“IP 101” Tomorrow at University of Rhode Island’s Launch Lab

We’re presenting our IP 101 Workshop at University of Rhode Island’s Launch Lab tomorrow, 2/27/20, from 11:30 am — 1 pm.  It’s part of the RI INBRE Entrepreneur Series. Learn about intellectual property (IP) basics and potential ways to protect your innovation as you transition from idea to product.  Students, faculty and other entrepreneurs in …

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Licensing 101 at the Free Library this Thursday Night

Join us this Thursday night at the Free Library of Philadelphia for Licensing 101 for Inventors. Learn about your options when considering licensing your invention to a company.  Learn how licensing works; how much you can expect in a licensing deal; whether to license or produce it yourself; and how to talk to potential licensees. …

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Ask Me Anything: Free IP Advice This Thursday at the Library.

Got a question about intellectual property?  On Thursday, February 13 from 12 — 5, we’ll be giving free, 30-minute consultations on intellectual property at the Free Library of Philadelphia’s new Business Resource and Innovation Center. Sign up at the Free Library of Philadelphia.  

Licensing your Invention

Profiting from intellectual property requires a choice: license your patented invention for royalties, or produce it, market it, and sell it yourself. Here are some licensing tips Scott has compiled from his experiences with inventors over the last 15 years. Tip #1: License it or manufacture it yourself? Unless you have the the time, money, …

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Twenty years of tinkering and persistence. Then a lucrative licensing deal.

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Determination, dilligence and a mid-life layoff were all he needed to make his invention the biggest-selling snow shovel in the U.S. and Canada. Howie Rosenshine was a fifty-year old software engineer when his employer of 22 years, Sun Microsystems, was bought out by Oracle. It wasn’t long before the layoffs began. That’s when Rosenshine was …

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Avoiding Infringement is a Subtractive Process

How do we avoid infringing others’ patents while obtaining the strongest patent possible for our own invention? When we focus on protecting our intellectual property, we sometimes fail to consider the possibility of infringing on someone else’s patent. A common belief among inventors is that The US Patent and Trademark Office protects inventors from infringing. …

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Patent Granted! Convert a snowboard to a skateboard/longboard.

Congratulations to our client Roberto Smith for his snowboard-longboard conversion kit, U.S. Patent No. 10427026.  Convert a snowboard to a skateboard or longboard, or convert your skateboard into a snowboard. This kit converts a snowboard to a long skateboard (“longboard”) by use of added trucks and structural supports. It combines the properties of a snowboard …

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Waxing Lyrica: Big Pharma Subverts the Patent Process

This December, the patent for Pfizer’s goldmine drug Lyrica will expire. Lyrica is prescribed for neuropathic illnesses such as epilepsy and fibromyalgia. Since its approval in 2004, Lyrica has made billions for Pfizer: in only three of its 14 years of sales, Lyrica sold over $10 billion worth of this drug. (Pfizer’s total revenue for …

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Idea People vs. Entrepreneurs

In judging whether to fund an entrepreneur, venture capitalists rely on more than just the gut feeling they’re famous for. In his book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, writer and surgeon Atul Gawande writes: “But finding a good idea is apparently not all that hard. Finding an entrepreneur who can execute a good idea …

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The Patent Behind an “Impossible” Food

Image courtesy Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com Last week at lunch, my colleague ordered an “Impossible Burger.” It took about two bites to understand why they called it “Impossible,” because this burger looked, tasted and went down like meat. It was, however, not meat. My colleague slid the dish over to me for a meat-eater’s opinion. I took a …

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