Hey everyone! This is my twentieth IEOR 190G Blog Post.

In this last blog post I will be discussing the value that I gained from taking this class. Now apart from the value added from the social-media tools that we used throughout the course of the semester that I discussed in my last blog post, I can proudly say IEOR 190G taught me a lot of material that will stick with me for a long time.

Nowadays everyone has heard of the word "patent", but knowing more about patents than "its that thing where you get to call something yours and sue people for using it" is relatively uncommon. I signed up for this course because I have a great interest in entrepreneurial ideas or solutions and I wanted to be more educated on patents and Intellectual Property as they relate to products in general. This course gave me a lot of insight pertaining to those topics and even if I may not be able to write an approvable patent application entirely by myself, I learnt a lot.

From learning the basics of how to read the actual document, to strategizing ways to protect oneself from Patent Troll litigation IEOR 190G made me familiar with all aspects of the patent process from the submission of the application to infringement litigation. Now I by no means plan to become a Patent Lawyer, and if I did then this would be the wrong course to take, but I do aspire to run my own business, a business whose success might very well gravitate around a solution or service that I wouldn't want my competitors to offer.

Following this course, I am even more convinced than I was at its start that being educated about the tradeoffs that a patent present you is essential when dealing with any form of Intellectual Property. Knowing the value added of keeping an invention a trade secret versus the cost of competitors using your inventions before you can claim ownership was specifically enlightening to me... especially in a world where everyone wants you to sign non-disclosure agreements but few agree!

I plan to use the knowledge that I learned in this class to make more informed business decisions, whether they regard my own intellectual property or my employer's. After having taken this class I will also be able to have fruitful conversations with patent lawyers and experts without the fear of feeling exploited or pushed around.

Lastly, from a more overarching point of view, I feel like IEOR 190G might have slightly changed my paradigm regarding originality of work. I have always been a stickler for originality being very biased against those who copy, however seeing how non-obvious use of prior arts truly can produce novel, original and useful inventions might have changed my mind. In today's "remix" culture where infinite information is at our fingertips and new inventions pop up every day, I feel that the most wonderful solutions build off the combination of more pre-existing entities whether we are talking about the Apple Watch or Bob Dylan's music.

As you may have inferred, IEOR 190G taught me a lot this semester and I could be more thankful to Prof. Lavian for teaching the class in the manner that he did. If you are interested in intellectual property, being an entrepreneur, or even simply dealing with new inventions, I highly recommend that you take this course.

As per usual feel free to view the video below for a discussion on the above.

On that note I thank you all for reading my blog posts and I wish you all the best for your futures.

Hey everyone! This is my nineteenth IEOR 190G Blog Post.

It has been a great semester, but it has come to an end and it is now time to reflect on our time together. In this first blog post I am going discuss Collaborative Social-Media Learning.

In this class we used a lot of social-media tools. From these very blog posts, to our youtube channels to our twitter accounts, we have experimented with pretty much every type of platform. This definitely has benefits the first of which is giving us familiarity with the status quo.

Personally, I am not very up-to-date when it comes to internet presence. I have a Facebook page which I barely use and an email address. When I had to make a twitter account for this class, I finally learnt how to use it. Granted, not know what "tweet" or "retweet" meant prior to a couple of weeks ago is totally my fault and problem, but nonetheless IEOR 190G brought me up to date with today's status quo -- currently having 284 million users, you need to know what Twitter is and how it works.

I have always been one to stay away from social media, afraid of putting my information on the web but something Prof. Lavian said during the semester resonated within me:

"You should be the one in control of what your internet presence looks like, not other people".

This convinced me to make a twitter account and using it for this class has been really cool! It instantly connects you to millions of other users with similar interests and many of my tweets were favorited by users like Braun US and Barrel On. I also found twitter to be very useful when used in the classroom as it helped highlight what my peers felt were important concepts, especially during Efrat Kasznik's guest lecture.

