#utility-model

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fromHarvard Business Review
17 hours ago

Scaling a Business Beyond the Family Playbook

Walmart employs more people than the Chinese Liberation Army, illustrating its growth from a mom-and-pop operation to a major employer in the U.S.
Business
Software development
fromZDNET
20 hours ago

'Like handing out the blueprint to a bank vault': Why AI led one company to abandon open source

Cal is shifting from open source to proprietary licensing due to security risks posed by modern AI tools.
Startup companies
fromAbove the Law
2 days ago

The Startup Bet Lawyers Keep Misunderstanding - Above the Law

Lawyers must embrace uncertainty in startups, viewing their careers as investments rather than relying solely on traditional risk-averse training.
fromTechCrunch
2 days ago

Inertia moves to commercialize one of the world's most elaborate science experiments | TechCrunch

Inertia Enterprises burst onto the scene in February with a $450 million Series A, making it one of the best capitalized startups in the industry, aiming to bring laser-based fusion reactors to market.
Science
Growth hacking
fromeLearning Industry
1 day ago

What Start-Up Marketing Teaches L&D Teams About Measuring Training ROI

L&D teams must adopt marketing-style measurement metrics to effectively assess training impact on behavior and performance.
Bootstrapping
fromEntrepreneur
2 days ago

Your Business Won't Scale Unless You Accept This Hard Truth

Leaders must delegate tasks to ensure business scalability and avoid being overqualified for daily operations.
Mindfulness
fromSilicon Canals
3 days ago

Somewhere between 1995 and 2010, patience stopped being a virtue and became a market failure - and we built an entire civilization on top of that assumption - Silicon Canals

Impatience has become an integral part of modern infrastructure, influencing how we interact with the world and perceive waiting.
Venture
fromFast Company
4 days ago

The 3 reasons why VCs invest: Faith, opportunity, or evidence

Venture capital rounds are driven by three core reasons: faith, opportunity, and evidence.
#patent-law
fromPatently-O
17 hours ago
Intellectual property law

Extraordinary by Design: How the USPTO Is Bypassing Its Own Reexamination Rules

Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
6 days ago

The Dark Matter of Patent Law: Nearly 25% of Office Actions Now Cite Secret Prior Art

Prior art can include unpublished applications, termed 'secret springing prior art', which complicates patent searches and affects rejection rates.
Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
17 hours ago

Extraordinary by Design: How the USPTO Is Bypassing Its Own Reexamination Rules

A new procedure allows patent owners to argue against reexamination requests before the USPTO decides on substantial new questions of patentability.
Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
1 day ago

Mind the Gap: The Middle Layer of Obviousness Doctrine

The obviousness determination in patent law lacks a structured method for concluding whether an invention is obvious after evaluating the required factors.
Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
6 days ago

The Dark Matter of Patent Law: Nearly 25% of Office Actions Now Cite Secret Prior Art

Prior art can include unpublished applications, termed 'secret springing prior art', which complicates patent searches and affects rejection rates.
Environment
fromEntrepreneur
6 days ago

How Nature-Driven Innovation Can Give Your Business an Edge

Biomimicry offers innovative solutions to business challenges by emulating nature's strategies, yet it remains underutilized in corporate practices.
Media industry
fromEntrepreneur
1 week ago

Free Your Mind to Create While AI Streamlines the Rest

Agencies must let go of outdated operational layers to maintain competitive advantage and embrace AI's role in streamlining processes.
fromBenzinga
6 days ago

A Vending Machine Business Finally Took Off After Multiple Failed Ideas. Now They Say, It's Not As Passiv

"Vending is NOT fully passive income. I'd call it semi-passive, like 70% passive. Social media makes it look like you fill machines once a month and money rains in."
Online marketing
Remote teams
fromInc
6 days ago

3 Principles to Help Your Business Thrive in the AI Era

Predictability is less common in business today; small firms are better positioned for flexibility and rapid adaptation to change.
Bootstrapping
fromEntrepreneur
2 days ago

