The United States Patent Office has announced it will open satellite patent offices to help deal with the backlog of patent applications. Detroit was chosen as the first location due to the highly trained professional scientific and engineering work force, the number of applications which originate from Michigan inventors, and its proximity to world-class universities. [...]

Export Admin Regs will finally get a post-Cold War overhaul http://bit.ly/ctw21x

The Copyright Office released a report on March 15, 2009 which provided for increases in several fees, citing rising labor costs and current budget constraints. While the cost of basic online copyright registration (eCO) for most types of works remains the same, the cost of registering a copyright via a 2D barcode application has increased [...]

Excellent piece on 20 lessons that business people should learn from Warren Buffett: http://bit.ly/5l69Sb

Murderboarding: critical skill needed by startups to balance out off-track brainstorming. http://bit.ly/6CmBJ1

Music artists selling 10K+ releases 1st time in 2009: 106 via major label, 107 via indie label, 14 on their own http://bit.ly/5oCBQj

Why would your employer plan still allow denial of claims after health reform? Existing federal law–ERISA (good point) http://bit.ly/nUtW

The federal District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan found on Wednesday that an Ypsilanti, MI copy shop was directly liable (as opposed to contributorily liable) for copyright infringement, by allowing students to copy course packs on its own photocopy machines.  Blackwell Publishing Group, Inc. v. Excel Research Group, LLC  (Docket No. 07-12731, ED [...]

H. Res. 554 is a bill sponsored by one Republican and one Democrat and would require that all non-emergency proposed federal legislation be posted 72 hours on the Internet, prior to any Congressional debate. As I have been saying to clients for years, don’t sign contracts without reading them — and it certainly makes sense [...]

It’s National Punctuation Day — make sure you properly use as many commas, quotation marks, semicolons and exclamation marks as you can.  (There is some controversy as to whether that double-dash counts.  It’s the “black sheep” of punctuation.  I think it’s more readable.)