The Paper Chase Part Deux – Blawg style

Thank you Professor Bainbridge for allowing respected and feared mentor Professor Kingsfield as your substitute in drafting the latest Blawg Review.  You have succeeded in transporting me back to my 1L year at Texas Tech where Socrates ruled my world.  Very clever.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, May 8, 2007 at 4:30 pm
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New FedCirc.us Search Tool Released

The master plan for the FedCirc.us site includes several web features designed to deliver patent caselaw information in a more effective manner.  The first – the GimmeTen! feature – has quickly become the most popular page on the site…and for good reason.  Not familiar with it?  Simply bookmark http://10.fedcirc.us and visit regularly.  That page always provides concise summaries of the ten most recently posted case reviews.  We’re confident you’ll quickly be hooked.

Today we announce the second feature in our bag of tricks – the travelling FedCirc.us search engine.  By following the steps below, you’ll be able to search the FedCirc.us site from anywhere on the web.

The best part is the simplicity — 5 easy steps (4 for most people).  Five minutes tops.

1.  Make sure you’re using either Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2.0 as your browser.  If you’re not, download the latest IE here or Firefox here (both are free).  For the record, FedCirc.us is optimized for Firefox.

2.  Start your browser.

3.  Visit FedCirc.us.

4.  Pull down the drop-down search box in the upper right hand corner and select “Add FedCirc.us” (in Firefox) or select “FedCirc.us” with the gold star next to it (in IE, see image at right).

5.  Surf the web.  Whenever you want to search the site, simply enter a search string in the box in the right hand corner, pull down the list, select FedCirc.us, and hit return.  You can do this from any page on the web…and you’ll immediately be transported to a listing of search results from the site.

I’ve quickly gotten used to searching by party name or full case name as I’m reading on the web.  This little trick has changed my surfing habits for the better…it’s a wonderfully efficient way to find information quickly.  We hope you find it useful as well.

As always, if you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know.  You can e-mail Matt directly at jmb @ rtipllc.com.

Enjoy!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, February 15, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Permalink: New FedCirc.us Search Tool Released
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A Little Something New – Fedcirc.us

Happy New Year!  – and – Happy Birthday PHOSITA! 

Wow – it is amazing to think we just stepped into 2007.  When we started PHOSITA three long years ago, we had no idea how this little project would turn out or even how long it would stay in existence.  Thanks to all of our readers for the great tips, the snarky criticisms and the amazing friendships that have occurred.  We are looking forward to our fourth year and we have a couple of new things up our sleeves to trot out down the road.

Speaking of friendships and new things, Matt, Steve and I are happy to announce the launch of FedCirc.us – the patent caselaw portal!  Built largely upon Matt’s stellar leadership and insightful writing, we have been tiddying up the tents and getting the main ring ready for y’all to come and explore.  A few folks have been testing the lines and unfurling the flags for us, but today…. well, today – WE GO LIVE!

Yes – it lives.  FedCirc.us is alive.  Visit it at http://www.fedcirc.us (and just because we have a wierd sense of humor, http://www.fedcircus.com will work, too).

Currently, FedCirc.us is a website that allows patent professionals and other patent stakeholders to access, digest and manage patent caselaw information.  The site is built on a foundation of timely, accurate, and considered reviews of patent decisions from the Supreme Court of the United States and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Check out some of these great features:

• GimmeTen!(tm) – Get concise summaries of the last ten case reviews written…all on one page.  Bookmark it at http://10.fedcirc.us.
• Read the Latest Review – Hit this button in the left menu to immediately get the full monty on the last case review written.
• Case Data – Check out the Case Data box that appears in every case review.  There’s a bunch of goodness in that box, including citation information and a link to download a .pdf of the opinion.
• Case Flags – Red flags.  Big red flags.  Believe us, you’ll known ‘em when you see ‘em.
• Tags – Navigate the site by keywords.  Conduct legal research with your head in the tag cloud.
• Practice Alerts – We issue specific practice alerts when we detect something important.  Sign up to receive these alerts, free!
• Feature article – We’re working to put together a team of authors that will publish timely and insightful analyses of the latest developments.  We’ll provide more details on this soon.
• E-mail and RSS subscriptions – A lot of the FedCirc.us content is available without even visiting the website.  Go ahead and subscribe.

