rethink(ip)

PTOEx - If they won't fix theirs, why don't we build our own?

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at August 31, 2005 09:33 PM

An idea:

If FedEx can take on the federal government's role as the mail delivery specialist, why can't a private commercial enterprise take on the role of patent office?

I'll be blogging on this some more over the next couple of weeks - but my first question to y'all out there, why not?

If Congress can't improve the process/quality by allowing the PTO to keep the user fees and use it to improve quality and service, let's innovate around them.

So - how do we create PTOEx?

What Grade Would You Earn?

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at August 30, 2005 09:06 PM

Wow.

Sometimes you stumble over something written on a blog and you just gotta go back and read it over and over before it fully settles into your consciousness.

Ageless Marketing has just such a post this week entitled "Trust is a Report Card Grade, Not a Vision Item or a Mission Goal." It ends with the tagline "... to be continued" and I must admit, I am looking forward to it.

In a nutshell, the author takes a jab (very well deserved) at all those company mission statements that make it a primary objective "to build trust" with customers.

We can’t tell you how many vision and mission statements we’ve seen citing building trust with customers as a primary objective. You’re not in business to build trust. Trust is not a primary objective. Serving customers beyond compare is. Customers reward the companies with trust and loyalty commensurate with the devotion the company gives to their well being.

Right on! Like many companies, law firm mission statements are even better - a sampling includes these gems:

"Our clients are entitled to professionalism from us. We ascribe to the highest professional ethics, and protect their confidences from improper disclosure. Their secrets are safe with us." - i.e. Trust Us.

"We value trust and loyalty. These are earned, but once earned, they are great enablers. They enable us to deliver the most timely, cost-effective and sagacious legal advice to our clients."

"He believes that it is imperative for a client to form a strong working relationship with the attorney who will be handling his or her case. Mr. Smith generally develops lasting professional relationships with the individuals he represents." - i.e. Trust us, you will like us.

The point Ageless Marketing makes: don't strive for trust, don't make it a primary objective. Instead, strive for perfect client service, the best product you can make or deliver. Do these things and the trust will follow. Trust is a badge to be earned - or a grade to be written down on the report card.

What grade would you give yourself? More importantly, what grade would your clients give you?

UPDATE: Ageless Marketing followed up today on their "to be continued" promise with a post entitled "Trust Flows from Cultures of Trust". Once again - they nail it. Go take a look, but here is the penultimate quote:

Thus, enumerated bulleted “how to statements” on building trust, such as contained in David Maister’s book The Trusted Advisor (see yesterday’s post), ring as hollow words, for even a con artists follow those steps. Enduring trust flows not from tactical actions but from strategic principles embedded in a culture of trust.

Rethink(THIS!) - Let's make a better patent document

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at August 29, 2005 08:14 AM

How much do you hate patents?  I’m not talking about the legal concept of the right to exclude, but actual patents.

The document.  It’s structure, layout and appearance.

Current US patents are better documents than their ancestors.  But, if you ask me, there’s still room for improvement.

Let’s change them.

Got any ideas on how to improve the patent document?  We’d love to hear them.  The ideas can be about anything and for any purpose.  You can view one of my prior rants on the subject here if you need something to get the gears moving.

So go ahead, make the patent more useful and/or easier to understand.  Heck, we’d even love to hear suggestions on how to make them more aesthetically pleasing (just remember not to place that term in the claims).

Use comments or send any of us rethink’rs an e-mail (addresses at top left).  We’ll post ‘em later.  Maybe we’ll even send them to someone who cares.

Patent Preparation and Prosecution Isn't a Commodity

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at August 28, 2005 08:08 PM

Via Brand Autopsy quoting Hugh MacLeod:

...when you start turning your products into commodities, you start treating your customers like commodities.

Patent preparation isn't a commodity, no matter what some folks think.  When preparation and prosecution becomes a loss leader, so do your clients.

Email Subscription Available for USPTO Notices

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at August 26, 2005 11:27 PM

Thank you.  Thank you for the response to our providing the United States Patent and Trademark information, news and notices via email.  It has been great!

