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New Small Business Assistance

Today the White House announced plans for a new federal website to help small businesses and exporters get government resources. The site, called BusinessUSA (no URL yet), will be created within 90 days. The goal, according to Small Business Administration chief Karen Mills, is to help business owners connect with the right agencies regardless of where they start, which she calls a “no wrong door policy.” The site will eventually include relevant information from state and local governments and the private sector. “We need to make it as easy as possible for [businesses] to find answers to their questions,” Mills said on a conference call with reporters. More...

10-28-2011 19:41

Push for big patent holdings brews in tech sector Google deal for Motorola includes 17,500 patents a

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) –– The intellectual-property arms race is rapidly turning into a game of big numbers, pushing companies such as Google into patent-buying sprees, tech-industry observers say.

Google Inc.’s GOOG -0.05% agreement to purchase Motorola Mobility Inc. MMI -0.05% for $12.5 billion Monday will give it a slate of 17,500 patents and 7,500 patent applications. That’s the latest in a slew of attempts to bulk up on its patent war chest.

Google recently purchased 1,000 IBM IBM -1.01% patents, and made a failed bid for Nortel Networks Corp.’s NRTLQ +6.67% 4,500-strong portfolio that was eventually sold to a consortium that included Apple Inc. AAPL -0.15% , Microsoft Corp. MSFT 0.00% and Research In Motion RIMM -0.66% .

Before Monday, Google was also believed to be considering buying InterDigital Inc. IDCC +0.03% , a wireless technology company that holds 8,800 patents.

While Google’s willingness to fork out a 63% premium over Motorola Mobility Inc.’s most recent closing price raises eyebrows, the Internet company is reacting to -- and feeding -- a new reality in the tech marketplace, patent brokers and attorneys say.

“The Motorola deal is reflective of the value associated with a large collection of IT patents, which are becoming valued at premiums,” said James Malackowski, chief executive of Ocean Tomo, the intellectual property services firm, that helped to value a portion of the Nortel portfolio. “It’s a case of 1 + 1 = 5.” More...

08-16-2011 22:20

Google+ May Pass Twitter With One-Fifth of U.S. Adults Online

(Bloomberg) — Google Inc.’s new social-networking service may grow to claim 22 percent of online U.S. adults in a year, passing Twitter Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. to be the second- most-used social site after Facebook Inc., a survey found.

Google+ has signed up 13 percent of U.S. adults and will add 9 percent over the next year, according to the survey from Bloomberg/YouGov. In the same period, Facebook will lose about 2 percentage points of U.S. adults to keep 69 percent of that population, while Twitter and LinkedIn continue to grow their portion of users.

Started in late June, Google+ is growing faster than Facebook and MySpace Inc. did in their early days. The service, which lets people connect with and manage groups of friends on a website, gained about 25 million users worldwide in less than a month, estimates market researcher ComScore Inc. Facebook has more than 750 million active users.

“Google+ is tracing a path similar to Facebook’s initial growth — building excitement in a core group of early adopters,” said Michael Nardis, head of YouGov investment products, in a statement about the survey. More...

08-05-2011 15:25

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