The General Services Administration, which directs the procurement of federal office space, indefinitely canceled its plans to find a permanent home for the USPTO's Silicon Valley satellite location. It remains to be seen whether the pressure imposed by local legislators and industrial leaders in the coming weeks will be enough to convince federal officials to stretch slim budgets in the name of enabling procedural efficiency and business innovation.

As climate change research advocates in and out of government offices request stricter transparency for energy and chemical companies, business directors are pushing back with concerns that their continuous disclosure of proprietary processes may violate fundamental trade secrets management principles. These tensions were recently exacerbated by discussion of a potential Environmental Protection Agency proposal which would require companies to publicly release information relating to the exact methods by which the businesses calculate greenhouse gas emissions.

The logistics of trade secrets management are rarely discussed in open forums, and often times their only recognizable manifestations lie buried in the fine print of non-disclosure agreements. But as both private and public sector misappropriations come to light, executives are seeking smarter ways to detect when their proprietary inventions may be at risk.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) Board of Directors recently approved a new domain name registrant accreditation process which could be a valuable deterrent to the scourge of online piracy and copyright infringement.

Fresenius Medical Care and Baxter International have been involved in a series of infringement disputes over the last decade concerning the features of dialysis machines produced by each company. Litigation between the two sides may be nearing its end after a unique application of the USPTO's post-grant review process.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) unveiled plans for a new pilot program intended to bring about faster, more cost-effective resolutions to import trade cases hinging on intellectual property infringement disputes.

Popular discussions at the intersection of copyright and profitability traditionally center on lost sales triggered by the scourge of piracy, but technology law expert Jonathan Band recently examined the issues with a broader perspective on overall business health. In a unique longitudinal study, Band discovered that firms within copyright-intensive industries still maintain noticeably stronger financial indicators than those posted by their mass market counterparts.

The covered business method (CBM) patent review program instituted by the America Invents Act completed its first practical application this month as tech giant SAP was able to disprove the patentability of proprietary processes formerly claimed by Versata Software. As a result of the patent review board decision, SAP may have new leverage in an infringement dispute that the two parties have taken to federal appeals court.

Recorded TV innovator TiVo has decided to settle its outstanding litigation with Google and Cisco centered on their distribution of infringing digital video recorder (DVR) technologies to Time Warner Cable to include in its set-top boxes. As part of the deal, Google's Motorola Mobility unit and Cisco will enter into a patent licensing deal with TiVo after paying a collective settlement fee of $490 million.

Ditto Technologies is a Silicon Valley startup which allows customers to upload images of their faces and conduct virtual fitting sessions prior to purchasing designer eyewear. The fate of the business could be in jeopardy, however, after potentially negligent invention disclosure management practices have left it open to multiple infringement suits.