Category: Software Patents

Tonight, the first Silicon Prairie Social was held at Mullen’s Bar and Grill in Lisle, Illinois. Similar to the Tech Cocktail events in Chicago, the Silicon Prairie Social was designed to connect “tech professionals, entrepreneurs, service providers, Internet professionals, Web 2.0 and startup companies, the mobile industry, and mobile marketing professionals.” The goals of the event were to:

• Connect local people with others in their industry and build community
• Raise the profile of the Silicon Prairie through the publicity generated around the events.
• Foster investment and economic development in the region by showcasing local businesses, entrepreneurs, and startups.

Here’s a partial list of those I saw, met, or talked with:

• Brian Clark of XNet an Internet hosting and services company in Lisle
• Jeff Mitchell of Harvey Nash an IT services and staffing company in Naperville.
• Coley Perry of Solution Partners Inc. an IT consulting company in Naperville
• Joe Johnson of Riverside Consulting Group Ltd. an IT consulting and services company in Riverside
• Anders Bovin of Sanders Infrastructure an IT consulting company in Naperville
• Paul Corning of Pariveda Solutions an IT consulting company in Chicago
• Mary Vojtech of Telcom Innovations Group a telecommunications/network provider in Itasca
• Steven Ryzner a manufacturing, engineering, and energy consultant in Chicago
• Ravi Mazumdar of TV Compass a company making a two-way interactive WiFi based smart TV remote control in Chicago
• David P. Leibowitz of Leibowitz Law Center a law firm in Waukegan
• Medi-Ez Systems Inc. a digital signature service company
• Evan Brown of the Internet Cases blog
• Bob J. Brill of Wood Phillips an intellectual property law firm in Chicago
• Mark Carter of One80 an Internet marketing company in Chicago
• James Roberts of James Roberts Consulting, Inc. a developer consultant in Algonquin
• Mazy Hadeyat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C. a law firm in Bolingbrook
• Julian Pretto of Chicago Mirco an IT hosting and services company in Arlington Heights

This only scratches the surface of the 350 people in attendance of this sold-out event. Events like this help promote collaboration and innovation in the suburban technology community. I look forward to future silicon socials on the prairie.

Linux.com a has review of the Peer-to-Patent pilot, which I reported on earlier. Beth Noveck of the New York Law School, a leader in establishing the pilot, is noted in the article saying that the UK Patent office will launch a similar pilot for UK patents. She also expects that the European Patent Office will follow with a similar project.

Business Professor John R. Allison, Economist Abe Dunn, and Law Professor Ronald J. Mann posted their article “Software Patents, Incumbents, and Entry” on SSRN. The article provides data showing that product based firms (e.g. Microsoft) are more likely to seek and obtain software patents than service based firms (e.g. EDS).

The article examined the relation between patents and different business models used by firms in the software industry. Part of the article analyzed firms’ pattern of patenting (how many patents the firms sought and received). The authors stated, “if the desire to build portfolios for defensive purposes were the main justification for patents in the industry . . . one would expect portfolios roughly proportionate to litigation exposure.” Id. 1594. They assert that a firm’s size is a reasonable proxy for its litigation exposure. Therefore, “if the defensive portfolio hypothesis is correct, patent portfolios would correlate closely with size, and there would not be a great deal of variation tied to other factors such as market sector or R&D intensity.”

However, the authors predicted the pattern of patenting would “depend not only on size, but also on [1] whether the firm focuses on selling products or services, [2] how devoted the firm is to R&D . . ., [3] whether the firm is primarily a software firm or a hardware/electronics firm, and [4] competitive issues in the specific sector of the software industry in which the firm is located.

The authors found that whether a firm sought and obtained patents depended, in part, on the extent to which the firm sold products as opposed to services. The data showed that “[a] firm that derives all its revenues from products . . . is expected to produce 230% more patents than a firm entirely devoted to providing services.” Id. at 1601. They found that the data did not show that some industry sectors merely relied more on products and some more on services, but rather the differences between patenting practices of products firms and services firms existed even within particular industry sectors.

The authors were not sure what caused this difference between products and services firms. The causes might be that (1) patents have a greater ability to protect innovation in products, (2) there is a “greater need to protect innovation that is disclosed through the distribution of products,” or (3) “a patenting culture in a firm’s early days . . . contribute[s] to its survival as a products firm.” Id. at 1063.

[Allison, John R., Dunn, Abe and Mann, Ronald J., “Software Patents, Incumbents, and Entry” . 85 Texas Law Review 1579 (June 2007) Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=989592]