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Join Us for the Final Episodes of the Data Monetization Webinar Series 

Once technology has collected data, what further use can that data serve? This is a question we hear on a regular basis, so we decided to explore the topic with a webinar series. Several distinguished guest speakers have joined us to share their insights. So far in the Data Monetization webinar series, our guest speakers have given an introduction to data monetization. They have also discussed data monetization in the medical, manufacturing and industrial markets. If you missed these presentations, they are now available on our website.Three more episodes are coming up before the end of the year. Make plans to join us:

• 11/19/20 at 12:00 PM CT: Episode 04: Data Monetization in Retail and Consumer 

• 12/3/20 at 12:00 PM CT: Episode 05: Data Monetization in Autonomous Vehicles, Security & Surveillance
   
• 12/17/20 at 12:00 PM CT: Episode 06: Data Monetization in Financial Services

Schwegman principal Suneel Arora and I enjoy serving as moderators for these programs; it’s been fascinating to hear from experienced industry leaders from across the country. One of our guests is Dr. Manjeet Rege, who is Associate Professor of Graduate Programs in Software and Data Science and Director of the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence at the University of St. Thomas. We’re privileged to hear from him on this practical and thought-provoking topic. We hope to see you in the (Zoom) audience soon.

On Thursday, October 8, our three guest speakers kicked off the Data Monetization webinar series. We were honored to be joined by Bill Schmarzo, Chief Innovation Officer of Hitachi Vantara and author of “Big Data MBA: Driving Business Strategies with Data Science”; Michael Gale, CEO of Inc. Digital, WSJ Best Selling Author of “The Digital Helix” and Forbes podcast host of “Futures in Focus”; and Manjeet Rege, Associate Professor of Graduate Programs in Software and Data Science and Director, Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence at the University of St. Thomas. Fellow moderator Suneel Arora and I enjoyed hearing these distinguished speakers’ points of view as they examined the question, what is data and how can you use it as a product? If you missed this presentation, or if you would like to hear it again, the recording is now available on the SLW Institute.

The next episode of the series is coming up on Thursday, October 22. In this episode, our next guests will discuss data monetization in medical device, healthcare and insurance. You can register for this episode, and the entire series, online.  The Data Monetization webinar series takes place every other Thursday through mid-December. In these presentations, speakers will discuss the use of collected data from a variety of perspectives. Suneel and I enjoy hosting and serving as moderators. Do join us if you can.

Are We Really Encouraging Innovation?

The race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine illustrates how vital scientific innovation is to our entire society – and also how arduous and uncertain scientific research can be. Scientific ventures are massive undertakings. For organizations to undertake such pursuits, there needs to be a reasonable expectation of a return on investment. This stance is not money-grubbing. A return on investment is necessary to enable the massive expenditures that go into developing lifechanging innovations.

In many cases, patents are necessary in order to protect this return on investment. Yet as a new report from the Alliance of U.S. Startups and Inventors for Jobs describes, U.S. legal and judicial systems have made changes to the patent system – and venture capital investment in patent-intensive industries has fallen.

Perhaps now is the time to examine this legal and judicial environment. Does our system really encourage the innovation that can change so many lives? The coronavirus is massive enough that governments have undertaken action to incent work to combat this virus, and rightfully so. But what about other needs and medical issues that do not receive as much urgent attention? Is our system set up to encourage innovation to combat other problems? What needs to change in the U.S. patent system so that more investors will turn to patent-intensive industries?

Patent Analytics Series Comes to a Close with Final Episodes 

In July, our team presented the last two episodes of the Patent Analytics webinar series. This series was an eight-part boot camp on driving performance with IP data and analytics. Episodes 07 and 08 wrapped up the series by discussing dashboards and patent prosecution history reports.

Episode 07: Using a Patent Analytics Dashboard for IP Strategy, Competitor Surveillance, and Portfolio Management 

The seventh episode of the series took place on July 9. Janal Kalis, Mark Stignani and I were joined by Thomas Marlow of Black Hills IP. We discussed such topics as high level insights for portfolio management; best practices for outside counsel management; fast competitive benchmarking; extraction of strategic insights/business actions; and an overview of dashboard tool sets.

Episode 08: Using Patent Prosecution History Reports to Increase Prosecution Efficiency and Avoid Unintended Estoppel

Janal Kalis, Mark Stignani and Peter Rebuffoni and I presented this final episode on July 23. One of the most daunting tasks of any patent prosecution team is staying on top of the file histories for patent family members completed or in flight around the world or previously prosecuted. In this webinar, we discussed best practices for tracking and organizing this information so it can be readily accessed and used to avoid inconsistent file wrapper arguments and reuse previously successful arguments in other applications.

All Episodes Available Online 

If you missed any of the episodes of the Patent Analytics series, you can check them out online; they are posted on Schwegman’s SLW Institute.

Let me take this opportunity to thank everyone who joined us for this series: We appreciate all of our speakers, and the attendees who were so kind as to give us their time.  It was good to gather with you – at least electronically – and discuss topics that give us energy and can help move our industry forward.

