On May 8, 2021, Spencer Silver, co-inventor of 3M Post-it® Notes, died at the age of 80. The inventor’s death has made national news, and inevitably the event has prompted retelling of the Post-it story, i.e., isn’t it amazing what can grow out of an accidental discovery. But there is more to Post-it Notes than […]
By Alex Shtraym, Patent Attorney The world is changing. It sounds a little harsh perhaps, but “dumb” devices are a thing of the past. Instead, the market is flooded with “smart” devices: smart phones, smart TVs, smart watches, smart appliances, etc. In no time, urban areas will classify themselves as smart cities, leaving you to […]
Among other events that occurred on this date in history, U.S. Patent 942,699, directed to the first synthetic plastic, Bakelite, was granted to inventor Leo Baekeland.
Business—at least as waged between competitors—is war. That observation was made in 1832 by Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz in his magnum opus, On War, based on his service in the Napoleonic Wars.
On Tuesday evening, I went to a “shark tank” event at TechNexus in Chicago. Thanks to my friend and colleague Nancy Fallon-Houle, the startup business lawyer, for inviting me.
If you’re an inventor, engineer, or programmer—if you’re an entrepreneur, owner, or prime mover in a business—if you use technology to make better products for your customers—
Let’s say you own a business that makes something, whether it’s a software product or a hardware device. Your success depends on filling your customers’ needs better than anyone else.
“We’ve run out of big ideas,” the Wall Street Journal wails. The voice of Corporate America paints a bleak picture without offering any path forward. In this article,
The President-Elect @realDonaldTrump and his transition team @transition2017 are working on appointments to his new Cabinet. One of the chairs is reserved for the new Secretary of Commerce.
There is an international crisis in software patents. The critical, unanswered question is this: When are software inventions eligible for patent?Billions in corporate assets are
