Maker Mom Builds Cookie-Cutter Empire With 3-D Printers

Athey Moravetz is doing some tasty work with her 3-D printers.

The video game designer has worked on PlayStation games like Resistance Retribution and Uncharted Golden Abyss. She's also a self-described "jack-of-all-trades," skilled with 3-D modeling tools like Maya, and knows how to design compelling characters with them.

After having two children she decided to work from home, and in addition to keeping active in the computer graphics industry, she also created a wildly successful Etsy shop, where she sells 3-D printed cookie cutters based on nerd culture favorites Pokemon, Dr. Who and Super Mario Brothers.

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Alan Ball’s ‘Banshee’ Screeches Onto Cinemax in January

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “True Blood” creator Alan Ball‘s new television series “Banshee” will premiere January 11 at 10 p.m. on Cinemax, the network said Thursday.

The drama, which is executive-produced by Ball and “House M.D.” executive producer Greg Yaitanes, centers on ex-con and master thief Lucas Hood (played by “Rush” star Anthony Starr), who assumes the identity of the sheriff of Banshee, Pa., where he continues his criminal ways while being hunted by a team of gangsters from his past. Ivana Milicevic (“Charlie’s Angels”) and Ulrich Thomsen (“The Celebration”) also star.

Series writers Jonathan Tropper and David Schickler also executive-produce, along with Peter Macdissi.

The pilot episode will re-air at 11:05 p.m. and 12:10 a.m., with additional re-airings on January 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 30.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Genetic Gamble : New Drugs Aim to Make Cells Destroy Cancer

C.J. Gunther for The New York Times

Dr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct.

For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs go after an aberration involving a cancer gene fundamental to tumor growth. Many scientists see this as the beginning of a new genetic age in cancer research.

Great uncertainties remain, but such drugs could mean new treatments for rare, neglected cancers, as well as common ones. Merck, Roche and Sanofi are racing to develop their own versions of a drug they hope will restore a mechanism that normally makes badly damaged cells self-destruct and could potentially be used against half of all cancers.

No pharmaceutical company has ever conducted a major clinical trial of a drug in patients who have many different kinds of cancer, researchers and federal regulators say. “This is a taste of the future in cancer drug development,” said Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. “I expect the organ from which the cancer came from will be less important in the future and the molecular target more important,” he added.

And this has major implications for cancer philanthropy, experts say. Advocacy groups should shift from fund-raising for particular cancers to pushing for research aimed at many kinds of cancer at once, Dr. Brawley said. John Walter, the chief executive officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, concurred, saying that by pooling forces “our strength can be leveraged.”

At the heart of this search for new cancer drugs are patients like Joe Bellino, who was a post office clerk until his cancer made him too sick to work. Seven years ago, he went into the hospital for hernia surgery, only to learn he had liposarcoma, a rare cancer of fat cells. A large tumor was wrapped around a cord that connects the testicle to the abdomen. “I was shocked,” he said in an interview this summer.

Companies have long ignored liposarcoma, seeing no market for drugs to treat a cancer that strikes so few. But it is ideal for testing Sanofi’s drug because the tumors nearly always have the exact genetic problem the drug was meant to attack — a fusion of two large proteins. If the drug works, it should bring these raging cancers to a halt. Then Sanofi would test the drug on a broad range of cancers with a similar genetic alteration. But if the drug fails against liposarcoma, Sanofi will reluctantly admit defeat.

“For us, this is a go/no-go situation,” said Laurent Debussche, a Sanofi scientist who leads the company’s research on the drug.

The genetic alteration the drug targets has tantalized researchers for decades. Normal healthy cells have a mechanism that tells them to die if their DNA is too badly damaged to repair. Cancer cells have grotesquely damaged DNA, so ordinarily they would self-destruct. A protein known as p53 that Dr. Gary Gilliland of Merck calls the cell’s angel of death normally sets things in motion. But cancer cells disable p53, either directly, with a mutation, or indirectly, by attaching the p53 protein to another cellular protein that blocks it. The dream of cancer researchers has long been to reanimate p53 in cancer cells so they will die on their own.

The p53 story began in earnest about 20 years ago. Excitement ran so high that, in 1993, Science magazine anointed it Molecule of the Year and put it on the cover. An editorial held out the possibility of “a cure of a terrible killer in the not too distant future.”

