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According to the survey, 40% of senior managers doubt that their leadership has a credible plan to address the economic crisis, while an even greater number—46%—are not sure that their leadership could carry out the plan, credible or not. Additionally, one-third of all CEO and CXO-level respondents do not have confidence in the plans that they presumably wrote themselves. Further, a remarkably high number of hard-hit companies—65%—are not doing enough to ensure their own survival, such as accelerating efforts to dispose of assets or secure external funding. Among companies that state they are financially strong, one-quarter are not taking advantage of opportunities to improve their position in the crisis.

While more than half (54%) of the managers expect their companies to emerge from the crisis stronger, the survey finds their optimism doesn’t square with their balance sheets; there is a disconnect between many companies’ financial/competitive position and strategic response. “Companies have focused on the near term, some at the expense of the long-term opportunities. The strong need to go long. They need to create a view of new industry structure,” said Bill Jackson, Booz & Company Senior Partner. “Many strong and stable companies are playing things too short-term oriented for the moment. The really struggling and failing companies have reacted dramatically and some have already moved into bankruptcy.”

Valence Technology prevailed in today’s decision by the Opposition Board of the European Patent Office (EPO) to revoke the European Patent granted to the University of Texas (UT) relating to lithium metal phosphates. The decision revoking the Goodenough et. al. UT European Patent eliminates any risk that UT could assert the European Patent against Valence’s proprietary lithium iron magnesium phosphate cathode material, which is a critical material for the next generation of electric vehicle batteries.

Valence had initiated opposition proceedings in the EPO on July 27, 2005, against the grant of the European Patent held by the University of Texas alleging that it lacked novelty. As a result of today’s decision, European Patent number 0904607, originally issued to UT, has been revoked by the EPO in its entirety. The decision to revoke the patent can be appealed by UT.

“Today’s decision by the European Patent Office was an important one for our company,” said Robert L. Kanode, president and CEO of Valence Technology, Inc. “By revoking the European Patent, the cloud of any possible patent infringement claim under the UT European Patent has been removed affirming Valence’s unrestricted right to market its unique, patented lithium phosphate powder batteries in Europe. The decision will allow us to more fully pursue European OEMs, who are the world leaders in electric vehicles. We have already established the proven performance and supply capability for our innovative battery solutions, and now our unrestricted right to market our proprietary lithium phosphate based energy storage solutions in Europe has been confirmed.”

With the economy in a slump, many companies are asking the question “how can I best make use of every technology dollar I spend?”

Many of the world’s top enterprises are taking steps to answer this question by implementing a Technology Financial Management (TFM) solution from ComSci. The ComSci IT Cost Transparency and Chargeback solution enables enterprises to gain more visibility into the costs of IT products and services, optimize IT investments and better align IT with the overall strategy of the business. By utilizing ComSci’s intuitive, interactive web-based reporting and analytics engine, these firms provide business users with the details of their individual usage, so enterprise customers everywhere can minimize IT costs and maximize IT business value.

In general, companies that implement a cost transparency and chargeback process can save 3% to 5% of their total IT Budget. ComSci’s solution provides detailed consumption information and metrics to the business users in order to obtain these savings. The business users, now aware of the costs of their consumption of IT services, are able to make better decisions about IT priorities and this enables them to eliminate services that are not adding value to the business.

“To many CIOs, the demand for IT resources appears infinite,” Craig Symons of Forrester wrote in his June 2006 report, How IT Must Shape and Manage Demand. “No matter what the business cycle, competitive environment, or internal conditions may be, IT resources are needed to grow or enable new businesses, improve margins, or reduce fixed and variable costs…. Without an effective mechanism to shape or control this demand, IT will almost always be faced with more demand than resources, forcing difficult decisions about resource allocation and leaving the perception that IT is a bottleneck to getting things done.”

Wal-Mart has has reached a settlement of a wage and hour class action against Wal-Mart in Minnesota captioned Braun et al. v. Wal-Mart, Inc. et al.

The class includes approximately 100,000 current and former hourly associates who worked at Wal-Mart Stores and Sam’s Clubs locations in Minnesota from September 11, 1998 through November 14, 2008, and the settlement provides for payment by Wal-Mart of up to $54.25 million, including a substantial payment to the State of Minnesota. Also, as part of the settlement, Wal-Mart has agreed to maintain various electronic systems, surveys, and notices that will further compliance with wage and hour policies and Minnesota laws. The settlement is subject to approval by the trial court, and the exact amount paid to class members will depend on the court’s approval as well as on the number and amount of claims that are submitted by class members.

All parties believe this settlement is fair and reasonable for all concerned. “We are satisfied with this settlement, gratified that these hourly workers will now be paid after seven years of litigation, and happy that the State of Minnesota will receive the largest wage and hour civil penalty in its history,” said Justin Perl, of the Minneapolis law firm of Maslon Edelman Borman & Brand, co-lead counsel for the class. Wal-Mart spokesperson David Tovar added, “Wal-Mart is pleased that the court in Minnesota ruled in its favor on many claims. Our policies are to pay every associate for every hour worked and to make rest and meal breaks available for associates. Any manager who violates these policies is subject to discipline, up to and including termination. We remain committed to providing good jobs with real career opportunity to the 1.45 million U.S. associates who choose to work for Wal-Mart and serve our customers every day.”

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.