Implications of Bilski on Innovation in 2010 and Beyond

7 01 2010

Back in November, we first posted about the US Supreme Court case of Bilski v. Kappos (Not Looking Good for Method/Software Patents).  The Supreme Court heard oral arguments at the end of 2009, and should rule on the case in 2010.

The invention in Bilski basically was a method where information was analyzed and acted upon.  Such a method has been referred to, and probably rightly so, as a pure business method.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit called into question the patentability of such business mentods, as well as software and other processes.  As stated by Gene Quinn at IPWatchdog (Praying the Supremes Get Bilski Right in 2010):

So in order to kill pure business methods the Federal Circuit shot at and killed much more.  In truth, what the Federal Circuit did was akin to pulling out an elephant gun to shot a fly.  There has been and will continue to be enormous collateral damage unless and until the Federal Circuit Bilski debacle is fixed.

How the Supreme Court deals with the Court of Appeals’ decision in Bilski will have a profound impact on current patents and patent applications for software and other method/process patents such as medical, analytical and diagnostic processes.  Gene Quinn also states in the same IPWatchdog post:

It is not at all an overstatement to say the fate of future innovation in the US rests squarely on the Supreme Court getting the Bilski ruling correct.  Long ago the manufacturing jobs started leaving and they are gone and not coming back.  To the extent that the US has anything other than a service economy it is thanks to intellectual property and intangible assets, and everyone who seriously considers the matter knows that the chief intangible asset for businesses is software.  Just take a look at the technology sector and the companies in that space and you can’t help but notice that the major employers in the US all have one thing in common — they use, create and exploit software.  Erase software patent protections and hundreds of thousands of jobs will be erased from the economy and investment dollars will go elsewhere.

- Gregg J. Lallier


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Categories : Intellectual Property, Technology, Uncategorized

The Digital Age

31 12 2009

As 2009 and the first decade of this new millenium comes to a close, there comes the flood of retrospectives on what the last decade “means” and how life has changed.  Much of what’s out there focuses on terrorism and foreign affairs (rightly so given that the decade has been essentially bookended by 9/11 and the would-be underwear bomber, with a couple of wars in between).  However, in tech/business circles, much of what I have read focuses on the decade being the dawn of the “Digital Age”.

Fortune recently had Steve Jobs on its cover, naming him the CEO of the Decade (The decade of Steve), which, I think, is apropos as Apple has been on the forefront of this digital convergence of entertainment and life.  In fact, after Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, he began the “digital lifestyle” strategy that resulted in the iPod, iPhone and the soon-to-be-released iTablet.  The result, as reported by the Fortune article, is that Apple “was worth about $5 billion in 2000, just before Jobs unleashed Apple’s groundbreaking “digital lifestyle” strategy, understood at the time by few critics” and ”[t]oday, at about $170 billion, Apple is slightly more valuable than Google”.

Such Apple products helped, in part, the spark and accelerate the advancement of the Digital Age, as more and more digital products that can work together came onto the scene.  And now, a consumer has the ability to use various different interrelated lifestyle digital products such as:  cell phones (including smartphones), computers (including personal, laptop, netbook and business), televisions (especially HD), television recording devices (e.g. DVR’s and Tivo), game consoles (e.g. PS3, Wii, XBox), and media players (e.g Blu-Ray).

I’ve been fortune enough to have lived through some pretty exciting technological ages/revolutions before this digital revolution:  the 1980s with the development of the PCs (which, incidentally, Jobs/Apple also had a hand in sparking; and the 1990s with the develop of the Internet.  Only now can I see how those two previous innovative jump-starts were the foundations for this new digital age, which makes me excited for the future when I find out what the digital age is a foundation for.

- Gregg J. Lallier

P.S.  Web 3.0, a blog by Independent Software, has a bunch of different posts about the digital convergence, which people might want to check out, including:


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Good Riddance 2009…Hello to a Better 2010 in the VC Market

23 12 2009

As most know, throughout 2009, I’ve posted about the dismal VC market in ConnTIP.  The drying up of exit opportunities, with fewer M&A’s and even fewer IPOs, didn’t help matters much.   Here’s a chart posted by the WSJ which is a pretty way of showing the awful 2009 VC market:

[VCYEAR]

 Still, an article posted today on WSJ suggests that 2010 may be a pretty good year in the VC market (After Dry Year, Start-Ups Are Poised to Get Cash).  Some encouraging observations made by VCs in the post:

  • Geoff Yang, a general partner at venture firm Redpoint Ventures, is quoted:  “When the year started it couldn’t possibly have been worse…Now there’s a significantly more optimistic view” .
  • Tom Baruch, of CMEA Capital, says that with the IPO window now appears to be opening, and expects up to half a dozen of his firm’s start-ups to file to go public in the foreseeable future.

Bottom line is for everyone in the field to chalk up 2009 as a learning experience, and, hopefully, start ramping things up to 2010!

-Gregg J. Lallier


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Categories : Start-Ups, Technology, Uncategorized, Venture Capital


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