Companies began chasing a drug to restore p53 in cells where it was disabled by mutations. But while scientists know how to block genes, they have not figured out how to add or restore them. Researchers tried gene therapy, adding good copies of the p53 gene to cancer cells. That did not work.

Then, instead of going after mutated p53 genes, they went after half of cancers that used the alternative route to disable p53, blocking it by attaching it to a protein known as MDM2. When the two proteins stick together, the p53 protein no longer functions. Maybe, researchers thought, they could find a molecule to wedge itself between the two proteins and pry them apart.

The problem was that both proteins are huge and cling tightly to each other. Drug molecules are typically tiny. How could they find one that could separate these two bruisers, like a referee at a boxing match?

In 1996, researchers at Roche noticed a small pocket between the behemoths where a tiny molecule might slip in and pry them apart. It took six years, but Roche found such a molecule and named it Nutlin because the lab was in Nutley, N.J.

But Nutlins did not work as drugs because they were not absorbed into the body.

Roche, Merck and Sanofi persevered, testing thousands of molecules.

At Sanofi, the stubborn scientist leading the way, Dr. Debussche, maintained an obsession with p53 for two decades. Finally, in 2009, his team, together with Shaomeng Wang at the University of Michigan and a biotech company, Ascenta Therapeutics, found a promising compound.

The company tested the drug by pumping it each day into the stomachs of mice with sarcoma.

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Preoccupations: When Relocation Is a Way of Life

ON New Year’s Day, the company I work for, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, will move me from Washington to Paris, where I will become a regional vice president of the company and general manager of the Hotel George V, which it manages.

Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times

Gathering the frequent-mover miles: From left are Christian and Meg Clerc, and their daughters, Eleanor and Georgia, at home in Washington.

My wife, Meg, teaches at a Montessori school. She and our teenage daughters, Eleanor and Georgia, will reunite with me at the end of the school year. It’s the seventh move for Meg and me: about every three years for the last two decades, we’ve packed and unpacked, and left newfound schools, friends, cars, dry cleaners, banks and homes, and found newer ones.

If you want to advance in the hotel industry, you’d better be able to check “yes” next to the box that asks, “Willing to relocate?” Mobility must be in your DNA if you want to move up. Originally from Switzerland, I myself have moved eight times over 25 years of working in hotels, rising from hotel restaurant food runner to hotel general manager: from Gstaad to Lausanne, Switzerland; then to Washington, Rome, Paris and back to Washington, then to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and to Chicago and Washington once more. Eleanor, now 17, was born in Rome. Georgia, 14, joined the journey on our first assignment in Washington.

Meg knew the score — and welcomed the global lifestyle — when she married me. In fact, she chose a mobile career herself, knowing that there would be Montessori schools worldwide.

The company provides good logistical support when it moves its employees. And on the home front, we have grown increasingly adaptive, and the moves have become easier over the years. The process begins when I first realize that a move may be in the works. Meg and I go out for lunch or coffee and review our trusty to-do list to become move-ready. Then we take our daughters out to lunch or dinner and broach the subject, beginning with “How would you feel if we moved to X?”

The worst reaction was when we planned to move back to Washington from Chicago less than a year after arriving there from Mexico. We thought the girls would be thrilled to reunite with friends in a familiar place. We thought wrong. In unison, they broke out in tears; they had just made new friends and were starting to fit in again.

Meg, so skilled at working with children as a teacher, had them talk about the roots of their fears and sadness, which usually revolve around establishing new social networks. I, racked by guilt about upsetting their cart again, blurted that they could get the puppy they had been begging for. (I had been adamantly opposed until then.) The tears stopped. Needless to say, our pup, Snickers, will be moving to Paris, too.

To stay sane at relocation time, we keep the house we’re in as homey as possible until we move, then turn the new house into a home as fast as we can. That way, we don’t have to stare at cardboard boxes on both ends of the trip. We can pack in two weeks.

Moving makes you prioritize what’s important. You have to decide what’s crucial enough to bring, and what’s marginal enough to leave behind. With friends, you have to choose those to see before you go, and the ones you want to stay in touch with after the move.