The Deals You Didn't Make Are Teaching You How to Win Next Time - Use This Framework to Make It Happen

Missed opportunities can provide valuable lessons if analyzed correctly.
Growth hacking
fromEntrepreneur
3 days ago

Commercialization Isn't the Same as Sales Growth - Here's How

Sales are a function, while commercialization is a system of decisions that defines sustainable business growth.
Startup companies
fromFast Company
3 days ago

Entrepreneurship was never easy, but it doesn't need to be relentless

Entrepreneurs face overwhelming mental loads and financial pressures, impacting their ability to innovate and grow their businesses.
Startup companies
fromEntrepreneur
1 week ago

This Business Model Is the Hidden Goldmine For Boosting Profits

Done-For-You business models are surging as entrepreneurs seek results without managing every task themselves.
fromTechCrunch
3 weeks ago

Meta launches new initiative to support entrepreneurship, drive AI adoption | TechCrunch

In the AI era, it should be easier than ever for people to build new businesses. We want to build the services that enable this. This is important for ensuring that people broadly share in the prosperity created by superintelligence.
European startups
#patent-licensing
Bootstrapping
fromEntrepreneur
3 weeks ago

Don't Let New Regulations Overwhelm You - Take Control in 30 Days or Less

Regulatory compliance failures typically result from poor internal organizational response rather than the rules themselves, and treating each new regulation as a structured 30-day operational project with clear ownership prevents chaos and ensures consistent execution.
Intellectual property law
fromKqed
6 days ago

Anthropic's Bid to Lift 'Supply Chain Risk' Label Suffers Setback in U.S. Appeals Court | KQED

Anthropic is contesting the Pentagon's classification as a supply-chain risk due to ideological motivations behind the government's actions.
Retirement
fromSubstack
1 month ago

How to Set Up a Business the Right Way

Establish business systems intentionally from the start rather than reactively managing obstacles, creating a sustainable foundation that prevents financial chaos and tax complications.
#uspto
#copyright
fromIPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law
2 weeks ago

WIPO in Focus: Beyond Treaties, Toward a Market-Driven IP System | IPWatchdog Unleashed

WIPO is not merely a distant UN bureaucracy; it is a dynamic, fee-driven organization that has been undergoing significant operational and cultural transformation in recent years.
Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
2 weeks ago

Disclosed but Still Secret? The Federal Circuit Weighs Patent Publications Against Trade Secret Claims

The technology at issue is a subcutaneous cosmetic penile implant, a silicone sleeve placed between the skin and 'Buck's fascia' to enhance girth and length.
Intellectual property law
Intellectual property law
fromFortune
2 weeks ago

'Conservatives' want to tax university research. It would kill the goose that lays America's golden eggs | Fortune

Proposals to tax university R&D income threaten innovation and economic growth in critical technology sectors.
fromFast Company
2 months ago

5 lessons for building up an industry, not just a company

But if you're innovating within your industry, it's a problem you should expect and prepare for because it means having to operate in two realities-the internal reality where you know the challenges in your industry and how you're going to solve them, and the external reality where nobody else has recognized the problem that needs to be solved. In a highly regulated industry like healthcare, safety, and stability create an inertia that often works against innovation.
Startup companies
fromEntrepreneur
2 months ago

How to Protect Your Startup and Close Bigger Deals

Because startups typically don't have a track record of success to attract potential clients, they can offer a trial of their platform for free or at a lower cost to showcase what their platform can do and how reliable it is. The enterprise - a potential client - can test the newest technologies without the worry of committing to a complete and often costly rollout.
Startup companies
#intellectual-property
Intellectual property law
fromIPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law
3 weeks ago

Other Barks & Bites for Friday, March 20: CAFC Approves Flexible Domestic Industry Analysis at ITC; MFN Pricing Threatens $167 Trillion in Medical Innovation's Societal Value; and UK Has No Preferred Option for AI and Copyright

The Federal Circuit supports flexible analysis in domestic industry requirements, while various legal and economic developments impact innovation and data access regulations.
fromPatently-O
1 month ago

The Patent Term Distribution, and What it Reveals

Congress set the patent term at twenty years from the earliest effective filing date. 35 U.S.C. § 154(a)(2) (not counting provisional or foreign national filing). But that statutory baseline is just the starting point. But, the actual term is shaped by a series of prosecution decisions, USPTO delays, terminal disclaimers, and patent family structure.
Intellectual property law
Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
1 month ago

Are Rising Maintenance Fees Shortening the Effective Patent Term?

