Lithosphere Software will be attending the Developer Patent Summit in Washington, DC tomorrow being run by the Application Developers Alliance. In advance of this meeting, I'll be re-reading the GAO patent report from August 2013 and reviewing Colleen Chien's recently published Patent Assertion and Startup Innovation report about NPE activity.
There seems to be a convergence of thought around NPE activity - it's not that NPEs are necessarily the problem, but rather that "bad patents" are the problem. If this position is correct, an interesting study would involve trying to correlate how many of these so-called bad patents were prosecuted pre-KSR versus post-KSR. There's not a lot of discussion about why these so-called patents came into existence, nor should we assume that the patents are bad patents based solely on the fact that they are being asserted by an NPE. Each patent should be evaluated on its own merit, or lack of merit.
Looking forward to an interesting discussion tomorrow.
Here's the meeting info:
DC DEVELOPER PATENT SUMMIT | #DevPatents
DATE: September 17, 2013
LOCATION: 1776 | 1133 15th Street NW, 12th Floor | Washington, DC 20005
AGENDA:
{C}6:00pm - Registration, drinks, food, and mingling
6:30-7:20pm - The Broken System: Innovators at Risk
7:20-8:00pm - Finding the Solution: Time for Reform
8:00-9:00pm - Enjoy beer, wine and food, meet the speakers, and network
DISCUSSION LEADERS INCLUDE:
The Broken System: Innovators at Risk
- Moderator: Jon Pasky - Principal and CEO, Pasky IP
- Kate Endress - CEO and Cofounder, Ditto
- Todd Moore - Founder, TMSOFT
- Eddie Peloke - CEO, Blue Shoe Mobile
- Micah Siegel, Ph.D - Senior Advisor, Stack Exchange
Finding the Solution: Time for Reform
- Moderator: Jon Potter - President, Application Developers Alliance
- Van Lindberg - VP of Intellectual Property, Rackspace
- Kevin O'Connor - CEO, FindTheBest
- Steven M. Auvil - Partner, Squire Sanders
- Matt Levy - Patent Counsel, Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA)
- Russ Merbeth - Chief Policy Counsel, Intellectual Ventures