November 20, 2009
Movie Night
Happy Friday, IP enthusiasts! We thought it might be interesting to celebrate the end of this hard-fought work week with a movie recommendation. So stop by your local movie rental establishment, or add this one to the top of your Netflix queue, nuke a bowl of popcorn, sit back, relax, and enjoy this flick.
Primer (2004) is a rough cut little gem that is still quite pretty, maybe because of its faults. It follows the cautionary tale of a couple of engineers who spend their off-work hours tinkering in a garage, looking for that next great technology. When they stumble across an invention that they don’t fully understand, the drama and suspense begin to heat up. As they come to realize the magnitude of what they’ve discovered, things boil over with tragic consequences.
Writer/director/producer/editor/star Shane Carruth was literally a one-man show in making this film. He even composed, recorded, and synchronized the soundtrack. Being his first effort at film making, one can’t help but be impressed. It really is no surprise that he took home the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.
October 15, 2009
An overview of U.S. patent protection
Below is the first in our series of "IP Overview" documents, which are designed to provide a capsule description of the various flavors of intellectual property protection. If you are new to IP, and you want to know more, we’re hoping that these posts will provide all of the information that you might need to get started. Enjoy, and sound off in the comments if there’s a question you have about this subject that was not answered here.
A patent is an exclusive right granted to an inventor by the United States government to exclude others from making, using, selling, or offering to sell the invention that is the subject matter of the patent. These rights are provided to the inventor in exchange for a full disclosure of the invention, which is published as public record for others in the field to learn from and hopefully improve upon. This exchange of rights for information aims at promoting the progress of science by trying to remove the natural tendency to keep innovations a secret for competitive advantage.
The protection in a patent lies in the claims. If one were to compare a patent to real estate, the claims of a patent are comparable to the property description of the deed. In other words, the claims define the scope and breadth of the patent. In the ideal scenario, the patent claims will carve out protection that is valuable to the inventor, i.e., define the invention in such a way that it is difficult to design around the protection granted in the patent.
