FreePatentsOnline.com has launched an informational site, www.citepatents.com, to help bloggers, journalists and others easily reference patent information, and to provide a free patent search box for adding to websites with a single mouse click.

Due to an impartial, peer-reviewed nature, patents are an important, frequently cited source of highly detailed, accurate technical information. Patents are uniquely powerful in citation; any writer on the web who refers to a patent with a hyperlink is footnoting a highly-credible document.

“Across the international spectrum, tens of millions of patents now exist, going back hundreds of years,” said Erik Reeves, CEO of FreePatentsOnline. “It is a profoundly broad database of how things work, from every continent. Citing a patent with FPO is easy, because the FPO URL taxonomy is crystal clear.”

For example, RIM, the firm behind the BlackBerry, may have avoided its patent infringement lawsuit and settlement payment of $612.5 million to Annandale, Virginia-based NTP by simply searching CitePatents.com or FreePatentsOnline.com for an electronic mail system with RF communications to mobile processors patent. The result is http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6317592.html.

“I always reference FPO when I cite patents,” said Blaise Mouttet of the TinyTechIP blog. “They have the best interface and features in the inventions-database space, and as soon as they made their search capability available outside their site, I placed it on my blog right away, as a service to my readers.”

At CitePatents.com, the html behind the FPO SearchBox can be grabbed and placed on a website or blog. Also, CitePatents.com has information on the differences between patents and patent applications, patent numbering, and the taxonomy of a patent document.

I prefer to report about when patents are utilized properly as opposed to simply being the focus of lawsuits, and that is what occurred this past week.

Frontier Communications and Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, L.P., headquartered in Los Angeles, announced today the settlement of patent litigation between the parties. As part of the settlement, Frontier Communications Corporation has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum for a nonexclusive license under a comprehensive portfolio of patents that Katz owns relating to interactive voice applications.

The patents held by Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, L.P. cover a wide range of interactive technology including automated forms of: customer service, prescription refill services, securities trading, merchandising, prepaid services, telephone conferences, registration, home shopping, as well as functions involved in securing information from databases by telephone, interactive cable transactions, and various other uses of toll free and local numbers.

Ronald A. Katz stated, “We welcome Frontier Communications Corporation to the group of leading telecommunications companies who have purchased a license under this portfolio.”

Mr. Katz is the named inventor on a large number of patents primarily in the fields of telecommunications and computing. He also formed Telecredit, Inc., the nation’s first on-line real time credit and check cashing authorization system, and was awarded a patent as co-inventor of that technology.

General Patent Corporation (GPC) announced today on behalf of its client, Digital Technology Licensing LLC (DTL), that it has licensed a key cell phone patent to Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB (Sony Ericsson).

DTL owns U.S. Patent No. 5,051,799 titled “Digital Output Transducer” (Patent), which is an essential patent for Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) codec and other cellular communication standards. The patented technology is also used to assure backward compatibility of cell phone handsets and base stations. Other applications of this patented technology include Bluetooth headsets.

“We are very pleased to grant a license to Sony Ericsson,” said Paul Lerner, GPC’s Sr. Vice President and General Counsel. “We will continue with our efforts to license this key patent and to vigorously enforce the intellectual property rights of our client,” he concluded.

With the the year coming to a close, there has been a flurry of settlements coming from the legal community.

This past week, Acacia Research Corporation announced that its Hospital Systems Corporation subsidiary resolved litigation with Philips Electronics North America Corporation pending before the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

The litigation related to a portfolio of patents that apply to medical picture archiving and communication system (PACS) technology.

Patent lawsuits sometimes take years to become resolved, however very few of them take a decade.  I just this come across the wire, A real-life David vs. Goliath story unfolded last week in Chicago when a Federal jury on Friday awarded a $23 million verdict to Jacob Krippelz, Sr. in a patent infringement lawsuit against Ford Motor Co. His patent, on an automotive lighting system used in exterior rear view mirrors, was issued in 1991.

The verdict came 10 years after Krippelz first sued Ford in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Krippelz is the 77-year-old Chief Executive Officer of Jake’s, Inc., a machining and heavy equipment component manufacturing company in Aurora, Illinois.

Krippelz was represented in the trial by Mark Ferguson, Adam Mortara and Hamilton Hill, all of Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP of Chicago. James Ryndak and Mark Suri of the patent firm Ryndak & Suri LLP of Chicago also represented Krippelz in the litigation.

“This is the culmination of a very long fight for Jake Krippelz,” said Ferguson, “and we are pleased to have been able to help him finally vindicate his patent rights.”

“It is an especially gratifying result,” said Ryndak, “because it shows that a hard-working individual like Jake Krippelz with a patented invention can prevail against even one of the largest corporations in America.”

