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We are excited to announce our first official “blog” site for GIS. Through our blog we will share what’s happening in the world of Intellectual Property and posts facts/ideas about interesting subjects related to our work in patent consulting. We welcome your comments and opinions.
Please feel free to check out our latest blogs here on the GIS Blog and keep on the lookout for future posts from our IP professionals. |
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One of GIS’ specialties is prior art searches. To effectively and successfully find prior art requires the balance of patent and technical knowledge that GIS has. GIS uses a methodology developed and proven over the last 20 years and has a success rate of over 80% when targeting specific patent reads.
As a service to our clients, we have prepared an example of a prior art report based on a recent court case in the Eastern District of Texas in the United States. Though we often customize reports and deliverables for each client, the sample report shows a typical example of our work product. |
To receive a sample of the report, e-mail us at sales@gistrategies.com. |
IP (Intellectual Property) Strategy – Part I (Introduction: Design and Implementation)
Implementing a proper IP strategy in a company can bring long term financial benefits. IP strategies can be designed to suit any company’s business model. In this article, the basic steps in designing and implementing a strong IP strategy will be discussed.
The basics steps involve the following:
- Education and creation of an IP culture within a company;
- Determining short and long term goals for the company and assessing how to develop an IP strategy well suited to the company;
- Design and implementation of a defensive strategy;
- Design and implementation of a strategy for licensing and/or patent divestiture to generate revenues;
- Building and managing patent portfolio to support defensive and licensing strategies.
The creation of an IP culture in a company is important in the development of an IP strategy. In the last thirty years the business of IP has become common place. However, there are still many negative connotations and misconceptions associated with IP, particularly with enforcement of patents. Through education personnel within a company can learn and understand the concept of patents and the processes involved in an IP strategy. This can be used to de-mystify any misconceptions of IP and promote the benefits that a strong strategy can bring to a company. Education should be directed to all personnel involved in the company, particularly upper management responsible for making important business decisions and researchers who are responsible for developing inventions.
A company must determine its long and short term goals in order to design and implement a strategy well-suited for the company. For example, while some companies may rely on licensing revenues from patents obtained for inventions developed from years of Research & Development, other companies may want to focus on a more defensive focused strategy for protecting themselves against competitors or other entities such as NPEs (Non-practicing Entities). Determining the long and short term goals helps establish where to invest resources and provides guidance for establishing the IP strategy. It is also necessary in order to prepare budgets for implementing a proper strategy well-suited for the company. Defensive strategies can range from the very simple to the very complex. An example defensive strategy might include the following steps:
- Review and understand a company’s technology and place in the market place;
- Competitive Intelligence Research;
- An IP audit;
- A Patent Landscape Analysis;
- Identification of technologies most at risk based on review and understanding of the company’s technology(ies) and place in the market place and based on Competitive Intelligence, Patent Landscape, and IP audit results; and
- Implementation of a Defense Strategy for mitigating risks associated with the technologies identified as being most at risk.
This final step might involve building a patent portfolio in technology areas of those of competitors, developing design-arounds for technologies at risk to avoid infringement, and development of a strategy for mitigating risk of litigation in the event of accusations of infringement.
A patent portfolio can provide a source of revenue through licensing and/or patent divestiture. Many companies rely heavily on licensing as source of revenue, while for other companies this is not a suitable option. A proper assessment of the short and long term goals of the company will be useful in determining what kind of licensing program, if any, should be implemented. Patent divestiture can also be a good source of revenue. For example, an IP strategy might include the development of a patent portfolio, which includes patents in non-core technology areas of the company. Patents in non-core technology areas can be used in lieu of monetary compensation in licensing negotiations with NPEs. As such, patenting non-core technologies can be useful in a defensive strategy. However, the development of a patent portfolio is expensive and patent divestiture can be useful in generating revenues for cost recovery.
Finally, once defensive and licensing strategies have been designed, a proper patent portfolio needs to be established. There are many factors that come into play in designing a patent portfolio that is effective for defensive and licensing purposes and that can generate revenue through patent divestiture. Some of the major factors that affect the quality, effectiveness, and value of a patent portfolio include: i) validity of the patents, ii) the level of use of the technology covered by the patents in the industry; and iii) the level of difficulty in proving infringement of the patents. When building a patent portfolio these factors should be considered when determining what technologies to patent and during drafting and prosecution of patent applications.
The basic steps of the development and implementation of an IP strategy have been outlined and described in some detail. Look for further details of each of the above steps in future issues of this newsletter.
Are you developing an IP strategy? Let GIS help you design and implement your IP strategy. |
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In recent lab testing, we were impressed with the miserly power performance of some computers. In particular, we found a couple of laptops/netbooks that perform numerous contortions (dynamic cpu voltage/frequency adjust) to save power. This prolongs battery life, and minimizes power consumption (heat dissipation) even if powered from the utility grid. Again, kudos are in order for these design teams.
