• This week brings the beginning of the 2013 season of Major League Baseball.  In honor of that, Shea Patenthere’s a long-since expired baseball-related patent — U.S. Pat. No. 3,002,234, for a “Convertible Stadium” — that covered Shea Stadium‘s movable seating (back when Shea used to be the home of the MLB’s Mets and the NFL’s Jets).
  • Now, back to SEPs.  Is all the attention being paid to standard-essential patents issues just much ado about nothing?  We don’t think so, but in a guest post at IP Finance titled “Scaremongering about SEPs,” Keith Mallinson claims that many of the issues involving SEPs highlighted by litigants and regulators are  being exaggerated.  Mallinson seems to be arguing that many proposals for fixes are just solutions in search of problems.
  • It’s been well-documented that Silicon Valley tech firms are no fans of non-practicing entities, particularly because these NPEs commonly target vulnerable startups right after rounds of financing.  But this activity isn’t limited to the West Coast — Crain’s New York Business reports that NPE activity has recently become more frequent in Manattan’s “Silicon Alley.”
  • Some say that there far too many patents that relate to smartphones — potentially up to 250,000.  Well, according to a recent report from technology consultant Chetan Sharma, that number keeps going up.  Sharma claims that roughly one-quarter of all patents issued this year are likely to be related to mobile technology.  (via Patent Progress).