Canadian infrastructure is in crisis. In a special five part series – Rebuilding Canada – Canwest News Service explored the critical infrastructure issues facing cities.  The series takes an in-depth look at the realities and the dollars behind Canada’s infrastructure crisis including:

• A study by economic forecasting firm Informetrica estimates that every one billion dollars invested in infrastructure would create the equivalent of 11,000 jobs, including 5,500 in the construction sector.
• The Canadian Federation of Municipalities estimates that our cities need $123 billion to bring essential public infrastructure up to acceptable levels; and another $115 billion to meet the needs of a growing population.
• Canada’s social infrastructure (pools, libraries, arts centres, community halls) is estimated to be in need of a $40.2 billion dollar boost to maintain and grow to meet the needs of an expanding population.
• The average Canadian produced more than 1,000 kilograms of garbage in 2006 and we’re running out of places to put it. A number of Canadian provinces have major projects in place to convert and compost that waste into renewable resources.
• Transit initiatives in six of Canada’s largest cities will transform the way commuters move between work and home. Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Montreal all have billion dollar projects planned.

Despite economic concerns, businesses will continue to invest in key marketing programs in the coming year, according to a 2009 Marketing Outlook survey released today by StrongMail Systems, Inc., the leading provider of commercial-grade solutions for marketing and transactional email. Results show that more than half (51 percent) of the nearly 1,000 global business leaders polled plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2009 to focus on programs that yield a higher return on investment (ROI), such as email marketing and search, while many will decrease spending on costly, less targeted programs like advertising and trade shows.

StrongMail’s 2009 Marketing Outlook survey found that only 37 percent of those polled expect to see a decrease in sales in 2009 due to current economic conditions; 22 percent believe their customers will spend about the same in 2009 as in 2008; and 19 percent think their customers will spend more next year.

Respondents across industries, with strong representation in retail, financial services, technology, and media and entertainment sectors, indicate that they plan to direct marketing budgets towards more personalized programs that will enable them to compete more effectively for customer dollars. As such, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of companies that plan to increase marketing budgets in 2009 will bolster email marketing programs, while 44 percent will add dollars to their search marketing campaigns. Those professionals decreasing budgets in 2009 will cut spend on marketing programs that don’t typically generate as lucrative a return, such as advertising (29 percent) and trade shows (19 percent). Only four percent of companies surveyed plan to cut email marketing budgets.

“Despite additional campaign costs, relevant campaigns increase net profits by an average of 18 times more than do broadcast mailings,” writes JupiterResearch vice president and research director David Daniels in the ‘The ROI of E-Mail Relevance Report’ (2005). “In addition, the use of Web analytics to target email campaigns improves revenue by nine times more than does the use of broadcast mailings.”

According to the StrongMail poll, nearly all businesses (81 percent) will either use the information available to them via customer databases, analytics tools or other resources to send more relevant emails to customers and prospects in 2009, or are currently considering tools to help them do so. Additionally, a significant number of organizations plan to experiment with new programs in 2009 to raise visibility and increase sales, like offering free-trials, promoting product giveaways and integrating social media strategies.

If you are like me and believe that proper organization is a prerequisite to success, then you will be happy to hear that the State of New Jersey may be establishing a court segment focused specifically on business cases.  A Bill was introduced on December 10th that would make this possible.

This business court would cover the following types of cases:

• Business Contract Law
• The Uniform Commercial Code
• Banking
• Insurance
• Commodities
• Securities
• Corporations
• Non-profits
• Partnerships
• Limited liability entities
• Trusts
• Competition among businesses
• Reorganizations
• Dispositions of businesses
• Business combinations
• Shareholder, partner and member disputes
• Intellectual property matters
• Non-competes
• Employment agreements

Considering that this court would have judges knowledgeable regarding all forms of corporate disputes, this could prove to be a successful model for the rest of the country to follow.  New Jersey already has a court designated for tax law, setting up a Business Court was the next logical step for the legislature to establish.  From all reports this bill should pass with little resistance.

If you are in the real estate industry, you know how difficult it can be to supply relevant and timely information to clients can be.  That is why I am a strong proponent of real estate specific search engines.  And one in particular even allows other web properties to partner with them, which is especially beneficial. Trulia announced the momentum of its Trulia Publisher Platform (TPP), a hosted technology solution that gives Web publishers the ability, completely free of charge, to create co-branded online real estate sections powered by Trulia’s search technology. With TPP, publishers can offer their audiences the ability to find and research homes nationwide using Trulia’s innovative search technology, award-winning user interface and useful online tools like local real estate guides, heat maps and sales comparable information.

TPP is profitable for partners from day one because the platform is offered for free and allows partners to monetize the experience through their own display advertising. And because Trulia hosts the TPP site co-brand, implementation is turn-key and publishers always have immediate access to Trulia’s latest functionality and features.

“As newspapers, magazines and Web publishers continue to evolve their business models, the Trulia Publisher Platform is an excellent alternative to their web site’s home search needs,” said Pete Flint, co-founder and CEO of Trulia. “Because of the easy integration, best-in-class technology and favorable economics for the publishers, we’ve been able to power real estate search for over 100 websites in less than a year.”

“The Trulia Publisher Platform allows us to leverage Trulia’s technology to integrate real estate search functionality seamlessly throughout our site,” said Jennifer Simonds, VP of Audience and Business Development at U.S. News & World Report. “We can then focus on content creation and ultimately deliver a greatly enhanced product that appeals to both our visitors and advertisers.”