Hi,
New on ‘Hedge Fund’ fall out, see links!
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=11866183&ch=4226720&src=news
Thank You!
Janice M. Garcia
http://www.uspto.gov/ - official site
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/iip/index.htm - official site, inventors resources
http://www.patentpending.com/patapp.html - patent attorneys, someuseful info
OK - so initial research suggests:
- It takes about 18months to process a patent
- You need a lawyer registered with the US patent office
- The legal costs can be between $4500 to $7500 - and just to get to the stage of filing the patent generally will be between $2500 - 4500
- Costs about $370 to $740 to file an application
- If they issue you with a patent it can be between $675 to $1300
- Patents last for 20 years, but maintenance fees are charge at 3.5, 7.5 and 11.5 years
- Patent office provides a “lump sum” service where they do a simple patent application, legal etc for $4850 - then some additional costs may be charged, plus issue fee
- As a benefit to small inventors, they offer a FREE interview about the idea in their office or by telephone or fax. Some things are by nature patentable, and some things are just not patentable. If they feel our idea is patentable, they will tell us.
- Next step at this point is to have a patent search performed to ascertain if any prior patents would inhibit or prevent a patent for your idea.
- To discuss in person, email Donn Harms: dharms@patentpending.com or call
(858) 509-1400
.
http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2009/01/09/carbon-project-ratings-bloomberg - the Carbon Ratings Agency could be a possible ‘green’ data vendor - they provide the info to Bloomberg.
Links to related websites, articles and resources online can be listed below as comments:
Industry events can be listed below as comments:
A concept I’ve heard in several web articles, including one by Tim O’Reilly - and one I wanted to find out more about, and sure that we’ll encounter in trading (an exchange has a network effect) or generic search:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effects
Tim’s article talks a bit about network effects, Google and real-time applications - so worth a read…a clip of it is below:
“Amazon—they really went out there and they worked their audience to contribute user reviews. They used collaborative filtering and similar technologies. In lots and lots of little ways they wove users into the fabric of their product. Google—every time somebody makes a link, they actually are adding to Google. They’re building their database. And Google is a real-time ad auction. Again, user-driven. Real-time services that are built on what the users are willing to pay for an ad right now. They don’t sell it to the highest bidder. That was their breakthrough relative to the competition. They were able to actually instrument the site and in real time figure out what the market was. So that’s harnessing users.
As part of that, I also realized that there’s a shift in power from pure software to something – back in 1997. I called it “Infoware.” These applications are really driven by information. And one of the things that distinguishes a Web 2.0 application is it literally gets better the more people use it. And the reason is because it’s a data-backed application, and the data is driven by user contribution, and the user contribution is driven by network effects. And that means the more people using the application, the more people contribute. And so you get this accelerating return relative to the competition.
That’s why some other online bookstore just can’t compete with Amazon because Amazon already has 10 or 15 million reviews. So you start and you have your little review thing and you get five reviews and, meanwhile, Amazon has 100. You want to set up a search engine and you have an ad auction but hey, why would they come to you when you only have a small number of customers, where Google already has tens of millions? So the companies that got there first and best and started to harness those network effects have accelerating returns that take them away from the competition.
And we see that pattern again and again in Web 2.0, that it’s really the idea that if you understand the network and you learn how to leverage network effects and you build an application that gets better the more people use it, then you’re doing Web 2.0. It has nothing to do with things like having a rich Internet application front end. It has to do with are you a networking application that gets better? And then again, there’s also an aspect—are you real time? “
Wikipedia Definition =
“Collaborative filtering (CF) is the process of filtering for information or patterns using techniques involving collaboration among multiple agents, viewpoints, data sources, etc. Applications of collaborative filtering typically involve very large data sets. Collaborative filtering methods have been applied to many different kinds of data including sensing and monitoring data - such as in mineral exploration, environmental sensing over large areas or multiple sensors; financial data - such as financial service institutions that integrate many financial sources; or in electronic commerce and web 2.0 applications where the focus is on user data, etc. The remainder of this discussion focuses on collaborative filtering for user data, although some of the methods and approaches may apply to the other major applications as well.
The method of making automatic predictions (filtering) about the interests of a user by collecting taste information from many users (collaborating). The underlying assumption of CF approach is that those who agreed in the past tend to agree again in the future. For example, a collaborative filtering or recommendation system for music tastes could make predictions about which music a user should like given a partial list of that user’s tastes (likes or dislikes). Note that these predictions are specific to the user, but use information gleaned from many users.”