COLUMBIA, 9/9/10 (Beat Byte) -- Want
the latest on America's greatest -- her inventiveness, intellectual property,
and the laws that protect great -- and not-so-great -- ideas?
It's patently obvious at MU law professor Dennis Crouch's PatentlyO , the nation's #1 blog about patent law according to
blog-ranking giant Technorati, Google, IP Watchdog, and virtually every other
online patent watcher.
PatentlyO's up-to-the minute news and commentary has
recently included pieces on the U.S. Board of Patent Appeals; patent
infringement; how to hire a "newly-minted" patent lawyer;
individual lawsuits that will form the latest in case law; and
so-called False Marking Claims. Widely-reported for its sheer strangeness is patent
attorney Raymond Stauffer's lawsuit against Brooks Brothers
Clothing, claiming their bow ties were falsely marked with patents that expired
in 1954 and 1955.
An intellectual property (IP) expert, Crouch (above) -- a
Princeton-educated mechanical engineer and University of Chicago law grad --
teaches the abstract(s) art and subtle science of protecting ideas at the
University of Missouri School of Law, where he landed after practicing patent
law in Chicago.
Crouch's work crosses virtually every aspect of American
ingenuity: computers, circuit design, software, mobile devices, automotive
technologies, heating and ventilation systems -- even patented methods of
doing business, such as the way Amazon sells books, or Priceline sells airline
seats. Prior to his legal career, Crouch designed
software for the Mayo Clinic and worked for the Peace Corps in Ghana, West
Africa.
Entire industries rise and fall on the ins and outs of
patent protection, an area that itself is a huge and growing industry. Most
recently, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen launched a series of lawsuits
"claiming that almost every major Internet company has stolen his firm's ideas,"
according to a San
Jose Mercury News article that sums up
Allen's aims. "At least we can give him
credit for reminding us of the troublesome flaws in the U.S. patent system."
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