Each of us has certain things we take along — our “transitional objects.” For example, I need the big wooden credenza that’s been in my family for generations, a great coffee machine, my A.S. Roma soccer-club shirt and my watch box — after all, I am Swiss. For Meg, it’s not about things, but about creating a cozy, well-lit new space. The girls still bring their favorite stuffed animals along with photos, but their most important transitional object is each other.

BUILDING a new network of friends can be as daunting for Meg and me as it is for the girls. We’ve found friends among new work colleagues and through tight-knit expat communities. But there’s a danger of getting stuck in a cultural bubble and never befriending local people.

Our moves have brought us a great appreciation of cultural differences. The ability to adapt quickly to change helps in all kinds of situations. The moves have also prepared our daughters to make new friends quickly. Still, we wonder and worry how it will affect their future relationships. Will they have trouble forming long-lasting bonds?

We find inspiration, meanwhile, in
the lyrics of “You’re My Home,” the Billy Joel song: “I never had a place that I could call my very own, but that’s
all right, my love, ’cause you’re my home.”

As told to Perry Garfinkel.

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State unemployment rate falls to 9.8% even as employers shed jobs

California's unemployment rate hit single-digits in November for the first time in almost four years, thanks in part to a holiday hiring surge by retailers.

The jobless rate fell to 9.8% from 10.1% in October, according to data in an overall jobs report released Friday by the state Employment Development Department.

The drop in the unemployment rate, determined in a survey of households, came even as a separate payroll survey found that employers in the state shed 3,800 jobs.

“The state showed a very significant and encouraging drop in the unemployment rate,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at the Fermanian Business and Economic Institute at Point Loma Nazarene University. “A fall below 10% is welcome news.”

For months, economic forecasts have said the unemployment rate wouldn’t fall to single digits until at least next year.

Both surveys in the report provide a mixed view, though, of what is still a fragile economic recovery in the state.

For instance, the state's labor force -- the number of people who are able to work and either have a job or are looking for one -- grew by 34,100 people in November. That typically indicates that job seekers feel encouraged to resume looking for work again.

“The good news in California was that we saw more people looking for work and more people getting jobs,” Reaser said. “But the bad news was that the nonfarm payroll survey, which is usually the more reliable source, showed a small drop in employment ... and comes as quite a disappointment.”

The payroll survey of employers showed that the biggest drop in jobs -- 11,000 -- came in the education and health services sector. The manufacturing sector lost 8,900 positions. The biggest gains offsetting most losses came in retail, which added 15,900 jobs.

The disparity between the falling unemployment rate and the drop in payroll jobs reflects the fact that the two are derived from different surveys: The unemployment rate is calculated from a survey of a small number of households, while the payroll job data come from a more thorough survey of businesses that report on changes in their monthly payrolls.

Other economists were skeptical of November’s reports, particularly losses reported in the healthcare and professional and business services sectors.

“Over the last year, [these sectors] have been very strong,” said Christopher Thornberg, founding principal at Beacon Economics, a Los Angeles consulting firm. “Why should it turn on a dime?”

Thornberg pointed out that healthcare has been resilient, expanding even through the economic recession.

He said he expects November’s job report to be revised early next year and the loss in payroll jobs will probably be reversed.

“The truth is, [the report] is not as good as what the household survey says, but it’s not as bad as the payroll survey,” Thornberg said. “None of this should be a surprise to us. California’s economy has clearly been gaining strength.”

In recent months, employers in the retail trend industry have beefed up payrolls as the 2012 holiday shopping season shapes up to be the strongest in years. The trade, transportation and utilities sector notched the largest over-the-month increase, as a group adding 12,900 jobs. The sector includes retail jobs.

The next-largest gain was in leisure and hospitality, which added 3,300 jobs. Construction, aided by a housing recovery that is slowly unfolding, notched a gain of 1,700 jobs last month.

Esmael Adibi, director of the A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research at Chapman University, called the report a “mixed bag.”

“Overall, yes, unemployment went down,” Adibi said. “Some people will see that as good news, but the question will be: Is this downtick going to be sustainable?”

Adibi said that even though the job figures are adjusted for seasonal hiring, he predicted that much of the retail hiring that has occurred in recent months will be temporary. Furthermore, losses in professional and business services suggest that firms are holding out on hiring until the so-called fiscal cliff crisis is resolved.

