One year after receiving President Obama's signature, the majority of reforms included in the America Invents Act have now taken effect. Earlier this week, new rules addressing both initial application processing and post-grant review were officially incorporated into U.S. patent law.

Apple and Google may have a commanding lead in the mobile device market, but their closest competitors came together this week to negotiate a potentially significant licensing agreement. By providing Research In Motion with access to its proprietary file storage technologies, Microsoft may have given the struggling Canadian manufacturer reason for hope.

In the preliminary findings released from a study due out later this year, the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) recently revealed that the number of patents issued to academic applicants rose to an all-time high in fiscal year 2011. In total, university researchers were responsible for the filing of nearly 20,000 U.S. patent applications last year and were awarded approximately 4,700 patents in return.

With media piracy evolving from an internet annoyance into a broader economic affliction in recent years, both public and private entities have taken notice and demanded stricter copyright enforcement efforts. After several months of delay, Center for Copyright Information (CCI) recently confirmed that it will debut its Copyright Alert System before the end of the year.

In March of this year, Cessna Aircraft announced at the Asian Business Aviation Conference & Exhibit (ABACE) plans to collaborate with Chinese partners on the development and manufacturing of existing and new jet designs. This sparked some fresh thinking about the integrity of intellectual property protections in such global collaborations.

Anthony L. Velocci, Jr. writes in a recent article for Aviation Week that thousands of entrepreneurial companies are flourishing across the aerospace industry worldwide. They are “vibrant source[s] of innovation and value-creation” given their “wealth of specialized skills, cutting-edge intellectual property, highly educated workforces, relationships with government officials and large aerospace customers, and, in many cases, valuable security clearances.”
“Small companies are an incredibly rich source of innovation,” Velocci quotes Charles Wessner as saying. Dr. Wessner, the director of Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the National Academy of Sciences, goes on to say “[t]hat is where big technology companies come from, and that is where the big companies go for innovative ideas.”

Allied Minds, a Boston-based investment firm, has reached agreements with several U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) research laboratories in a wide-ranging technology transfer strategy intended to spur economic growth through the commercialization of military innovations.

The implementation of a first to file system in March 2013 promises to be one of the most significant changes brought about by the America Invents Act. This week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office unveiled a new proceeding that will serve as an additional safeguard that ensures true inventors gain and maintain their rightful protection under the new framework.

Today's business models are more collaborative than ever, with companies exploring unique partnerships intended to add new dimensions and value to their product lines. But without proper identification and protection of their intellectual assets, firms could find it difficult to reap the full reward of their inclusive policies.

Although amassing a large and diverse intellectual property portfolio can be a valuable pursuit, companies must realize that risk escalates as assets continue to accrue. As a result, quantifying the potential threats to portfolio value and relevance has become a more pressing component of IP management strategies.