Gridlock -- Not on the Beltway This Time

Understanding all of the ins and outs of intellectual property and the whole idea that an invention is property can make your head hurt.  It's one of those esoteric tasks that has been left to the patent cognoscenti for a very long time.  The down side of the, "let us worry about this" approach to intellectual property offered by many patent professionals is that the average entrepreneur, business owner, investor, and product manager is left scratching their collective heads after they've spent a lot of money and the cease and desist letter shows up anyway.

The Grid Lock Economy presents an engaging and compelling look at the politics and reality of intellectual property as an asset and the challenges this causes for innovators, inventors, the economy, and a host of other issues.  This book provides food for thought to help the rest of us understand why intellectual property issues are so daunting.  This is the latest entry from the Way Better Patents Reading List.



The Grid Lock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives by Michael Heller — Patent thickets, the tragedy of the commons, and hard issues in intellectual property and the politics of ownership.

(We have added the link to Amazon for two reasons.  First, we thought the covers were interesting and fun to look at and second, if you follow the link and buy the book Amazon throws us some change which helps us keep our product pricing low.)

Access to Knowledge - A Primer & Thought Leadership

Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property edited by Gaëlle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski — A discussion of how intellectual property and access to knowledge collide, intersect, and compete.

Access to Knowledge (A2K) is a term used to cover many of the issues that impact the changing world of digital knowledge — copyright, creative commons "copyleft" protection of traditional knowledge, patent rights intellectual property and trade.  A2K has many aspects and many constituencies.  Here the discussion brings into sharp contrast how intellectual property collides with everyday life.  This is the latest selection from the Way Better Patents Intellectual Property Reading List.

Consider some of the goings-on in the IP world.  Publishers of technical journals suing patent attorneys for making unauthorized (read uncompensated for) copies of their copyright protected work to attached to patent applications to document prior art.  College students who found cheap copies of expensive text books during their semester abroad and shipped them home to sell on eBay are now being sued by the publishers because they believe reselling a used book that was printed overseas in the US market violates their copyright.  Medical researchers attempting to patent treatments that use the same compounds documented in century old Sanskrit.

Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property defines the core issues on how the digital world calls for new thinking on the issues and provides insightful thought leadership on the complex legal, regulatory, educational, and human issues.  I was introduced to the A2K folks as "progressive IP advocates."  The progressive moniker made me predisposed to think this was going to be a sermon on why patents are bad and why copyrighted works should be free for the taking.  You will be surprised at the discussion and how the authors have framed the discussion.  The progressive IP advocates have a lot to say.

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Intellectual Property: The Tough New Realities That Could Make or Break Your Business — Intellectual Property 101 — The latest Way Better Patents Good Read.

Intellectual property doesn't need to be scary - that's the whole foundation of Way Better Patents.  If people are going to spend millions and millions of dollars on patents and patent enforcement, and if patent news can more markets, mere mortals should be able to figure out what's going on.  We've had quite a few meetings that went something like this:

Enter business executive toting a big thick document stylishly bound in consultant-esque fashion.

Mr. or Ms. Executive slides the bulky document across the table and says, "I just paid $50,000 for this due diligence thing and I still don't understand if I can make and sell my product.  Why do I need to bother with this stuff anyway."

IP guru starts to explain how prior art and patents work and Mr. or Ms. Executives eyes roll back in their head while they reach for the Excedrin Migraine - that is if they can find it.  Fade to dark....

This book is the one you send Ms. or Mr. Executive home with so that they can come back with a reasonable understanding about what IP is all about and why they should care.  They might even acquire the vocabulary to keep up with their patent attorney and patent examiner.

The author, Paul Goldstein, is a law professor at Stanford Law and works counsel to Morrison & Foerster, he works on intellectual property litigation and transactions.  Who doesn't want to read a book by someone who works for a law firm with the nick name Mo Fo?


Intellectual Property: The Tough New Realities That Could Make or Break Your Business by Paul Goldstein — Stuff you need to know presented without the patent mumbo jumbo.

Please send us your good reads or comments on ours to feedback@waybetterpatents.com.


(We added the link to buy the books at Amazon for two reasons - the pictures of the covers look good and if you buy one of the books from the link on, Amazon pays us a little change.  This helps us keep our product cost low. )