The fiscal cliff refers to the tax hikes and government spending cuts set to kick in Jan. 2 if Congress and the White House don't reach a deal to resolve those issues.

Economists have said that if the fiscal cliff is not avoided, the country will be pushed back into recession.

“If firms are worried about a significant slowdown, they’re not going to commit themselves to hiring people,” Adibi said.

Over the year, California has added 268,600 nonfarm jobs, an annualized growth rate of 1.9%. That's a faster pace than the nation as a whole, which has grown at an annual rate of about 1.4%.

The Golden State’s unemployment rate, still the third-highest in the nation, has fallen 1.5 percentage points since November 2011.

The state also reported that October’s job gains were revised slightly downward to 38,800 jobs net new jobs instead of the 45,800 originally reported last month.

ALSO:

In defense-heavy San Diego, 'fiscal cliff' threat hits home

Third-quarter GDP growth revised higher but weakness looms 

New jobless claims up 17,000 last week, but remain relatively low

ricardo.lopez2@latimes.com

Follow Ricardo Lopez on Twitter.

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The Decades That Invented the Future, Part 9: 1981-1990

Today's leading-edge technology is headed straight for tomorrow's junk pile, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. Everyone loves the latest and greatest.

Sometimes, though, something truly revolutionary cuts through the clutter and fundamentally changes the game. And with that in mind, Wired is looking back over 12 decades to highlight the 12 most innovative people, places and things of their day. From the first transatlantic radio transmissions to cellphones, from vacuum tubes to microprocessors, we'll run down the most important advancements in technology, science, sports and more.

This week's installment takes us back to 1981-1990, when music television defined a generation, the first Nintendo console hit the U.S. and Apple's Macintosh brought about the age of the personal computer.

We don't expect you to agree with all of our picks, or even some of them. That's fine. Tell us what you think we've missed and we'll publish your list later.

Above:

The world’s first and only fleet of spaceplanes earned its wings when Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on April 12, 1981. Launched on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s spaceflight, the mission, STS-1, lasted 54.5 hours. Columbia’s two crew members, John Young (an Apollo veteran) and Robert Crippen, circled Earth 37 times before landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Though it successfully proved the shuttle’s flight capabilities, this inaugural trip was also a portent of disaster. During the flight, the two astronauts observed damage to protective thermal tiles near the shuttle’s rear and nose. Two decades later, Columbia’s thermal protective system would fail and the orbiter would crumble in the United States' southern skies.

The U.S. shuttles were the first reusable, winged spacecraft to enter Earth orbit and land. Ferried to space by two rocket boosters and an enormous fuel tank, the shuttles – Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis, Challenger, and Endeavour – were a crucial part of NASA’s spaceflight program for 30 years. Among other tasks, astronauts on board performed science experiments, repaired and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope, helped build the International Space Station, and delivered satellites (like the Chandra X-Ray Observatory) to orbit. In August 2011, the space shuttle program officially ended; in 2012, the remaining shuttles were retired with much fanfare to sites around the country.

Photo: Space Shuttle Columbia lifts off. Credit: NASA.

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Singer Odell first male to win Brit newcomer award

LONDON (Reuters) – Singer-songwriter Tom Odell was named the Brit Awards’ tip for the top in 2013, the first male artist to receive the honor previously won by chart queens including Adele and Jessie J.

The 22-year-old, whose musical style and voice has drawn comparisons to Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, beat London electronic duo AlunaGeorge and classically trained soul singer Laura Mvula to the Critics’ Choice Award.

Selected by a panel of music industry experts, the annual prize goes to a British artist tipped for mainstream success, and previous winners have gone on to top charts in Britain and beyond.

“Looking at the list of amazing female artists who have won the Award already, I just hope I don’t let the boys down!” Odell said in a statement.

He released his debut E.P. “Songs From Another Love” in late 2012 and followed up with a performance on the popular live music show “Later…with Jools Holland“.

Odell also appears on the BBC’s Sound of 2013 longlist and MTV’s Brand New For 2013 selection of 10 up-and-coming artists, as the music business seeks to identify the chart-toppers of tomorrow.

Many acts, including Odell, already have record deals with major labels.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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For Tracy Anderson, Fitness Expert, Always a New Move

Erin Baiano for The New York Times

Tracy Anderson, center, teaching a fitness class at her studio in TriBeCa. Her classes and DVDs have attracted devoted followers — and, she says, mimics.

