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Innovation at Work: Google's Driverless Bombshell

nospam@example.com (Axel H Horns) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 22:51:00 +0200

Non-autonomous car driving, XX. century

This weekend reports emerged (here, here, and there) that Google, Inc., successfully has tested autonomous driverless vehicles driving around in normal street traffic in secrecy for a year or so, collecting some 140K miles of driving experience.

Ok, it was Google, Inc., not

Surely, those companies also have also built and tested prototypes for autonomous driving but apparently none of those projects got that far as it now was achieved by Google.

Accidentially, at the same time a German newspaper reports on first steps in a research project aiming at the same driverless technology conducted at Braunschweig University. However, this German project appears to be still in its infancy; the report says that they are just testing autonomous driving on 11 km of a known route in a town. Clearly the Google project is literally hundreds of thousands of miles ahead.

What can we learn from that?

Google is a purely 'digital' company; i.e. they appear not to have had any hands-on experience with classic automotive technology so far. I am inclined to think that not despite but because of their distance to established carmakers they were successful. Not being involved in a traditional branch of industry is that what counts but a certain mindset of openness and curiosity.

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On How To Make Use Of A Mobile eBook Reader

nospam@example.com (Axel H Horns) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:49:00 +0200

Some months ago I had contemplated going deeper into technologies and issues of e-books and mobile e-book readers. Starting point was some kind of discontent with the format of a blog for articles that exceed some threshold of length comfortable to be consumed on a normal desktop or notebook screen. Would it make sense to create from time to time an article with more length than appropriate for a blog and then disseminating it on-line as an e-book?

An on-line search session aiming at free authoring tools for use under Linux lead me to two software packages:

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EPO / EU: Important Changes Ahead

nospam@example.com (Axel H Horns) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:56:00 +0200

Tomorrow will be the very last day in Office for Ms Alison Brimelow, President EPO. As Wikipedia knows, Alison Jane Brimelow CBE is a British civil servant and former Chief Executive and Comptroller General of the UK Patent Office, now known as the Intellectual Property Office. She is the fifth and current President of the European Patent Office, a position she holds since July 01, 2007. Born in 1949 in Havana, Cuba, she is one of the two daughters of Sir Thomas Brimelow, a British diplomat, who was Permanent Under-Secretary in the British Foreign Office in 1973-75 and Member of the European Parliament in 1977-78, and Jean Cull. She holds a degree from the University of East Anglia.

On June 25, 2010, the UK-based magazine Managing IP has honoured her with the Outstanding achievement award for her work in intellectual property during her career at the UK Patent Office and at the helm of the EPO.

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Germany: A Case Study On How To Strangulate Innovation

nospam@example.com (Axel H Horns) — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:16:00 +0200

Free WIFI - No longer available in Germany?

Well, I think I don't have to tell you here that patents are some sort of exclusive right related to inventions. Only inventions are eligible to be patented. Some of them, to be more precise.

But mere inventions, taken by themselves, are quite worthless for the society.

They might be seen as some sort of raw material for breeding innovation which means that changes happen in the real world. Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something or "new stuff that is made useful", as Wikipedia puts it. Patents seen as a legal instrument to assist in doing the administration of the benefits of inventions can make sense only if a sufficient fraction of those inventions make their way into real innovation.

Producing inventions is one thing, transforming them into innovation is quite another. Not all inventions turn out to be fit for innovation. Time has to tell.

However, experience suggests that in many, if not in most or even all cases, real innovation is a double-edged sword: Wherever and whenever innovation occurs, there will not only be winners but also victims: The representatives of Old School (or Ancien Regime as I would like to name it) who insist on doing it traditionally as it ever was done before the advent of the specific invention in question. In this context, think of Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction as a necessary attribute of a dynamic capitalism which is fit to survive its crisis. As brutal as it sounds, allowing victimisation of endangered members of the class of proponents of Old School by not bailing them out by means of new regulations might well be a necessary prerequisite for sustainably saving our capitalist system of economy.

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Daniel Closa et al.: "Patent Law for Computer Scientists"

nospam@example.com (Axel H Horns) — Sun, 09 May 2010 21:22:59 +0200

Four patent examiners from the European Patent Office (EPO) have jointly launched a book titled "Patent Law for Computer Scientists - Steps to Protect Computer-Implemented Inventions". The 1^st edition of the book, XV, 194 p., Hardcover, ISBN: 978-3-642-05077-0, has recently been published by Springer in Heidelberg, Dordrecht, London and New York.

As set out in the preface chapter, the book is based on a total experience of some 70 years of the authors in the patent business within the EPO.

According to the Springer website, their professional background can be summarised as follows:

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Billable Hour is Dying: Pfizer Sets Another Nail Into The Coffin

nospam@example.com (Axel H Horns) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:54:33 +0200

Pfizer’s general counsel, Ms Amy Schulman, reviewes their move away from billable hours. See also Mr Gershon Hepner in the Huffington Post and my previous postings (here, there) concerning the Rio Tinto approach.

Selling Holes or Brokering Control Power

nospam@example.com (Axel H Horns) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:22:26 +0200

In 2007, Mr Alexander Woodruff wrote in his blog:

"According to marketing theory, you do not sell products - you sell benefits.

Taking this to extremes, as Kotler once did, this means big companies like Bosch or Black&Decker are not selling you drills - they sell the hole. If you get the hole you need in a piece of wood, your need is fulfilled. [...]"

If this is assumed to be valid, what does a patent attorney sell?

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Staff Matters

nospam@example.com (Axel H Horns) — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:42:00 +0200

Yesterday it had come to be known that Ms Brimelow is not going to apply for a second term in Office as President of the European Patent Office beyond her first term ending in June 2010. This comes a bit as a surprise as there had been rumours that she was indeed keen to get re-appointed to another full term. However, the present status means she will serve for more than a full year and in view of the mounting problems of the EPO I only can hope that there will be no lame-duck-syndrome turning her energy and efficiency down prematurely. There is a dark connotation to Ms Brimelow's step as reported by Mr Joff Wild in his IAM Blog:

"[...] Last week at the European Patent Forum in Prague there were rumours that the French were not keen on Brimelow serving more years in charge at the office than had their man Pompidou. That sounded ridiculous at the time, so I did not report it. However, maybe I was wrong. It could be that Brimelow has decided that she can no longer be bothered with all the politics that come with her job."

Anyway, even beyond this matter the absolute institutional non-transparency of the proceedings of the Administrative Council (AC) of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg) is disturbing. It appears to be quite ... Byzantine.

Quite another matter is who, probably in the coming days, will be announced as next Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). Various more or less informed speculations say that it will indeed be Mr David Kappos (Ipwatchdog, PatentlyO). It would not come as a surprise to me. According to Mr Dennis Crouch, Associate Professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, (LinkedIn) Mr Kappos is a longtime IBM patent guru and currently holds the title of VP and Assistant General Counsel in charge of Intellectual Property. Mr Crouch writes:

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