One of the major "complaints" that we have received is that we were only providing the information via RSS. RSS is really the information delivery option of the future and we will be pointing the way to some tutorials in the future, but in the interim - give the people want they want. 

So - below is an email signup application.  Simply put in your email address and you will receive all USPTO updates via email.

We value your privacy, just like we value our own.  We will never sell the names of the folks that sign up - so have no fear.  We will not add to your spam burden.

So, sign up and enjoy.  And please keep the feedback coming - it really helps us to know what you need and want.

Enter your Email Address to Receive USPTO News and Notices


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Changes are coming...

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at August 25, 2005 10:59 PM

The other day I heard my four year old (referring to the television) say "Daddy, make it go faster!," not realizing that he was watching live TV (and was stuck watching the commercials). The day before, my two year old (who was watching the Wizard of Oz this morning when I told him to come with me to get dressed) handed me the TiVo remote and said "Toss, toss pleeese" (asking me to pause the TV). All three of my kids have no clue of how it used to be [insert rant on walking up hill both ways...]. They have no concept of what TV is like when you can't skip the commercials and pause live TV (aren't DVRs great?).

It makes me think of the changes to the practice of IP law in the past 7 years (since my oldest child was born). Easy access to PDF copies of patents (remember ordering a paper patent or having a service fax you a copy?), online filing, online searching and the rethink(ip)'r favorite....working with patent attorneys who are not in major metro areas. All of this is possible because not only is more and more content available online, but people are becoming more and more used to relying on technology (the Internet in this case) for their business needs.

Most of these changes weren't driven by attorneys wanting to earn more money. It's hard to argue that simplifying things, ease of use and speed are synonymous with billing by the hour. They aren't. Instead, these changes were driven by the public, by entrepreneurs and by access to technology.

Things are changing (in case you haven't noticed it). Those that don't change are going to be left behind.

I'm thankful to be involved with this great rethinking of the practice of IP law...thanks for coming along for the ride. Just wait until you see what ideas, tricks and tools we have in the hopper.

Now, if Daddy could just make it go faster.

Worldwide Patent/Trademark/Copyright Office RSS feeds

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at August 23, 2005 11:36 AM

A number of readers have fired over other feeds:

• WIPO: http://www.wipo.int/news/en/newsfeed.jsp
• EPO: http://www.european-patent-office.org/_data/update/rss.xml
• US Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov/help/rss.html
• Switzerland: http://www.ige.ch/rss/rss-de.xml (German only)
• http://www.ipnewsflash.com/feeds/notices.xml is a private collection of notices from EPO, WIPO, USPTO, German office, UK office and Switzerland

Thanks Christopher, Bill, and others.  If there are others, let us know!

Rethink(ip) makes United States Patent and Trademark Office News and Notices available by RSS

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at August 22, 2005 11:42 PM

We are pleased and excited to announce that we have created RSS feeds for all news items and notices released by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

They haven’t done it or shown any intention of doing so, so we did!

Many of our readers will no doubt agree that the Office’s News and Notices site is a woefully antiquated and inadequate means for distributing important information to the intellectual property community.  We believe this site stands as a stark reminder of the Office’s failure to implement RSS technology.  We’ve ranted on this in the past, but have seen no action or commentary by the Office.
 
So we decided to take matters into our own hands.
 
Today we launch the following four RSS feeds that mimic the categories used by the Office:
 
Official Gazette and Federal Register Announcements (feed:   http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkIP_USPTO_OG )
General news items  (feed:   http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkIP_USPTO_GEN )
Patent news items  (feed:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkIP_USPTO_PAT )
Trademark news items  (feed:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkIP_USPTO_TM )
 
A fifth feed includes ALL items for each of the four categories listed above  (feed:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkIP_USPTO_ALL )
 
Go ahead and subscribe.  Who knows, you might find yourself actually reading PTO news and notices on a regular basis!

We believe this Rethink(ip) project is a great example of a practical application of RSS technology and we hope it will expand the use of RSS throughout the IP community.  We also hope it will grab the attention of decision-makers at the PTO and encourage them to take a serious look at RSS.
 
If you have any questions regarding RSS or how to use the feeds, please contact any of us at the addresses listed on the main rethink(ip) site.

