The recent announcement of Yahoo and Microsoft's partnership may mean more choice and transparency for consumers, advertisers and publishers. It certainly means more competition in the world of online search and advertisements. Carol Bartz of Yahoo and Steven A. Ballmer of Microsoft finally put pen to paper on Wednesday, July 29, 2009, to announce this […]

The current decline in patent filings at the United States Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO") has been well documented on many prominent intellectual property blog sites.  In fact, according to a recent Patently-O blog entry, "new patent filings are down 16% so far in 2009."  This post examines the variability in the number of application filings in the United […]

Thanks to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, it is now clear that "hotel" is a generic word. Hotels.com attempted to register the mark for the services of "providing information for others about temporary lodging; travel agency services, namely, making reservations and bookings for temporary lodging for others by means of telephone […]

42 years after playing the memorable organ solo on "A Whiter Shade of Pale", ex-Procol Harum organist Matthew Fisher has finally been awarded a share of the song's royalties. Despite penning the melody from the British band's most popular song, Fisher was never acknowledged as one of the song's authors. Now, in one of the […]

Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired, which has won a National Magazine Award under his tenure. He wrote an article in the magazine entitled "The Long Tail", which he later turned into a book called "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More" (2006).  In this blog post, I will […]

Australia is now at the centre of the global gene patent debate with a Senate inquiry that began last week in Melbourne. Senators in Australia began hearing public submissions on August 4th about the topic of gene patents in relation to the impact they have on health care costs. The inquiry centres around a bid […]