On 12/1/2006, the Patent Office issued a restriction requirement. A restriction requirement requires the applicant to select one invention for one patent, and, if he wishes to pursue other inventions, to pay additional application fees for processing those inventions. On 12/12/2006, Mr. Ohman elected to pursue Group I, which was the design using the phrase [...]

And as always, drop me a line or follow me on Twitter!

Welcome to hands-on Friday! Today I went hands-on with my HDTV — the Panasonic TH-50PZ77u. You’ll notice that the title screen adds a ‘0′ at the end of the name. Whoops!
Even better news: you can now subscribe to this show. Just add it up [...]

(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Automattic (the creators of WordPress) has created a microblogging service, but it’s not for everyone–and that’s the point.
Skip WordPress' powerful blogging front-end and check out Prologue, a simplified microblogging front-end that lets you write small posts by yourself or with a group of others.
It’s called Prologue, and it’s a new theme for WordPress.com users [...]

Fisker likens battery-powered cars to iPhones, a product consumers are willing to shell out extra for, even if it means taking on some risk of being an early adopter.

Regardless of your choice of analogy, the auto industry is facing the kind of technology-based competition it hasn’t seen in years.

(Credit:
Phoenix Motorcars)

That may sound like bravado [...]

(Credit:
Charles Cooper/CNET News.com)

But despite Chertoff’s repeated commitment to doing the right thing – including a call to arms inviting Silicon Valley’s best and brightest technologists to come to Washington to work on cyber-security – I wonder how many industry skeptics he’ll win over. Until recently, DHS couldn’t get a cyber-security director to stay in what [...]

The film industry in court Tuesday tried to show a federal judge that the software known as RealDVD entrusts its creator, RealNetworks, with the job of protecting digital film copies from piracy.

Schumann demonstrated that film copies could be made and moved to a thumb drive. Schumann told the judge, however, that RealDVD’s copy protections would [...]

Yet I wonder if — aside from these efforts — one could in fact leverage the “magic” of microcredit to support SMEs. The appeal and power of microloans lies in the immediate personal linkage it creates between creditor and individual borrower — the smaller the loan, the bigger the perceived impact (and the emotional reward) [...]

You can follow me on Identi.ca, but I hang out more on Twitter and Friendfeed.
In other words, the Twhirl client won’t have to ping the Identi.ca servers to get updates; instead, updates will be sent directly to the Twhirl client. This makes nanoblog conversations more live–you can have a back-and-forth without hovering [...]

Many of those efforts were aimed at Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, who told us half a year ago that he would definitely not support retroactive immunity. That was then. Now he does–and he voted for the final bill on Wednesday.

Kevin Bankston, an EFF staff attorney, says his group will continue to pursue [...]

This follows two more letters that Barton sent late last year before the DoubleClick acquisition was complete. (In one, Barton complained that his staff wasn’t receiving the royal welcome at the company’s Mountain View, Calif. headquarters; that sub-dispute has since been resolved.)

(Disclosure: Declan McCullagh is married to a Google employee.)

Another demanded information about filtering [...]