UPDATE: Other IP RSS feeds can be found here.

Use of PowerPoint in a Trial

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at August 19, 2005 04:13 PM

Wow - now here is a little rethinking payback...

• Beyond Bullet Points on Trial:  according to the Fortune magazine article, "Stark Choices at the First Vioxx Trial", two lawyers used PowerPoint in "starkly" different ways in a heavily-publicized trial that began Thursday in Texas.  In the first of many trials involving the prescription drug Vioxx, plaintiff Carol Ernst is suing Merck and Co. over the death of her husband Bob Ernst in 2001.
  
• Jury Finds Merck Liable - $253 Million Judgment:   A Texas jury found pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. liable Friday for the death of a man who took the once-popular painkiller Vioxx, awarding his widow $253.4 million in damages in the first of thousands of lawsuits pending across the country.

I bet Cliff Atkinson starts doing a lot more consulting on jury trial prep.  I know some patent prosecutors/lecturers who could use some help as well.  Explaining concepts isn't confined to litigators.

Guest Blawgers Welcome

Have a rant, observation, crazy idea, complaint about the practice of IP law, or anything else you think our readers would enjoy? Send it to one of us (email addresses at www.rethinkip.com) and if it fits into the rethink(ip) theme, we'll post it. Heck, if you want we can even make it anonymous.

Information addiction, just say no

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at August 18, 2005 12:40 AM

I’ve looked on with wonder this week as I read the three previous posts left by my fellow rethinkers. First, Doug’s post about ignoring his RSS mistress for so long that he feared revisiting her, then Matt’s post about the need to cut the cord, finally, Doug’s post on bloggers on vacation. What was amazing to me was that I could have written any of those posts. Scary!

It’s clear…we’ve all taken some time off this summer. Our post frequency has been down on our “other” blogs (The Invent Blog, PHOSITA, Promote The Progress) as well as here. Some might say we have “checked out,” but the reality is that the three of us have independently been doing some serious “rethinking” of our own. Rethinking life, rethinking work, and rethinking rethink(ip). For me, I’ve found this rethinking process has resulted in me (1) reading fewer blogs and (2) spending less time late at night sucking at the teat called the Internet.

I’ve been weaned.

I’ve cut the number of blogs I read EVERY day down to 15 from 140+. I stopped checking my email every 10 minutes every hour of the day. I’ve even left Skype and Trillian (slick program that lets me log into MSN, AOL and Yahoo instant messaging accounts) off occasionally. I am making an effort to unplug myself. It makes me want to stand up in front of all of you and say “Hi, my name is Stephen and I’m an information addict.”

What have I learned in the process?

The less blogs I read, the closer I read the ones I do read. My RSS overload had caused me to regularly delete blog posts in my “in” pile as fast as I could just to get through them. The result is that I was missing all sorts of great content. Now I have a “must read” pile and everyone else is in the “if I have nothing better to do with my life” pile. Sorry if you are in that pile. Don’t let the good blogs get diluted by how easy it is to add another blog to your aggregator. Just say no. Reading blogs is not an all you can eat buffet.

I’ve also found that stepping back for a while helps you put things in perspective (see my previous bucket post for exactly what I am talking about). This project is a lot of fun…but the reality is that we are all just a hole in that bucket of water.

Finally, I’ve been reminded that email is a tool, not an organ. It isn’t part of you…you can leave it at the office. You don’t have to feed or water it all weekend. Let it be.

So, if you find yourself suffering from information overload…it might be time to say “no” for a change. Step away from the BlackBerry before someone gets hurt.

Photo via here. Yes, it is another udder pic, deal with it.

Blogging Depression or What to Do When Willie Wonka's Squirrels Come After You

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at August 17, 2005 10:09 PM

Via - What's Your Brand Mantra a post entitled Blog depression

On BlackBerries, Mickey Mouse, importance, and indispensability

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at August 16, 2005 10:39 AM

A Blackberry as a symbol of importance?  So says Doug in his great post reflecting on a recent trip to the Capitol and commenting on Dennis Kennedy’s Contrarian View of the Blackberry.

I’ll take it a step further – in the right context, they mark those who believe they’re indispensable (or have a fear that they’re completely dispensable).

