A struggling Silicon Valley maker of flash memory chips filed a pair of sweeping patent infringement suits against Samsung.

Dr. Keith was a co-inventor of the three-way automotive catalytic converter a major advance in eliminating the toxic tailpipe emissions that once blanketed cities in smog.

Is there a role for foundations in advancing an innovation agenda? And, if so, what?

The history of the invention of the “revolving battery gun” and the inventor who gave it his name.

The decision that a man’s business concept was too vague for patent protection could reshape the way banks and high-tech firms protect their intellectual property.

Sharing an idea through a video posted on YouTube has been an essential part of an inventor’s success.

The discovery of a new material called black silicon offers a lesson in government financing of science and technology.

Harold Hughes, chief of Rambus, says infringement issues were out of control in the early 1990s.

SanDisk, maker of flash memory cards, has some 860 patents in the United States and 550 overseas. Samsung currently pays SanDisk $440 million a year to license those patents.

The University Small Business Patent Procedures Act is under increasing scrutiny by swelling ranks of critics, who charge that it has distorted the fundamental mission of universities.

Manufacturers should make products that consumers can easily maintain, repair, repurpose or even reinvent.

New products approved by rabbis are helping the world’s more than 1.5 million Orthodox Jews use the conveniences of modern life.

Judy Estrin’s book is the latest call to action by scientists, technologists and political leaders worried about the country’s future competitiveness in technology.

Under the terms of the agreement, Nokia can use all of Qualcomm’s patents in its mobile phones and network equipment, and in return it agreed not to use its patents against Qualcomm.

Unitaid is endorsing the creation of a panel of experts to explore the feasibility of a “patent pool” to try to make drugs at lower costs for poor countries.

Innovation and creativity is what distinguishes man from the rest of life on earth. If our ancestors had been content to hunt and gather food as nomads, then the whole of civilization and everything in it would be virtually non-existent. Imagine a life without beautiful works of art, cars, television and mobile phones, not to forget computers. Every single invention and masterpiece is the result of the creativity of the human race. But where does creativity come from?

Over the millennia we humans have developed a symbolic world, a world powerful enough to endanger the physical world. Ritual is the transitional instinct that helps us navigate back and forth between these two worlds.

It's often unfortunate when inventors and innovators take everything so darn personally. When someone questions their idea and concepts to learn more they often get rather persnickety, angry, and we find they are unable to articulate their plans in laymen terms or prove their concepts. Further, they often have no back-up plans to support their theories, hypothesis, or inventions.

Our great innovative society and civilization is squandering some one of our greatest assets. Let me explain. Today, we have many incredibly smart, accomplished, and experienced individual innovators, consultants and inventors, but they have no access to help provide for the common good of the nation. They are blocked by bureaucracy and their talents wasted, why? It seems that lobbyists have more access to our government and that the people are an afterthought.

Many small time inventors feel slighted by the US Government and the Military, as they have worthy ideas and concepts, but when they contact the any of the appropriate agencies, they are met with a stone wall in the bureaucracy. In fact, even if they do get some satisfaction or someone to listen to them, they get comments like; "you have interesting credentials." Interesting credentials come again? What does that mean, and ask a few innovators and inventors about this and they will tell you that many from Washington DC area have told them that they have "interesting credentials," it is beginning to sound like a code phrase, as they are the only ones who use that phrase.