The weekly blog posts and youtube videos were something a was a little bit more used to doing as IEOR 190E, the mobile app challenge lab used a similar format. Blogging really helps to organize your thoughts especially when you also record a video as you are revising what you are going to publish multiple times with each revision helping to tie up loose ends and develop more understanding.

I think that this teaching style can be very beneficial for classes whose material in very current. IEOR 190G's material is exactly that: current. With most of our assignments being based off of our own research and current articles Prof. Lavian shared with us, the collaborative social-media nature of our homework not only forced me to be more aware of current events, but also opened my ears to other current information that my classmates found. Oftentimes, the arguments that people made in their blog post were repetitive, but the few who took an opposing or untraditional stance really made my "gears turn" and it is those posts that I enjoyed reading the most.

To this end, I would highly recommend that professors use blog post more frequently in subject matters that are relevant to current events, and more importantly, get the rest of the class to comment on each other's posts as that is where I gained the most value.

One way that I would improve this way of learning could be to find a platform that would allow all of the students to sign up as a class with individual profiles, kind of like a group, to allow for easier navigation to all of my peers' pages as going back and forth between the google spreadsheet made it easy to lose track of whose blogs I had visited and whose not yet.

That's all for this post and stay tuned for my last post coming up.
As always feel free to watch the video below for a discussion on the above.

Hey everyone! This is my eighteenth IEOR 190G Blog Post.

This time I will be discussing some research I did following our guest lecturer's talk last Monday.

Something that I wanted to look a little deeper into was the "white space analysis" that Ms. Kasznik spoke of when suggesting a few strategies for IP growth.

Following some research, I found that not everyone agrees with whitespace analysis helping being the right way to guide innovation attempts, even if it should be a necessary part of the process.

First of all, when applied to the patent world, the term “whitespace” means an analysis method that identifies the lack of patents in a particular technology area as a leader for innovation decision-making.

There is no doubt that Patent "whitespace analysis" is important aspect of any innovation assessment. This is due to the fact that if a company is introducing a new product or technology, it needs to know at an early stage whether it can own the fruits of its innovation efforts, and whether it might be sued for infringement.

However this should not drive the innovation process! Relying on patent whitespace analysis to determine innovation strategy is akin to making a decision on buying an investment property decision primarily on basis of the absence of other investors in the area.

In other words, "whitespace analysis" should only be used to validate, not to drive, innovation pathways.

That's all for now from me and I look forward to seeing you all in class on Monday.
As always feel free to watch the video below for a discussion on the above!

Hey everyone this is my seventeenth IEOR 190G Blog Post.

This time I will be discussing this week's guest speaker, Efrat Kasznik of Foresight Valuation Group's lecture.

She touched on three main points:

•  First she gave a n IP Marketplace Overview. The main points were the following:
• there is a change from 17% in 1975 to 80% of the S&P 500 Market Value being intangible assets in 2010.
• now 250k patents go into the design and making of a smartphone
• there are multi-billion dollar deals involving IP
• however the USPTO has a huge Backlog and pendency increase
• Sharp increase in troll litigation since 2010 -- mostly litigate against startups which has changed the whole dynamic of the marketplace.
• Next she suggested a few IP Strategies for Growth 
• entities can now use this marketplace to their advantage by building an IP Portfolio to increase their valuation.
• this takes advantage of the later stages of IP's life cycle: i.e. the portfolio's monetization and its liquidation.
• nowadays in emerging markets less patents are being granted even if we have the highest number of applications ever
• mature markets are filing less patents and more patents are filed and granted in a bubble market
• this is due to "white space" analysis or looking at how much of an industry's space of intellectual property 
• Lastly she provided some recommendations motivated by a few IP Case Studies. A few were as follows:
• Support future products: failure to patent innovative research can mean huge prospective losses.
• "Design around" existing patents to avoid damages.

That's all from me for this blog post and stay tuned for my next post presenting some relevant research. As always feel free to watch the video below for a discussion on the above!

