In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Twitter announced it will be raising the price of its stocks in its initial public offering to the range of $23 to $25, from the previous range of $17 to $20. In the same filing, it announced it had received a letter from IBM alleging Twitter had infringed at least three U.S. patents held by the company. Famously, Twitter itself holds remarkably few patents, a state of affairs that many have said could jeopardize its IPO. In contrast, IBM holds an array of patents.

A letter sent to the leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate judiciary committees requests legislation to combat patent assertion entities. The signatories to the letter include the Computer & Communications Industry Association, National Retail Federation, National Grocers Association, American Gaming Association, Printing Industries of America and the American Hotel and Lodging Association.

The World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs, and Geographical Indications was unable to reach a tenable conclusion for an industrial design treaty during the WIPO general assembly earlier this year. It is convening again from Nov. 4 through Nov. 8 to discuss the matter further.

According to Inside Higher Ed, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the growing definition of what fair use of copyrighted material means in the academic world. As universities adopt new technologies for the storage and delivery of information, the shifting understanding of what fair use means is very important to administrators and faculty alike.

In the technology industry, intellectual property rights can be lucrative. This is evident from the success of the biggest tech companies, and from how often they face lawsuits from patent assertion entities. It's recently been reported that one of the giants will be selling its mobile patent portfolio.

According to Reuters, patent licensing company WiLAN is considering selling itself. The company holds more than 3,000 patents, and its business relies largely on negotiating licensing agreements with other companies whose products rely in some way on the patents WiLAN owns. Recently, WiLAN's activities have been covered extensively in the media, and in this space. The company filed lawsuits against many major technology companies, including Apple, for intellectual property infringement. While many companies chose to settle with WiLAN, it lost its suit against Apple. This caused WiLAN's stock to drop by 23 percent.

The Motion Picture Association of America recently submitted a list to the U.S. Trade Representative of the virtual and physical destinations that enable the most copyright infringement. The industry organization is concerned that there are too many active websites willfully enabling intellectual property infringement.

Christy Wyskiel, the new Senior Adviser to the President for Enterprise Development at Johns Hopkins University, was recently interviewed by The Baltimore Business Journal about her position and the interaction between research and enterprise. She has experience working as an investor in early stage startups, as well as supporting business and management advice to such companies.

According to Info World, the Innovation Act of 2013 has bipartisan support, and many in the tech industry are excited about the impending vote on it in Congress. Others have concerns, however. Here are some features of the bill that are causing excitement in the intellectual property world:

In the modern global economy, intellectual property rights are a potential source of revenue for businesses all over the world. They are often more valuable to companies than physical assets integrated throughout operations. With that said, the UN Commission on International Trade Law and the World Intellectual Property Organization have been working since 2003 to modernize procedures around using intellectual property as a security for business financing, according to Managing Intellectual Property.