We’re extremely excited about this project, mostly because the website is just the beginning.  FedCirc.us is merely the leading edge of the most ambitious and significant RTIP LLC (otherwise known as the Rethink(IP) guys…) project yet.  We’ve got a slate of informational products and services – all built around the FedCirc.us foundation of case reviews – that we’ll be announcing over the next several months.

So come on by and stay awhile – we just might buy you some Circus Peanuts!

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, January 2, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Permalink: A Little Something New – Fedcirc.us
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Flickr Interestingness Rankings Patents Released

Over at the SEO by the SEA blog, William Slawski has posted on newly published patent applications filed by Yahoo convering an implementation of the concept of “interestingness search.” 

There is a pretty good exchange in the comments between William and Thomas Hawk – a celebrated photographer on the Internet and someone who is directly involved with the Zooomr web photo service. 

Zoomr is a direct competitor with Flickr, which is now owned by Yahoo.  Presumably Zoomr may have some issues if the patents are ever issued.  As a word of caution to Thomas (and all other bloggers out there) – I would be very careful in what you say about your technology and when/how/who it was developed.   All of your comments could be used as admissions down the line.

Anyway…

While the discussion between Thomas and William follows the typical “software patent discussion framework”(TM) of outrage, more outrage, denial, and chest thumping about how “Person X, Y, Z” came up with the idea 1, 2, 4 or 100 years ago… I was pleased to notice that William and Thomas actually took some time to thoughtfully discuss what Yahoo was trying to do with its patent applications and how they fit in with the overall search and photo-sharing market out there.

My only quarrel with their discussion: like all that fall within the “software patent discussion framework”(TM) — they failed to look at the actual claims of the patent and instead debated the description that the inventor drafted.  Once again – it is the claims that control the scope of the patent, not the description directly. 

All discussion of patents or patent applications should start first and foremost with the claims… it is the claims that control.

As a taste of what to expect over at SEO by the SEA:

Flickr Interestingness Rankings Patents Released

posted @ 2:17 am in [ Social Search ] by William Slawski

I’ve posted some pictures to Flickr, but I’ve never really paid much attention to the “interestingness” rankings the site uses.

Interestingness and clustering were first used in August of last year, as announced by Stewart Butterfield on the Yahoo Search Blog and the Flickr blog.

Blog posts about Flickr’s interestingness, and a February Flickr forum post on changes to the interestingness rankings, show a lot of interest in the “secret sauce” on how photos are determined to be interesting. A couple of patent applications were published by Yahoo this week that delve into interestingness rankings, clustering of pictures, and metadata associated with Flickr images.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, November 2, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Permalink: Flickr Interestingness Rankings Patents Released
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Where is Dunlap Codding and Rogers Located?

Well, our main office is located in beautiful Oklahoma City!  We also have satellite offices in Washington, D.C. and Perrysburg, Ohio. 

This post is actually a test of a new blog posting software by Microsoft – Windows Live Writer (WLW).  One of the interesting features of WLW is the ability to publish maps, like this one which was created solely within WLW.

While this is certainly a very cool feature, I still enjoy Blogjet and believe that Dmitry’s efforts to introduce Version 2.0 of Blogjet will continue to push the boundaries of blogging tools available.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, October 20, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Permalink: Where is Dunlap Codding and Rogers Located?
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An attraction worth “checking out”

It seems everyone is a blogger these days, including librarians.  There is even a specific site for “news, commentary, and stories for and about Oklahoma Libraries.”  Fortunately, they have called attention to the Oklahoma Inventors Congress Annual Meeting being held on the OSU campus in Stillwater, Oklahoma on August 12th and reminded everyone that there is a Patent and Trademark Library located on that campus.  For those headed to Stillwater next month, the library may be an attraction worth checking out.   

