questions

Aisha Boue

Thanks!

JimIvey

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I believe an English dictionary would suffice for those terms.  

I suspect those terms have a context that you're not telling us.  For example, "multiple patents" is a group of patents numbering more than one -- e.g., a collection of two or more patents.  I suspect that's not what you're looking for.  But that's too easy, so I assume there's more to the question.

The only word in your questions which is not an English word is "biotech" which means "biological technology".

With more context, I could perhaps be more helpful.

Regards.

a student

Thanks for your quick response.
Sorry for the short question.
I am an overseas student who wants to  know better about patent. I am reading a report by FTC regarding balance of competition and patent law and policy
I guess I can put my question this way: what is the difference between multiple patents and patent profolio?
By the way, yes, biotech means biotechnology.

Regards,

JimIvey

A "patent portfolio" can mean different things in different contexts.  It usually means a collection of patents and/or patent applications owned by a single entity (person or corportation).  It can also refer to patents and/or patent applications pertaining to a particular technology and/or product/service group.

For example, you can say that XYZ Corp. has a nice patent portfolio, referring to all the patents and patent applications they own.

You can also say that XYZ Corp. has a nice patent portfolio pertaining to their A100 product and another nice patent portfolio on their B200 service.

You can also say that XYZ Corp. has a telephony patent portfolio and a web services patent portfolio.

You can say that a given industry has been issued many patents, but I don't think it's proper to call that a patent portfolio since they're not commonly owned and/or commonly managed.

I hope that helps.  Think of the difference between seeing multiple investments and having a portfolio of investments.

Regards.

a student

It truly helps.  In fact, I was very hesitate to post my very ABC questions at the first beginning.
I still would like to know--when you say an English dictionary, do you mean something like Black Law Dictionary? If not, would you please give me an example?
Thank you very much.

JimIvey

What I was suggesting was that the plain English meaning of the words themselves was accurate, and that legal dictionaries wouldn't help.  I'm not aware of any patent dictionaries.

For example, if you know what "multiple" means and what "patents" means, you should know what "multiple patents" means.  We've talked about that one -- you had a question more about portfolios.

I don't think you're going to find "biotech research tool" in any dictionary.  "biotech" is a shortened informal form for "biological technology" and probably isn't in a dictionary.  A research tool generally refers to some computerized literature search system.  You could call google.com a research tool.  There are probably special services for searching biotech research papers and articles.

If you really want a place to ask all these questions, I'd try about.com.  Of all the search engines, I like about.com for the basic "what is a..." type of question.  You can try google.com, yahoo.com, and I like dmoz.com for topic-based searching (as opposed to keyword searching).

Regards.

a student

Just want to express my appreciation again--for the efforts and time that Mr. Ivey and other people have spent.
It's great to have this forum around to learn more about IP issue.

Best Regards,

JimIvey

I'm glad I could be helpful.

Just a small suggestion, click on some of the sponsors' ads at the top periodically.  I certainly don't intend to endorse any of the advertisers -- you have to do your own due diligence before using any of those services.  But I'm sure it helps this site to grow if it gets some funding.

I'd say that's true for any free, ad-supported site you like on the web.  If you like a site, click on some of the ads on that site to help keep it around.  I've seen many great sites disappear for lack of money.

Regards.