Editorial: Disruptive Innovation & Patent Quality

In this issue of the HULSEY IP MoNIToR, we focus on the relationships between innovation and patent quality. Clayton Christensen, renowned Harvard Business School scholar and author of the Disruptive Innovation has recently published an important work questioning his original concepts and teachings with a focus on, not the customer, but the job that needs to be done in a particular market.

With a new focus on a particular job to be done by either a new product or a new service, it is appropriate to consider associated intellectual property. For instance, if a job requires the development of a new invention, then patent protection comes to mind. In a job-centric market, competition then may focus on which innovative products and services provide the best solution.

This is where intellectual property rights that characterize and protect best the novel solutions can come to the forefront. And, here patent quality emerges as an essential element for associating the value of a new solution to the value of associated rights. Today, the USPTO attends to promoting and managing patent quality at many levels. So, too, the larger IP stakeholder community is embracing these concepts. So, we highlight here some important works on the patent value, portfolio development, and quality patents at many levels.

This quarter, we also present several new educational offerings on patent trolls and mastering innovation. In essentially all areas of commerce, academia, and government, we are paying increasing attention to innovation and inventiveness. New awards programs, conferences, and national forums, from those being held at the White House, to the ever evolving Edison Awards, to several important websites that purely focus on innovation, there is a growing abundance of attention to innovation.

Part of this attention includes new tools and systems for the management of innovation. And, from all of these effort, new, amazingly innovation products are emerging as the fruits of innovation, with their associated IP rights. These rights include new brands, new logos, new trademarks, and trade dress that accompany the new patents for inventions and copyrights for original works. As these rights permeate the global markets, we are seeing them tested both in the U.S., as well as abroad. For example, we discuss the newly heard case of Apple v. Samsung for design patent infringement at the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as other trademark and copyright matters in domestic and international tribunals.

We hope that you enjoy this 2016 third quarter edition of the HULSEY PC IP MoNIToR and that we evermore earn your recognition of our serving as a Gold Standard in IP for a Competitive, Entrepreneurial Marketplace_TM

All the best,

BILL HULSEY LAWYER – PATENT – IP – HULSEY PC
Principal, HULSEY PC