Approximately 60% of U.S. patentees abandon their patents before expiration by not paying maintenance fees, with full-term maintenance rates declining to roughly 40%.
Intellectual property law
frompatentlyo.com
1 month ago

Guest Post: Protectionist PTO Memo is on a Collision Course with TRIPS

USPTO Director's new policy considers U.S. manufacturing status when deciding whether to institute IPR and PGR proceedings, potentially conflicting with WTO TRIPS obligations requiring nondiscriminatory patent treatment.
Intellectual property law
frompatentlyo.com
1 month ago

Untethered: USPTO Loosens the Article of Manufacture Requirement for Digital Designs

The USPTO relaxed design patent rules for computer-generated interfaces and icons, removing display panel requirements, allowing 'for' prepositions in claims, and extending eligibility to projected, holographic, virtual, and augmented reality designs.
Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
1 month ago

Twenty and Done: The Fee-Driven Collapse of Claim Count Diversity

Patent fee structures have created a hard threshold at 20 claims, causing 28% of 2025 utility patents to issue with exactly 20 claims compared to 6% in 2005.
#patent-strategy
Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
1 month ago

Guest Post: Design Patents at the ITC

The ITC applied a lower visual similarity standard than the Federal Circuit requires in finding design patent infringement, potentially allowing judges to disregard claimed design elements as minor or trivial.
fromIPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law
1 month ago

Opinion: The ITC Has Lost Sight of the Public Interest

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC)-an agency with the extraordinary power to block imports and, in turn, influence the direction of American technology policy-has drifted out of that balance. To align with the Trump Administration's intellectual property priorities and pro-investment agenda, the ITC is in urgent need of reform.
Intellectual property law
Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
1 month ago

The Third Way: Examiner Action Dates and the Allowance Rate Curve

Examining USPTO allowance rates by anchoring outcomes to examiner mail dates provides the most direct measure of examination policy by capturing the moment examiners make final decisions.
Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
1 month ago

The 20-Year Allowance Rate Arc: From Trough to Peak and Back Again

U.S. patent application allowance rates followed a V-shaped curve from 2001 to 2024, declining from 71% to a 59% low in May 2006, then rising to 82% by early 2020, representing a 23-percentage-point swing.
Intellectual property law
fromPatently-O
1 month ago

Extolling the Virtues: 'Space-Efficient' Preamble Fails to Limit

The Federal Circuit reversed an indefiniteness ruling while affirming dismissal of breach-of-contract claims in NimbeLink Corp. v. Digi International Inc., with the patent issue centering on whether claim preambles impose substantive limitations.
fromAbove the Law
2 months ago

From Cost Center To Value Engine: Patent Management In The AI Era - Above the Law

In a recent Tradespace and Above the Law survey, two-thirds of companies that draft patents in-house described IP as a value driver, while 71 percent of companies that outsource drafting viewed IP as a cost. When drafting and prosecution move inside, IP teams work closer to engineers and product leaders. This proximity improves invention quality, strengthens claim strategy, and aligns patent decisions with product direction, market timing, and business priorities.
Intellectual property law
#ipr-institution-rates
fromIPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law
4 years ago

The Burden of Proof regarding Cellular Wireless Standard Related Patents: Final Thoughts for Our Critics

Do owners of patents for which licensing declarations have been made enjoy more rights than other patent holders? Do such licensing declarations impose obligations on potential licensees rather than on patent holders? Should prospective licensees have no right to challenge such patents? In another responsive article, that is what one commentator claims our series of articles on IPWatchdog asserted, although we never wrote or suggested anything of the sort.
Intellectual property law
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