate more than $150 million to charities and institutions during his lifetime for educational causes, including the I Have a Dream Foundation, which he established in 1981; the Eugene Lang College, part of the New School in Manhattan; the Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia University School of Business; and Swarthmore College, which he entered at 15 on a scholarship.

Much of Lang’s fortune was derived from the Refac Technology Development Corporation, it was reported in his obituary, a public company he founded in 1952 that specialized in the licensing of patents and financing high-tech ventures.

Thousands of Suits

“REFAC held patents relating to LCDs, ATMs, credit card verification systems, bar code scanners, VCRs, cassette players, camcorders, electronic keyboards, and spreadsheets,” reports Wikipedia, “and filed thousands of lawsuits against other corporations to secure licensing fees or out-of-court settlements, a business practice of some very large corporations such as Microsoft and Google as well as large startups such as Intellectual Ventures, and sometimes criticized as patent trolling.“

Some considered Refac International Ltd., known for suing thousands of big and small companies to protect its patents, the model on which other non-practicing entities (NPEs) were based. In 1990, the company was chastised by a federal appeals court in Washington after losing a major lawsuit it filed against 118 Southern California companies selling products with liquid crystal displays.

The New York Times reported that Refac — the name stands for resources and facilities — had made much of its money “by aggressively filing patent infringement suits against companies like IBM and Eastman Kodak and retailers like R.H. Macy and Radio Shack on behalf of inventors of a wide range of products: liquid crystal displays, automated teller machines, bar-code warning systems and spreadsheet software.”

In a letter to The Times [valuable for its historical and factual content], Mr. Lang called the article “grossly distorted” and pointed out that most of the clients represented in lawsuits had sought out Refac after offering licenses to the corporations for their inventions and being turned down.

He illustrated his argument by citing the inventor of the laser who had tried to get industry to recognize his role and succeeded only after Refac won validation of his patents in the courts.

“For Refac, the drama of litigation began in 1975 when Gordon Gould, after battling industry opposition since 1959, asked us to represent his claims as inventor of the laser,” wrote Lang.

“Concluding that Mr. Gould’s claims had genuine merit, Refac, against all odds, accepted the challenge. It took until 1987 and some $4 million, but the courts finally validated every patent of Mr. Gould’s. Despite vituperative reactions from the laser industry – analogous to quotations cited in your article – claims that in 1975 might have been labeled ”all but worthless” now generate annual royalties in excess of $12 million.

Impulsive Gesture

A self-made businessman who flew coach class and traveled on subways and buses, Lang is best remembered for his impulsive gesture in June 1981, when he was invited to deliver the commencement address to 61 sixth graders at Public School 121 on East 103rd Street in Spanish Harlem. He had attended P.S. 121 as a boy 50 years earlier.

He made himself personally available to the students, counseling them when they faced obstacles such as teen pregnancy, addiction, and delinquency. He cheered them at their graduations and helped arrange for jobs. When a student was incarcerated at Sing Sing, he helped him pursue college course work from prison.

In addition to his daughter, Jane Lang, a Washington lawyer and community activist, Lang is survived by two sons, David and the film and stage actor Stephen Lang (Avatar, Conan the Barbarian, Gettysburg); a sister, Barbara Lang; eight grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Mr. Lang the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

For more information about the Eugene M. Lang Foundation, go here.

Image source: thenewschoolhistory.org; newsworks.org

Litigation, News, People, Transactions, Uncategorized
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Bloody AC-DC patent war depicted in new novel by Oscar winner

March 29, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

If you thought the 19th Century was a kinder, gentler time for the people responsible for break-through inventions, you would be mistaken – it was not much better than today. 

The bitter battle for the electricity standard between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse was nastier than a bar room brawl. It has all the drama of a Hollywood movie, which, in fact, it is currently being made into.

Last Days of Night is a New York Times best-selling historical novel written by the Oscar-winning writer of “The Imitation Game.” It tells the true story of the battle between direct and alternating current for the electricity standard, one that involved fundamental patents, lawyers (Paul Cravath, 18 months out of Columbia Law School), lawsuits (312 of them), bankers (J.P. Morgan), a phobic inventor (Nikola Tesla), the press, and electrocutions of animals and a human.

Keen Observer

Last Days of Night is not classic literature. Its short chapters give it the feel of a pot-boiler. However, the book’s is timely for an ability to reveal character – good and bad – in the face of adversity and is a keen observer of the inventive process.

It is no surprise that its author, Graham Moore, won an Oscar for his adaptation of The Imitation Game, the story of British mathematician Alan Turing, who cracked the Nazi’s enigma code, but who was a victim of his time.

Moore is currently adapting Last Days into a major motion picture starring Eddie Redmayne, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the young Steven Hawking in The Theory of Everything. The Last Days movie, with an all-star team in control, has a good shot at achieving what few books and films have: a realistic portrait of the relationship between inventions and the people and systems that drive them.

Deeper Dive

IAM subscribers go here for the May issue, which contains “Book Sheds New Light on an Epic Patent Battle,” a deeper dive into this strangely inspiring, mostly factual, novel that reminds us that the premium on new ideas is as tied to people as it is to capital and genius.

Much to his credit, Graham Moore’s provides a lengthy note from the author, detailing what he condensed in the novel and why. His historical timeline (mrgrahammoore.com) helps readers to separate fact from fiction, for a fuller appreciation of the people and events that helped to secure a bittersweet victory for AC.

To purchase Last Days of Night, go here.

Image source: mrgrahammoore.com

Books, Litigation, People, Research, Transactions, Uncategorized
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