If you can’t make it to the meeting, the librarians have provided other useful information and links worth looking into on their site. 

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, July 27, 2006 at 6:03 pm
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a coup at blawg review

Opps… RTIP’rs did it again.

It was Steve, Matt and I’s pleasure to host Blawg Review over at Rethink(IP) this week – and, as usual, we couldn’t just leave things at the status quo.  We rebelled against “the man” by actually following the rules – namely, we posted the top three law blog posts of the week – no link whoring (at least not for other people) allowed in this edition.  We picked them, we posted them – now let’s hear why we are/are not wrong!

The “honorable mentions” are over at Blawgr – our community blogging portal for legal professionals.  So, once you have been over to Rethink(IP), you should wander over to Blawgr and read the remaining links — lots of wholesome goodness awaits you over there as well.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, March 13, 2006 at 10:37 am
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colin samuels hosts blawg review #35

Wow!  Colin Samuels has put together what is easily the best Blawg Review of them all over at his Infamy or Praise blog.

As Colin sets out, the phrase “infamy or praise” is from Dante’s Inferno and this week’s Blawg Review is a tour of law blogs categorized according to the differing planes of hell.  Why is this so topical, well….

“In addition to the fact that it provided the name of your host’s blog, Dante’s masterwork is an appropriate basis for this week’s Blawg Review for another reason (and no, I wasn’t going to say that all lawyers belong in Hell). Prior to Dante’s work in the early years of the 14th century, the divisions in poetry between those with “high” topics and language and those with “low” topics and language was quite strict. Wikipedia provides a good characterization of Dante’s impact on this status quo:

Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar language of Italian, not Latin as one might expect for such a serious topic.

I cannot think of a better analogue to legal blogging! What are legal blogging generally and Blawg Review specifically if not the discussion of serious subjects in more accessible forums and in more accessible language?”

 

 

 

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, December 6, 2005 at 10:08 am
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BlawgThink 2005 – Mandatory Cool Thing To Do

Join leading legal bloggers in Chicago on November 11 and 12 for BlawgThink 2005: a bold new approach to learning about legal blogging. This first of its kind two-day has been organized by friend Matt Homann, a lawyer, futurist and author of the the [non]billable hour blog.  The event brings together the largest group of legal bloggers ever assembled for two days of education, innovation, fellowship and fun.

The first day of BlawgThink will feature structured educational sessions led by top legal bloggers covering basic and advanced topics, including blogging how-to, blogging tools, marketing tips, content strategies, RSS and ethics. Each session will have ample time for questions, demonstrations, and hands-on practice.

The second day of BlawgThink, in true LexThink! fashion, belongs to the attendees. Though there will be some planned activities, much of the agenda will be determined by the audience. By combining collaborative brainstorming techniques with small group discussion groups, BlawgThink give you an unparalleled opportunity to meet, learn from, and interact with the best and most innovative legal bloggers in the country.

Matt encourages you bring your ideas, enthusiasm, and creative energy and the program organizers will come up with cool ideas to improve your blog, increase your blogging “ROI” and change the legal blogging landscape.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, October 16, 2005 at 10:49 am
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How to Understand Your Lawyer – Interpreting “Patentese”

Do you know what the heck your patent attorney means when you hear that there was a rejection based on prior art, or that there was an objection to the specification, or even that your patent claims were allowed? Hard as we try, we still often lapse into speaking “patentese” (a specialized field of “legalese”). You should never be afraid to ask your lawyer to explain. After all, they work for you. But, if you are hesitant to point out our failure to actually speak English, you needn’t suffer any longer.

Patently-O: Patent Law Blog to the rescue. Dennis Crouch recently posted links to a few patent glossaries, claiming that they are “a great place to start if you are a new lawyer, agent, or paralegal trying to learn the trade.” The only thing I would change about this statement is to include a patent-seeker or a patentee in this group of people.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco, September 30, 2005 at 9:18 am
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