Start looking.  You’ll see them.

Try this thought experiment — take Doug’s Blackberry-toting important hall-walkers and congressional staffers out of the Capitol building and put them on vacation in a beautiful locale with their family.

In your mind, do they still have their Blackberries?  Are they using them?  How frequently?  What do their kids’ faces look like as they use them?

Ok, you can stop.  I’ll give you the answers:  Yes, yes, very, upset.

I’ll submit this anecdote as proof-

At the end of a recent trip, My wife and I were able to take our boys to Disneyland in California.  We had two days at the park with our two young sons.  No work.  No blogging.  Just Mickey Mouse, cotton candy, and lots of smiles.

I had my cell phone, but it was tucked safely away in one of the backpacks.  Never used it.

I couldn’t help noticing, though, that many other people weren’t able to cut the cord.  I didn’t notice many Blackberries (this is the Hollywood set, mind you, and those Blackberries popular with the DC set are so utilitarian), but I must have seen over a hundred people with earphones connected to their cell phone, which was typically stuffed into a fanny pack or something similar (don’t even get me started on those things).

And they were actually using them!

Here’s one example.  We were waiting in line for the Buzz Lightyear ride (my oldest son’s favorite, by the way).  As we patiently walked the maze, we encountered the same people over and over again (everyone knows how this works).  This one poor guy was with his family as well (wife, two kids).  Like me, he was on sherpa duty (stroller in tow, two backpacks, cameras, etc.).  But he also had a wire dangling from his ear.  On one of our passes, I traced the wire to his backpack.  By the time I met him on the next pass, he had retrieved his cell phone — a Treo 650 — and was holding a conversation about an e-mail he had just received.  He assured the other party to the conversation that he would “chew on that” and promised to “shoot something back in an hour or so.”

Think about the ridiculousness of this situation.  He must have just gotten an e-mail and had called (or took a call from) the sender to tell them that he would respond to the e-mail.  Man, this guy must be indispensable!

(what odds will you give me that he’s a lawyer?)

Meanwhile, the sun shone and his wife struggled to entertain their obviously disappointed kids.

As a father, I briefly felt bad for the guy.  He sacrificed time with his family — which is so hard to get these days — and committed to sacrificing even more (remember, he’s got some chewing to do and an e-mail to write, all in the next hour).  I also felt bad for him as a fellow sherpa.  “Dude, if you’re gonna sacrifice time with the fam, at least make it easy on yourself — shell out the bucks for the wireless headset.”

Then I stopped thinking about it – I had to get back to my business of the day.  My oldest was teaching me how to aim the blasters on the Buzz ride.  There’s this pointer thingy, and you have to….

My RSS Aggregator Scared Me

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at August 15, 2005 09:02 PM

It's not really Friday, but I missed a few the past month or so - so I will take a personal perogative and post a TGIF on Monday.

I was scared of my RSS aggregator - really, I was terrified of loading up FeedDemon and being bombarded with RSS feeds, thousands of unread posts, and watchlists with more entries than I could count.

Since I basically took the last two weeks of June and all of July off from blogging and reading RSS feeds, it was all there waiting for me. An entire summer of tablet PC, droning legal analysis and "productivity" posts staring me down. Simply mentioning the word RSS made me break out in a cold sweat. I was a bad bad blogger. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.

I avoided looking at the aggregator's icon when searching for other programs. I could imagine my aggregator speaking to me: How dare I ignore it - didn't I know how important everyone's words were? Didn't I need to keep track of all the legal bloggers? Wasn't I afraid of "missing it" - the next best thing in legal blogging? Everyone was reading great things and I was being left in the dust. What was wrong? Didn't I know what I was missing?

I looked into the dark abyss and my aggregator was staring back at me.

Thing is: I really didn't care. I read a couple of books - printed on paper, not eBooks. I drove around going to estate sales and garage sales looking for antique tools to rehab. I painted a room. I watched foreign movies and spent too much time obsessing over Blues albums.

So, this evening I screwed up my courage and started up FeedDemon and cleaned everything out that was older than a week. Poof -- 45,000 posts instantly gone. I could almost hear their cries - "nooooo..... I'm melting."

