How to Participate in Open Source While Maintaining IP Integrity
The key idea is to think strategically about the software, the value it can provide to the company, and whether the technology should be developed in-house. In some cases, software can provide more...
View ArticleThe SEC Defines Blockchain, But Did They Get it Right?
The SEC has landed on a definition which includes both permissioned distributed ledgers and permissionless distributed ledgers in the term “blockchain.” This is not surprising, nor is it necessarily...
View ArticleSupplying Legal Notices for Free Software in your Products
This license, like many other Free Software licenses, require a legal notice to be given to the recipient when the software is distributed. Alas, it seems like Intel has not done so and as a result the...
View ArticleIP Due Diligence for Start-ups in the 2018 Legal Environment – The Most...
For IP due diligence for investment in a start-up or young company, the most important conversation is with the key developer(s) of the product(s) or service(s) [the “Conversation”]. Ideally, the...
View ArticleNavigating the Uncharted Waters of the Blockchain
Driven by media coverage of extravagant returns for investors in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple, among others, some of which have exhibited 100,000 percent or more annual growth...
View ArticleWhen Will Wall Street Wake Up to Elon Musk’s Broken Promises?
Reports about Musk’s talks with Cortica comes one day after Goldman Sachs analyst David Tamberrino affirmed his sell rating for Tesla stock on his expectation that Tesla stock would drop by 30 percent...
View ArticleMicrosoft Announces Shared Innovation Initiative Encouraging Industry...
On Wednesday, April 4th, the official Microsoft blog published a post written by the company’s president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, which announced the company’s new Shared Innovation...
View ArticleNegotiating Your First Big Tech Software License
One of the critical moments in the life of a start-up tech company is landing its first big contract with a giant tech company. That first tech deal is also a daunting process. Take a deep breath. You...
View ArticleGoogle vs. the Luddites: A Patent Battle Neither Side Should Win
The idea that all software is obvious is a theoretical argument that doesn’t just border on the scattological, it wades right into the sewer. Consider artificial intelligence. If AI, which requires the...
View ArticleUnderstory Earns U.S. Patents for Weather Sensing Technology
Understory’s first patent covers the sensor device itself which consists of a stainless steel sphere sitting on top of a shaft, a configuration which one of the sensor’s designer called “God’s...
View ArticleYour Developers Could Be Publicly Disclosing Source Code By Using Third-Party...
Recently, I met with a potential client to discuss key points that developers and management should keep in mind in taking the first steps to begin developing a patent portfolio. One aspect of the...
View ArticleLimiting the Impact of Patent Assertion Entities on the Open Source Community
There has been a great deal of discussion over the years regarding patent trolls, also known as non-practicing entities (NPEs) and Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs). As most of the IP world knows, these...
View ArticleWe Need an Open-Source Approach to Weed Out Bad Quality Patents
Much has been written about patent quality. But many authors approach this problem with a bias against the very idea of a patent system. These critics would “solve” the patent quality problem by...
View ArticlePatently Strategic Podcast: Open Source and Patent Rights
Use of free open-source code can be a massive accelerant when building complex software applications. Why reinvent wheels? And depending on resources and budget, sometimes it’s the only practical way....
View ArticleOpen Source AI? More Transparency, Please
Jockeying for position among the leading generative AI large language models (LLMs) has amplified their differences. Training models and code access are the source of some of the biggest disagreements....
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