USPTO introduces new tool to help creators identify their intellectual property; United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), January 18, 2023

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO); USPTO introduces new tool to help creators identify their intellectual property

"Today at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Women’s Entrepreneurship (WE) event in Naples, Florida, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office Kathi Vidal announced the launch of the agency’s new Intellectual Property (IP) Identifier tool. This user-friendly, virtual resource— designed for those who are less familiar with IP—enables users to identify whether they have IP and the IP protections they need to support and advance their business, invention, or brand. The IP Identifier serves as an important foundation for an innovator, entrepreneur or creator’s IP journey. In addition to the tool helping identify a person’s or company’s intellectual property, it provides easily digestible information on intellectual property – patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. 

“Protecting your IP is a smart and necessary business strategy, and the IP Identifier is a great starting point for those new to IP,” Director Vidal told the audience at the WE event. “This resource will equip entrepreneurs with a basic understanding of the IP they have and will lead them to resources to protect it. We encourage everyone who is considering starting a business or trying to grow one to utilize this tool. It’s another example of our work to bring more people into the innovation ecosystem to increase American competitiveness, grow the economy, and solve world problems.” 

The IP Identifier is comprised of two modules: The Basic IP Identifier; and the Advanced IP Identifier. The Basic IP Identifier module consists of six simple questions that allow users to quickly assess the type of IP they should protect. The Advanced IP Identifier module allows users to learn about their specific type of IP and obtain links to additional resources, including how to file an application for protection. A third module, Managing your IP assets, is currently under development. 

Companies benefit from having IP protection. When used as collateral, a company’s first patent increases venture capital funding by 76 percent over three years and increases funding from an initial public offering by 128 percent. It can also help serve as a recruiting tool: The approval of a startup’s first patent application increases its employee growth by 36 percent over the next five years. Further, protecting your IP can also increase your market share – a new company with a patent increases its sales by a cumulative 80 percent more than companies that do not have a patent.

The IP Identifier was announced as part of USPTO’s recently-launched Women’s Entrepreneurship (WE) initiative, a community-focused, collaborative, and creative initiative to inspire women and tap their potential to meaningfully increase equity, job creation, and economic prosperity. WE includes a new online hub for aspiring women entrepreneurs that provides key information on how to get started, how to identify and protect their intellectual property, and how to secure options for funding and how to build and maintain a network."

Baby Yoda Shows Us the Force of Intellectual Property Rights; Observer, December 7, 2019

Ross Marchand, Observer; Baby Yoda Shows Us the Force of Intellectual Property Rights

"Intellectual property protections allow for producers, such as Disney, to safeguard their secrets and profit off of the carefully-crafted storylines enjoyed by millions of fans around the world. Meanwhile, fans can still have their fun by posting movie-related memes that (likely) enjoy legal protection from copyright law.

And even when companies may be within their rights to sue for IP infringements, they must still weigh market considerations and make sensible decisions that please their consumer base. That’s critical, because ideas like lightsabers and Baby Yoda’s aren’t created in a vacuum (of space). IP protection allows us to travel to a galaxy far, far away, without being trampled by a bantha herd of lawsuits."

Brain Power Pays Off With Japan’s Intellectual Property Exports; Bloomberg, January 15, 2018

Connor Cislo, Bloomberg; Brain Power Pays Off With Japan’s Intellectual Property Exports

"Given the importance of IP to their economies, Japan and other advanced nations such as the U.S. are trying to strengthen protections in this area.

Japan nearly saw its preferred IP protection regime realized in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, until President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the agreement threw the pact's future into doubt.

The remaining 11 TPP members have suspended multiple IP-related provisions from the original agreement. Meanwhile, another large trade deal championed by China, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, doesn’t address IP to the satisfaction of Japanese businesses."

The great intellectual property trade-off; BBC, June 25, 2017

Tim Harford, BBC; The great intellectual property trade-off

"For most economists, scrapping intellectual property entirely is going too far. They point to important cases - such as new medicines - where the costs of invention are enormous and the costs of copying are trivial.

But those who defend intellectual property protections still tend to argue that - right now - those protections offer more than enough incentive to create new ideas.

Dickens himself eventually discovered a financial upside to weak copyright protection.

Twenty five years after his initial visit to the US, Dickens returned, keen to make some money.

He reckoned that so many people had read cheap knock-offs of his stories that he could cash in on his fame with a lecture tour. He was absolutely right: off the back of pirated copies of his work, Charles Dickens made a fortune as a public speaker, many millions of dollars in today's terms.

Perhaps the intellectual property was worth more when given away."

Patent rights key to ensuring access to medication; Trib Live, 10/24/16

Robert A. Freeman, Trib Live; Patent rights key to ensuring access to medication:

" A United Nations panel recently released disastrous policy recommendations designed to increase access to medicines in developing countries. The panel ignored obvious solutions.

Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon originally tasked the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines with remedying the “policy incoherence” between intellectual property rights and drug access. The panel predictably — and wrongly — viewed IP protections as a barrier to access rather than a bridge to medical innovation.

Undermining IP rights will not help patients in developing countries access medicines.

A 2016 Foreign Affairs study sought to determine whether strong patent protections increase the prices of drugs to developing countries. It found that patents were not key drivers of higher expenditures."