TRACY ANDERSON, the tiny blond fitness guru perhaps best known as Gwyneth Paltrow’s trainer and business partner, is as bright and sparkly as the Swarovski crystal-encrusted iPhone case she was admiring one recent Thursday.

“I love this!” she squealed, bouncing on the sofa of the Greenwich Hotel. Then she turned the case over and spied a fighting word: Soul, short for SoulCycle, a popular chain of cycling studios in New York and Los Angeles.

She looked as if she had swallowed something sour, and nearly dropped the bejeweled case. Her girlishness disappeared, and she said flatly: “I can get you better legs than them.”

Ms. Anderson, 37, claims that SoulCycle, through a former employee of hers, uses one of her inventions: a system of resistance bands that hangs from the ceiling. (A SoulCycle spokeswoman had no comment.)

The cycling studios are just one target of the combative Ms. Anderson. At least half a dozen of her former employees have released exercise DVDs or have opened their own studios — their clients include Madonna, Anne Hathaway and Kelly Ripa — many peddling workouts she said were derived in “an opportunistic way” from the intense, heart-in-throat dance routines and minimal-weight, high-repetition “muscular structure” moves Ms. Anderson has spent 14 years perfecting.

Her influence can be found in almost any gym featuring the type of jump-heavy cardio dance classes she has popularized or a version of what Ms. Anderson calls her “weird free arms” — essentially waving the arms from every conceivable angle for minutes at a time.

“It makes me sad for humanity, actually, that people would take all my hard work and then pose like they have a method that they have tried and tested,” she said of her former employees, becoming so angry she struggled for words. “They’re not even lip-syncing what I do. They’re, like, karaokeing off my songs.”

She added: “But the nice thing about it is that as a company, Gwyneth and I have been really smart like Coca-Cola and we didn’t teach any of those trainers how or why I move the way I do.”

Ms. Anderson, who was born in Indiana, studied musical theater for two years at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. She insisted she did not owe anything to Jane Fonda, the original dance aerobics queen, because Ms. Fonda was “a motivator, but she never claimed to have a method.”

Ms. Anderson described her own philosophy as “the method,” and talked passionately about the science behind it, tossing around terms like “proprioception perception,” “strength of synapses” and “muscle confusion.”

“I move across the large muscles in a way like when you were a kid you got an Indian burn, building collective strength between muscle groups,” she explained with a smile.

Ms. Anderson has not sought certification in fields like exercise physiology or teaching, she said, because, “I am so hard on myself with not deviating the amount of time that I have for research and development of the method.”

As for coming up with moves to slim problem areas where women are predisposed to store fat (“disproportionate struggle,” in Ms. Andersonspeak), she painted a vivid picture.

“I’m completely focused on how can I get forces to travel from opposing directions and end up creating a contraction in a muscle that’s going to then pull in,” she said. “And then as we lose the fat the muscular structure will be vibrating so well that it will have the connective tissues pull the skin back to it.”

Richard Cotton, an exercise physiologist and the national director of training for the American College of Sports Medicine in Indianapolis, said there is “a ton of research that disputes the idea of spot-reduction.”

“You can’t choose where the body loses fat,” he said.

Gary Diffee, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who examined some of her claims, said, “Like many things of this type, the science seems to be a mixture of true, kind of true, true but irrelevant to the point she is trying to make, and wrong.”

“The main thing is that she is getting people to move,” Dr. Diffee said.

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Majorities support some new gun laws, not bans

Although public support for “gun control” as a general concept remains well below the levels found in the 1990s, several polls in recent days have shown Americans favor some new laws.

The polling indicates some areas where President Obama’s promised push for new measures to combat gun-related violence could prevail. At the same time, the numbers also show deeply entrenched and stark partisan divides on the issue that almost certainly will complicate efforts to gain support from Republicans for new gun measures.

Controlling the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips gets consistent majority support in surveys by the Washington Post/ABC News and YouGov  that were conducted after the Newton, Conn., massacre last week. The ability to fire large numbers of bullets without reloading has factored into several mass shootings.

A ban on bullets that can penetrate bulletproof vests also gets strong public support in recent surveys. Previous polls have shown strong support for requiring background checks of all people trying to buy guns and other steps to close loopholes in the current system.

