In one of his final executive acts before Christmas, President Obama signed a new law which could have a range of implications for the international patent community. While several provisions are expected to boost administrative efficiency and strengthen protection, critics worry that extending the scope and term of design patents could have unintended consequences.

It has been a year filled with high stakes patent litigation for the U.S. technology sector, and that trend has continued all the way through to the final days of 2012. A Pennsylvania District Court judge has ordered semiconductor manufacturer Marvell Technology to pay Carnegie Mellon University $1.17 billion following the infringement of two patents tied to hard disk storage devices.

As the economy took a downward turn, entrepreneurial activity started trending upward in recent years. To turn good ideas into sustainable businesses, however, startup companies and sole inventors must look beyond gathering the foundational ingredients.

Verizon and AT&T have been operating as somewhat of a duopoly in recent years, with Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and a handful of others splitting the modest remainder of U.S. wireless subscriber market share. As 2012 comes to a close, Sprint is lining up a bold acquisition that could propel it toward the head of the pack.

The University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, through its Batten Institute, released a briefing in April of this year covering the status of innovation in “green technology” as expressed in global patenting activity. The analysis defines “green technology” or “greentech” as “products and services that reduce energy and material consumption, waste and pollution.” According to the authors, the patents studied utilized the World Intellectual Property Organization’s classification system for alternative energy and covers the sectors of “solar, wind, geothermal, biofuel, biomass, fuel cell, hydro, synthetic gas, integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), man-made waste, mechanical power from muscle energy, natural heat and waste heat.”

In a recent post by attorney Eric Lane on the business blog CleanTechies, results of the latest Clean Energy Patent Growth Index (CEPGI) are highlighted. The CEPGI, put out quarterly by the Cleantech Group at the law firm of Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti P.C., has been tracking innovation activity in the clean tech industry since 2002, as measured by granted U.S. patents in the field.

After four decades of negotiations, Europe made its most definitive attempt to establish a unified patent system to date with a signed proposal which will go into effect in early 2014. According to The Economist, 38 countries, including all 27 European Union members, have pledged support for a system that will automatically honor intellectual property rights across 25 nations, establish a new regulatory court and do away with linguistic barriers that so often compromised efficiency.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently released its Fiscal Year 2012 Performance and Accountability Report, chronicling a year filled with legislative and procedural changes. After an initial review of the figures, PatentlyO's Dennis Crouch categorized the findings as encouraging news for patent quality.

The road toward a unified European Union patent system has been defined by a series of fits and starts in recent years, but the process seems to be gaining critical momentum this month. According to EuropeanVoice, diplomats are now scheduled to endorse revised draft legislation in a December 10th meeting.

Provisional patent application (PPA) filings have consistently risen in all but one of the past 15 years, according to the latest analysis from PatentlyO. However, the popularity of this tactic does not always correlate with patent pursuit or award.