As it turns out - my aggregator didn't come after me. I am still alive and there isn't anyone waiting behind the bushes outside my house to beat me senseless. It felt good - it felt liberating.

So, for now the score stands:

Abyss - 0
Douglas - 1

What was I so scared of in the first place?

BlackBerries Run Amok!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at August 3, 2005 11:14 PM

Dennis Kennedy has an interesting post up about the ever present BlackBerry entitled: A Contrarian View of the BlackBerry. Dennis, in only the way Dennis can, squarely takes aim:

I'm a bit of a contrarian on the whole obsession of lawyers with the Blackberry. See this article on the phenomenon featuring my former law partner Jim Gunn (one of the people who I truly appreciate having gotten the chance to work with during my legal career) for an overview of lawyers' affinity for the BlackBerry. In Jim's case, he has his usual geat sense of humor about the whole phenomenon.

I was talking to Dennis the other day and we were laughing about our recent travel horrors and I recounted to him a story about making a number of congressional visits while in DC last week. I found it interesting to watch two groups of people: the families touring the congressional office buildings and the staffers working in the congressional office buildings. The families were walking around with wide open eyes, smiles and a general sense of wonderment and excitement. In fact - they were the only people who would actually look you in the eye and acknowledge your presence. The parents were usually herding the kids and answering a gazillion questions a minute. Every time someone in a suit or "professional attire" hurriedly walked by staring zombie-like into their BlackBerry, a hushed silence befell the groups as they attempted to figure out if it was someone "important".

Since I usually make most of my visits in the spring, I don't usually get the see the large groups of tourists. It was a blast. Everyone was having fun and genuinely excited to be seeing democracy in action. What does this have to do with the BlackBerry? Well, the staffers, as you could imagine, were clueless as to what was going on around them. Maybe it has become too commonplace for them, maybe it wasn't quite so interesting to be asked for the 5,000th time where the cafeteria could be found. It could be a lot of reasons - but the one thing that struck me as funny was that all of these staffers were hurriedly walking (running) around with their eyes glued to their hands where the ever present BlackBerry could be found. In almost a trance, they move a couple of fingers, scroll a wheel, sigh and move on down the hall. It was almost as predictable as the Oompa Loompa dance moves in the new Willie Wonka movie.

My comment to Dennis: the BlackBerry is now a barometer or indicator of who is important and who is "out of the loop". On that particular warm and steamy afternoon in DC I knew, however, what group was "the important ones" - the kids and families who were genuinely interested in how our government works.

I know that at least one of the kids I saw that day will be a rethinker - and I doubt they will ever think of a BlackBerry as an indicator of "importance".

Remember the bucket

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at August 2, 2005 01:11 AM

 A couple of weeks ago, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor spoke at a judicial conference in Spokane, Washington. During her speech, she read one of her favorite poems, a poem which has since become a favorite of mine. I include the poem below (with the author's permission, of course):

"There Is No Indispensable Man"
by Saxon N. White Kessinger, Copyright 1959

Sometime when you're feeling important;
Sometime when your ego's in bloom
Sometime when you take it for granted
You're the best qualified in the room,

Sometime when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions
And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining
Is a measure of how you will be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop and you'll find that in no time
It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example
Is do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember,
There's no indispensable man.

So. Next time you are patting yourself on the back for the case you won, how many people viewed your blog yesterday, or whatever gets your ego thumping, remember that bucket. [Photo source]

Howdy Again!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at August 1, 2005 12:45 PM

Well - it has been a long month hiatus, but a little rethinking and R&R does a body good! (Does anyone else remember that Saturday morning cartoon guy who had the anatomically correct pajamas?)

Looks like it has been a bit quiet around here, so I have some new thoughts and questions for y'all that I will be posting throughout the week. I also think you will start to see some improvements and additional features to Rethink(IP), so stay tuned.

A lot of you have also been asking about PatentMojo -- that is a long story for another time. It is quite the cautionary tale, however, so we will be sure to share it with you when everything gets sorted out. For the time being, let's just say that little project is "hibernating" and will hopefully be up and running again in no time.