By contrast, large majorities oppose more far-reaching steps, such as a ban on private ownership of handguns.  The public remains closely divided on the issue of banning semiautomatic guns, with poll results varying in part on the wording of the question.

The surveys suggest that the outcome of the coming debate could depend heavily on whether public attention focuses on the specific proposals or on the general issue of “gun control.”

Overall, public opinion on regulating guns has shown “only modest change” since last week’s killings, according to pollsters at the Pew Research Center based on a new survey of 1,219 Americans conducted Monday through Wednesday. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Asked whether it is “more important to control gun ownership” or “more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns,” Americans divided closely, with 49% putting a priority on gun control and 42% on protecting gun rights. That’s a shift from a 47% to 46% division just after the shooting in Aurora, Colo., in July. Neither the Aurora shooting nor the one in Tucson, Ariz., in 2011 produced a significant increase in support for controls as a general proposition.

The difficulty of moving public opinion on the issue reflects the reality that most Americans have strongly held views on the subject. Currently, that intensity leans toward the gun-control side, but only slightly, with 42% saying they feel strongly that a priority should be put on controlling gun ownership, while 37% feel strongly on the side of protecting gun rights.

In the late 1990s, about two-thirds of Americans said that controlling gun ownership was more important than protecting gun rights, but the percentage backing gun control dropped during the George W. Bush presidency, then fell sharply again when Obama was first elected.

That historical pattern reflects the stark partisan divide on the issue. Among Democrats, 72% in the new Pew survey said they put their priority on controlling gun ownership, while only 20% sided with protecting gun rights. Among Republicans, the division was the reverse, 27% to 69%. About one-third of Americans say they have a gun at home. Among Republicans, almost half say so, while among Democrats, only one-quarter do.

That partisan divide is reinforced by strong regional and racial ones. In the Northeast, residents put the priority on gun control by more than 2 to 1. In the rest of the country, the public is equally divided between the gun control and gun rights sides. Urban residents put their priority on gun control by 56% to 35%, while among rural residents the divide is almost the opposite, 39% to 52%; suburbanites are closely split. Blacks by 68% to 24% put a priority on gun control while among whites, the divide goes the other way,  42% to 51%, with support for gun ownership particularly strong among white men.

Although Obama on Wednesday suggested that parents might back gun control measures to protect children, the Pew survey showed that support for gun control is higher among non-parents, reflecting the fact that Americans younger than 30 support gun control considerably more than those ages 30 to 65. Americans older than 65 were the group that has shown the most shift in opinion this year, moving toward greater support for gun controls.

Overall, the Pew survey shows that a plurality of Americans, 48% to 37%, say that gun ownership does more to protect people from crime than it does to put people’s safety at risk.

By contrast, when asked whether allowing citizens to own assault weapons makes the country safer or more dangerous, Americans by more than 2-to-1 said more dangerous. Even those who put a priority on protecting gun rights divided evenly on the question about assault weapons, an indicator that new restrictions on at least some of those weapons could gain majority support.

ALSO: 

House Democrats push on gun control

Sen. Feinstein will not become Judiciary Committee chair

Weapon used in Mexico gunfight linked to Operation Fast and Furious

david.lauter@latimes.com

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Let's Use Patent Fees to Stop the Trolls

As mundane as it may sound, patent fees may be the simplest way to eliminate suspect software patents and stop trolls.

The USPTO’s most recent proposal to modify patent fees, likely to take effect early next year, is the first change to the agency’s fee structure since recent patent reform granted the agency power to set its own fees. However, the new fee structure will accomplish little more than lowering costs for smaller patentees and universities at the expense of larger, more sophisticated patent owners.

I’d argue that changes to patent fees could – and should – go much further. Especially because, according to the agency’s own interpretation of the law, the PTO now has “flexibility to set individual fees in a way that furthers key policy considerations.” So what could the agency accomplish using fees?

For one, we could eliminate a large portion of suits filed by trolls – especially those asserting software patents. This approach would involve only modest changes to the number and magnitude of patent renewal or “maintenance” fees.

Here’s how.

Patent trolls and software patents, often viewed as two distinct problems with the patent system, actually cause harm due to just one fundamental flaw: Patent rights all too often persist long after the useful lifetime of the inventions they were originally intended to protect.