Hey everyone!! This is my sixteenth IEOR 190G Blog Post and this time I will be continuing to talk about the TED Talks video we watched, specifically choosing one for analysis.

The TED Talk I chose is Kirby Ferguson's titled Embrace the Remix. In this video he is voicing his opinion on why the modern interpretation of patent law is actually going against its own principles.

His argument is one that human creativity cannot infinitely come from within, but rather comes from "with-out". He illustrates examples like Bob Dylan, the voice of a generation, who some say copied 2/3 of the material in his songs. Danger Mouse, the DJ that remixed the Beatles and Jay-Z to make the Grey Album. Henry Ford who admits to never inventing ANYTHING, but simply rearranging prior inventions!

The way to conceive of creativity is by understanding the remix and how the remix process actually ends up with a totally new creative entity.

Nowadays patent laws use the award analogy of property and this is where a lot of issues stem out from. For example Steve Jobs was first quoted saying that great artists STEAL in the 90s but later in 2008 was willing to go "thermonuclear war" on Android for "copying" his idea the iPhone. So basically -- copying is ok, as long as its not from me!

Patent Laws were made to promote progress, however oftentimes they do the opposite. It is our job to keep a level head and remember the whole purpose being our patent system and perhaps most importantly rethink how we think about creativity!

Well that's all for this post. Watch the video below for a discussion on the above!
Cheers!

Hi everyone! This is my fifteenth IEOR 190G Blog Post. And this time I will be discussing one of the TED talks videos we viewed in class.

The first video I chose to analyze is Drew Curtis'.

He's TED Talk is about his personal story of enduring a Patent Troll infringement case and he has a lot of great insight to give!

He indicated that nowadays it is too easy to get a new patent and this can be achieved by taking something already being done and patenting it for an emerging technology for eg. telephoning on internet.

However due to new technologies this makes the mechanism obscure and oftentimes these lawsuits end in settlements. Unfortunately the avg cost for a defendant if you WIN is $2million and 18 months of your time. This is ludicrous! For this reason it is cheaper to settle than to fight a lawsuit!

However he does have a suggestion: fight the infringement of the patent, not the patent itself as it makes the case much easier and more manageable. By doing this himself he was able to settle his case for ZERO dollars.

His ending recommendations are the following:

• fight the infringement NOT the patent
• make it clear that you have no money and would prefer to give it to a lawyer
• make it as annoying and painful as possible!

He ends on a funny line with DON'T NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS! but in all honesty, these trolls have become the terrorists of the Intellectual Property World!

That's all for this blog post and stay tuned for another video commentary!

Cheers!

Hey Everyone!

This is my fourteenth IEOR 190G Blog Post. In this post I will be continuing my discussion on Silly Patents.

This selection of patents are pretty out there, so I hope you enjoy the read!

The first patent I would like to talk about is: Banana Suitcase

This invention is made along the line of "no-one likes a bruised banana!' however making a banana a suitcase as if it were a professional photo camera is pretty silly. Apart from the fact that a banana is one of the fruits with complete natural packaging that already features a wall a half of an inch thick, it is a novel, and non-obvious invention as I doubt anyone would normally think of putting their bananas in Samsonites!

The next patent I would like to discuss is: Gas Factory

                                                         

This patent is a contraption to capture the methane gas that a cow emanates when farting. Now as silly this device is, the main reason for how absurd this device is that the methane produced by a single cow is close to absolutely nothing. To be able to actually do anything with the gas collected, this contraption would have to be harnessed to hundreds and thousands of cows. It doesn't seem very practical and even if it is novel and non-obvious, it is absolutely not useful!

The third patent I want to show you is: Pedal operated mower

This patent is for a lawnmower that is operated by pedals attached to a tricycle! The apparatus is actually novel, but also non-obvious as we are talking about the early 1980s. As nowadays such an invention would be obvious due to the amount of motorized lawnmowers we have, this patent's date is what makes it legitimate (even if it has expired by now). 

I hope you enjoyed these hand-selected patents and feel free to watch the video below for a discussion on the above!