Blue Ocean Maps Webinar Available Online

Blue ocean maps are a valuable tool for identifying “open spaces” in the patent landscape. They enable better targeting of claims on defensible points of distinction. Thomas Marlow of Black Hills IP joined Schwegman Analytics Chair and Firm Compliance Officer Mark Stignani to discuss this approach on a recent webinar. This sixth episode of the Patent Analytics webinar series took place on June 25. In “Using Blue Ocean Maps to Identify Open Spaces in the Patent Landscape,” Mark and Thomas reviewed the creation and use of blue ocean maps for everyday prosecution. They also presented some real life examples.

If you missed this presentation, you can still watch a recording and download the slides. You can find these resources on the SLW Institute, at:

https://www.slwip.com/resources/episode-06-using-blue-ocean-maps-to-identify-open-spaces-in-the-patent-landscape/

On June 11, we presented the fifth episode of the Patent Analytics webinar series. Suneel Arora, Tyler Nasiedlak and Mark Stignani joined me. This episode covered, “Best Practices for Developing Reliable Freedom-to-Operate Landscapes and Advanced Techniques for Interactive, Reusable FTO Mapping.”

One of the most dreaded tasks for any product development team is navigating a complex patent landscape in order to achieve an infringement-free product design. We discussed best practices for patent counsel to work with product development teams to perform the key tasks of an FTO project, and also demonstrated how interactive claim maps make navigation of an FTO landscape fast and effective.

Key takeaways from this episode included:

• FTOs involve multi-sourced, highly nuanced data
• Detailed human analysis is required
• You should resolve data inconsistencies by hand
• Claims are key
• Commercial FTO mappings require review

  The webinar recording (and slides) are available online, if you missed it. You can find them at:

  https://www.slwip.com/resources/episode-05-best-practices-for-developing-reliable-freedom-to-operate-landscapes-and-advanced-techniques-for-interactive-reusable-fto-mapping/

We just completed Episode 4 of our patent analytics webinar series.  In this webinar we explored the use of examiner analytics to assist in making prosecution decisions.  Some of the takeaways were:

1. Many examiner analytics are driven more by case assignment and art unit influences than the examiner.
2. Analytics are helpful to ballpark the likelihood of success of any random application filed in an art unit, but are not capable of predicting how any one case is going to treated.
3. It can be difficult to differentiate between statistics that are driven by supervisory control vs an individual examiner, or driven by PTO policy or law, and thus cannot be ascribed to any one examiner.
4. Good use cases are making decisions on whether to file an RCE or appeal, and educating a client on the overall probabilities of getting a case allowed, the usefulness of an interview, and other such things.
5. Another use case is to identify outlier examiners that may be particularly difficult to gain an allowance from.

For the full webinar, you can find it here:

Episode 04: Using Examiner Analytics to Improve Prosecution Efficiency and Develop Well-informed, Data-Driven Prosecution Decisions and Strategy

The SLW Institute began its 8-episode webinar series on Patent Analytics.  The first webinar was entitled “Techniques and Analytics for Identifying Valuable Patents and Patents to Abandon” on April 26, 2020 with subsequent webinars every two weeks.  The panel comprised of Schwegman, Lundberg and Woessner experienced professionals including Steve Lundberg, Principal & Chief Innovation Officer; Janal Kalis, FTO & Patent Analytics Expert; Thomas Marlow, President, Renewals of Black Hills IP and former Chief Patent Counsel of Fairchild Semiconductor; Tyler Nasiedlak, Principal & Former Chief Product Counsel of Guidant Corporation/Boston Scientific and Mark Stignani, Analytics Chair and Firm Compliance Officer and former Chief Patent Counsel of Thomson.

The webinar discussed key concepts in patent value, the difficulty in proactively managing a patent portfolio, but through simple and effective approaches combined with “eyeballs on” review can yield strong results.  Discussions included cross-functional teams, mapping claim coverage to company products and competitor products while considering jurisdiction and age of patents; tagging and classification of a portfolio, including tagging of inventions and disclosures with combined revenue and profit databases; dispositive matrixes; speed and citation analytics for both good and bad patents; automation of USTO patent term calculation as well as a broad array of useful tools across patent search, patent analytics and patent drafting.

The episode of the webinar can be found here:  https://www.slwip.com/resources/patent-analytics-episode-01/

To sign up for forthcoming webinars, please go to:  https://www3.slwip.com/patent-analytics-webinar-series

While declining to recommend the Supreme Court should grant certiorari in Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. v. Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc., the Solicitor General nudged the Supreme Court to reconsider its abstract idea exception established in Bilski and Alice, as follows:

Although Mayo is the most immediate source of confusion, the uncertainty ultimately stems from the broader framework articulated in the Court’s recent Section 101 decisions.  The Court’s reconceptualization in Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593 (2010), of inherent, long-recognized limitations on Section 101’s affirmative scope as freestanding, atextual “exceptions,” id. at 601, has given rise to an array of difficult questions.  The confusion created by this Court’s recent Section 101 precedents warrants review in an appropriate case.

While a fix to the 101 confusion would be welcome, there is little hope the Supreme Court could ever deliver it.  Given how metaphysical and generally incomprehensible the abstract idea exception is, nothing short of total disavowal can restore 101 jurisprudence to a sensible state consistent with the rest of the world.  Hopefully Congress will get around to a legislative fix soon.