Neither software patents nor patent trolls are “bad” per se. Some software developments are sufficiently pioneering that they probably deserve a modicum of patent protection. Likewise, trolls can in theory play a beneficial role in the innovation economy as disseminators of unappreciated technology, or as champions of wronged inventors who lack the resources to sue on their own.

The problem with trolls and software patents isn’t that they exist, but that they exist in a patent system with a twenty-year patent term.

Software and other computing-related inventions fall out of date very quickly because computing power increases exponentially – per Moore’s Law, the density of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years. So it doesn’t makes sense for patents covering these inventions to remain in force more than two decades after their creation. At that point, they have little value except as tools to shakedown companies making devices thousands of times more sophisticated than those on the market when the patent was filed.

Similarly, patent trolls’ benefit to society, if any, greatly diminishes with time. Trolls litigating patents just before expiration can’t credibly claim to spread awareness about useful new technology or vindicate inventors’ rights against current competitors. Whatever socially beneficial value the software patents owned by trolls had is virtually nil when asserted two decades later.

Trolls file more than 70% of all patent suits within the final three years of the patent term.

Unfortunately, according to a recent empirical study I conducted, 17 to 20 years down the road is precisely when troll-owned software patents are most often asserted.

Trolls file more than 70% of all patent suits litigated within the final three years of the asserted patent’s term of protection. And of all companies accused of infringing a patent within three years of its expiration, trolls accuse more than 83%.

In other words: Trolls and the companies that actually produce products enforce their patents at opposite ends of the patent term. In fact, trolls have a hard time even acquiring patents until their terms are more than half over; the average troll-owned patent in my study changed hands twice over a 12-year span before it was first asserted.

Moreover, aging high-tech patents are far and away trolls’ favorite weapon. Of all infringement claims filed by trolls in the last three years of the asserted patent’s term, 88% allege infringement for patents related to computers or electronics. And almost 75% of those claims target software.

Bottom line: The final few years of the patent term overwhelmingly benefit patent trolls asserting grossly outdated patents. They do not benefit product-producing companies enforcing patents covering technology currently on the market.

So why not eliminate these last few years?

A three-year term reduction would impact over 60% of infringement claims filed by trolls, while affecting just a small fraction of product-company patent claims. A large portion of late-term patent litigation filed by product-producing companies actually looks an awful lot like traditional patent trolling: Consider the software patent suits filed by struggling or bankrupt companies like Kodak and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Trolls and the companies that produce products enforce their patents at opposite ends of the patent term.

Most other late-term product company suits are filed by biotech and pharmaceutical companies. These companies could be shielded from an across-the-board term reduction by liberally applying existing provisions in the Patent Act, which permit term extensions for patents covering products that require FDA approval.

The real impediment to shortening the patent term isn’t industry opposition or even a long legislative slog – it’s that the U.S. is bound, as a member of the World Trade Organization, by an international treaty that requires a minimum of 20 years’ protection for patents. So short of additional patent reform legislation – which might draw the ire of the rest of the industrialized world – what can we do to reduce the number of patent suits enforcing exceptionally old patents?

Increase the size and number of maintenance fees. It’s a simple but effective solution.

Under the current fee regime, patent owners must pay to renew their patent three times: 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after they issue. Roughly half of all patents expire because their owner fails to pay one of these fees. Imagine how many more middling patents might expire prematurely if the PTO simply required additional fees. And since research shows that most patents wind up in the hands of trolls 12 years after issue or later, why should U.S. patent owners’ payment obligations end so early in the term?

The PTO should adopt a new fee schedule requiring annual renewal payments in the latter half of the term – better yet, increasing those fees yearly so they become more expensive as the patent ages. Many countries, including the U.K. and Canada, already do this.

This simple change would help expire many patents that otherwise wind up in the hands of trolls. At the same time, the change would allow product-producing companies with valuable patents – and thus the revenue to pay fees – to extend their rights up to twenty years from filing.

Given the enormous influence of patents on technology and business – and the complexity of the issues involved – Wired is running a special series of expert opinions representing perspectives from academia and corporations to other organizations. To help move reform efforts forward, some of these opinions propose specific Solutions to the Software Patent Problem (presented at a conference hosted by the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University). Together, these proposals will help advocates and policy makers decide what to do about software patents.

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