In the course of our research, GIS has the opportunity to investigate a slew of interesting consumer products. One such product that comes to mind is the Sony Reader PRS-505. The PRS-505 was first announced by Sony on 2n d of October 2007. The last time we worked on this unit was about 18 months ago.
Photo 1: Sony Reader screen (un-powered) |
We retrieved the Sony Reader
PRS-505 from our store-room, and
here is what it looks like today, 18
months after power was removed
(see left photo, un-retouched).
During all this time, the PRS-505 has had its supporting electronics (including the battery) detached from the display. The screen content is still sharp and clearly readable well over a year later. With regards to the specification for the display, the manufacturer asserts:
”it requires no power to maintain a static display”.
“Image Stability: Remains legible for months”
The Sony Reader screens, along with other companies such as the Kindle and Nook, are fabricated using screen technology from an innovative company called E-Ink. They now have newer technology which includes color. |
Picture 2: Microscope 5x view of Sony Reader screen.
The above photo is a 5x microscope view of the screen. You can clearly see an individual pixel, as outlined by the red box. The display firmware uses an anti-aliasing feature that inserts grey pixels to fool the eye in making the character look smoother. This screen is specified to a resolution of 170 dpi, 8 level gray scale.
The pixels are composed of spheres that vary in size, though seem to average about 25 µm in diameter (the size of a human hair). Each sphere contains some ink particles that are displaced within the sphere based on charge that is applied to it. Each sphere can be addressed by more than one charge line (e.g. you could have a half-black half-white sphere, or even access just a quarter of the sphere.
In Picture 2, you’ll note that there are some spheres that should be black (and others that should be white). These could be defective spheres, or more likely, they are spheres that have lost or gained a charge over the course of the last 18 months. Either way, they do not impede the clarity or quality of the viewable text, as witnessed in the first photo.
Picture 3: The photo above shows the red-boxed area of picture 2, but with higher magnification.
The downside of this present display technology is the refresh time which is in the order of 1 second. This is clearly not enough for a general use computer screen. If this refresh time could be improved by an order of magnitude, it might be suitable as a non-active media computer device (e.g. text editing, spreadsheets etc).
There are other companies that are also vying for the low power display market. Color capability is being announced by Liquavista , a Phillips subsidiary, who have a prototype available. They also claim faster display refresh times. They expect production units for the end of 2010.
Another highly promising company producing “electronic paper” displays is Pixe Qi. This company has prototypes available and claims video rate refresh with color capability. Up to a 5-fold decrease in display power is claimed over. And then there is the Qualcomm subsidiary Mirasol, which has another way to skin the same proverbial cat.
With this low power display technology, netbooks that claim 8 to 10 hours of operation from a battery could conceivably be designed to operate continuously for days or even weeks. Alternatively they could make use of even smaller, lighter batteries.
These are certainly interesting times, with technology moving so rapidly, that it will enable a more consumer and eco-friendly experience. At GIS, our engineers are anxiously awaiting for these Green devices to be in production so they can hit our reverse engineering lab benches at some point. |
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 The LESI 2010 International Meeting and Conference will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa from April 11 -14, 2010.
Pierrette Breton will be co-presenting in the following workshop on Wednesday, April 14 at 2:00 p.m.:
Workshop: WHAT TO DO IF YOU SUSPECT YOUR PATENTS ARE INFRINGED
Part 1 - Pursuing an assertive licensing program can be performed using several organizational structures, from in-house licensing professionals to particular types of law firms or licensing consultants. Four organizations will be compared against specific measures to help a company choose which approach works best for it. A list of factors to consider will be proposed.
Presented by : Charles Neuenschwander – Principle, International Patent Licensing Company
Part 2 - Providing evidence of infringement is key to open and enable a patent licensing negotiation. Examples will be provided of how this evidence is gathered and presented.
Presented by: Pierrette Breton - President & CEO, Global Intellectual Strategies, Inc.
Part 3 - In today’s environment negotiating a reasonable license is getting ever more difficult. There are, however, certain fundamentals that should be considered beginning with the drafting of the notice letter, conducting the negotiation meetings, to agreeing on a royalty amount. We will explore these fundamentals and how best to apply them in real world situations.
Presented by: Gerald Amen – Principle, International Patent Licensing Company |
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Express Circuit Extraction
Circuit extraction from a semiconductor IC is one of the most complicated and expensive types of analysis you can undertake. Traditionally, it involves the steps of sample preparation, imaging, circuit extraction, and finally, circuit analysis.
GIS is proud to offer what we call Express Circuit Extraction for analog semiconductor devices. In essence, what we do is for specific devices and circuits, we are able to use our knowledge of analog circuit design to skip the imaging step, or at least greatly reduce the amount of imaging that is required. The time savings gives our clients results quicker and at a reduced price. |
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Patent Portfolio Mining
Patent Reviews
Patent Product Mapping
Product Procurement
Patent Infringement Analysis
Prior Art Searches
Technical Rebuttal
Trial Witness
Patent Valuation
Patent Portfolio Appraisal
Patent Landscape
Patent Divestiture
Patent Acquisition |
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