On April 12 an op-ed was published in the Wall Street Journal  entitled Patent Trolls vs. Progress by Andy Kessler, a former hedge-fund manager. I would like to correct some inaccuracies. Mr. Kessler attributes Microsoft's recent purchase of AOL's patents and Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility (presumably for its patents) as protection against non-practicing entities ("NPEs") also disparagingly known as "patent trolls." First, no portfolio of patents will ever protect against an NPE. This is because an NPE, by definition, does not produce a product. In a patent litigation between two companies, the typical scenario is that company A owns a patent and attempts to license that patent to company B that it believes is infringing. Company B can pay a fee to company A or it can refuse to pay. Or company A may attempt to get an injunction against company B to prevent it from selling its product that incorporates the invention described by the patent. If company A wants an injunction or requests a fee that company B refuses to pay, then company A will almost

S.A.F.E. recently released version 4.4 of CodeSuite and version 1.1 of CodeSuite-LT. The most important new feature of this version is that these programs now recognizes many different text encoding formats including ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32. Characters in alphabets other than the Latin alphabet used for English are now supported. For example, code with comments or strings in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Russian can be compared correctly.

The most significant change is to BitMatch. When examining binary object code to find text strings, you can now specify the encoding format of the file. If you're not sure about the encoding, you can choose multiple formats.

As demand for our products increase outside the United States, we realized a need to support languages in those countries also.

A patent can de divided into the following sections:

1. Abstract. This is a one-paragraph description of the invention that's being patented.
2. Drawings. These are carefully labeled figures that are used to illustrate important concepts of the invention and that are described in the detailed description. It is important that at least one diagram shows a block diagram of the invention if the patent includes apparatus claims. For a physical device, a diagram should show the physical parts and their relationships. For software, the diagram should show the architecture of the software. For a patent that includes method claims, at least one diagram should have a flow chart that illustrates the method.
3. Background of the invention. This section describes the field of the invention, other inventions, or publications that predate this invention ("prior art"), and other inventions related to this invention. This section typically explains the inventions usefulness-what's so great about the invention and why people will want it.

There has been a lot of writing, and action, by people for and against the two bills being considered by Congress for protecting intellectual property owners from having their rights infringed online. The PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) is the version of the bill being considered by the Senate. The Stop Online Piracy ACT (SOPA) is its counterpart being considered by the House of Representatives. The law firm of LaRiviere, Grubman & Payne, LLP does a good job of summarizing the two laws here. The two bills are different and, if passed, will have to be rolled into a single bill, but their essence is to enable U.S. law enforcement or a private party to shut down websites that are "dedicated to infringing activities." Such a website is defined in the bills one whose primary purpose is infringement. The accuser must show that the website has "no significant use" other than engaging in, facilitating, or enabling any of the following:

According to the World Intellectual Property Report 2011, published by the United Nations, royalties and license fees for intellectual property outpaced economic growth in recent years.

On September 16, 2011, President Obama signed The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act into law. One of the key, and most controversial changes, is a shift in the patent priority rules from the "first-to-invent" system. Professors David S. Abrams and R . Polk Wagner performed a study on the effect of this change on entrepreneurs and individual inventors.

In August I debated the impact of software patents at the Computer History Museum (you can watch the debate here). I asked members of the audience how many were programmers or had  written software. A large number of hands went up. I then asked  those people to put their hands down if they thought what [...]

Here are my new podcasts about software intellectual property and software development relating to IP issues. I believe you'll find them useful. The Software IP Detective's Handbook About Software Copyrights About Software Trade Secrets About Software Patents The Software Clean Room Process

People have been asking me lately what I think about those organizations that buy up patents and license them or sue infringers. Kindly known as non-practicing entities (NPEs), patent licensors, or patent aggregators, they are disparagingly called "patent trolls." However, there is a much more troubling entity out there that I want to bring to [...]

Leonardo da Vinci has been called the greatest genius who ever lived. While his artwork has been appreciated by millions over the centuries, his so-called accomplishments in mathematics, science, and engineering are only myths and I debunk them here.

Over the years as an expert witness I've worked with a lot of lawyers. Most are really sharp, some are brilliant, and a few... not so much. Here are some guidelines for treating an expert right.

Wikipedia is great for cocktail party banter, but don't rely on it for critical facts. The anonymity of its contributors, the poor fact-checking on the early contributions, and the bias of unqualified volunteer editors make it an increasingly inaccurate source that is losing its initial attraction for many.

Peter Huber at the Manhattan Institute argues in the Wall Street Journal that software patents discourage innovation and must be disallowed or restricted. Dr. Huber's facts are wrong and his conclusion is wrong.

My book on software intellectual property has just been published by Prentice-Hall.

S.A.F.E. has recently announced the release of DocMatch, a new tool for comparing all kinds of documents to find plagiarism.

Antivirus company McAfee and R&D company SAIC recently published a report entitled Underground Economies, a study of corporate IP theft. According to the study, many cyberthieves now see stealing IP as more profitable than credit card theft and identity theft.

You can now run CodeMeasure for free to graph the growth of your software project development effort over multiple versions of the software. CodeMeasure uses the Changing Lines of Code (CLOC) method to calculate the growth.

In the past few years I've been interviewing students for job openings at my companies. Some students came from large, well-known universities while other came from small colleges. Some students had bachelor's degrees in computer science while others had master's degrees. One thing that many of these recent graduates had in common was that they couldn't program competently.

The ADFSL 2011 Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law is a small conference that's focused on practical results as well as academic research. I attended last year, and presented a paper, and found it interesting and informative. I heard from law enforcement officials, the kind of people you don't often meet at these types of conferences.

Sometimes a full-course meal is more than you need, have time for, or are willing to pay for. Sometimes fast food just hits the spot. That's why we're introducing CodeSuite-LT, a lower priced version of CodeSuite with most of the functionality at much lower cost.