Category Archives: Miscellaneous

And The US Government is Letting the Patent Pirates Plunder Away …

With the exception of Nova Scotian Pirates, Sourcing Innovation is quite negative where pirates are concerned. But not all pirates are created equal – some are much more pernicious than others. And the most pernicious of all the pirates are the Patent Pirates who should be made to walk the plank as soon as possible.

But thanks to the slow movement of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which broke for April Recess before finishing what would have been a historic deal to curb the scurrilous practices of patent trolls, as per this recent VentureBeat article on how Waiting for Patent Reform is Costing Us Billions, they are taking bigger hauls than ever. If the pirates of old had known how profitable it would be to plunder patents, they would have used their black magic to put themselves into a Rumplestiltskin sleep for 300 years so that they could wake up to the richest haul in history. (Even the haul of the richest Columbian drug lords pale in comparison to the haul of the patent pirates.)

To put the problem into perspective, the U.S. Economy loses approximately $1.1 Billion to the patent pirates for every two week delay! Imagine what it could do with $1.1 Billion. Not only do we need a “loser pays” bill for patent lawsuits, but we need a bill that prevents patent trolling in the first place! Patent plundering kills innovation – not something the US economy can afford right now.

One Week … to Uncovering Savings You Never Knew Existed!


It’ll be one week ’till you’ll look at me
Cock your head to the side and say “I’m listening”
Five days and you’ll look for me saying
“Get that together come here and teach me”
Three days and the lecture room
You’ll realize you’re too early, but yet not too soon
Next day I’ll have swayed you
but it’ll still be two days till you say I’m spot on!

That’s right, one week until the doctor gives the keynote at Vinimaya’s User Group Workshop on The New Archaeology of Spend Management: Uncovering Savings That You Never Knew Existed. So, if you’re part of the Vinimaya community, you might want to answer that invite.

One Hundred and Ten Years Ago Today

The United States began construction of the Panama Canal, one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

The Panama Canal, completed 100 years ago this August, is a 77.1 kilometre ship canal in Panama that cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. It has 3 locks at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake, which is an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work for the canal that sits 26 meters above sea level. (The current locks are 33.5 meters wide, but a wider lane of 55 m locks is under construction as part of an expansion project that is scheduled to complete next year. More information is in the 2012 Progress Report).

One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, the shortcut considerably redoes the amount of time taken for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which up until then had to take the lengthy, hazardous Cape Horn route around the southernmost tip of South America via the Drake Passage or the Strait of Magellan. A ship can traverse the canal in 20 to 30 hours vs the 20+ days it would take to sail the thousands of kilometres to go around the Cape. (For example, ships sailing from New York to San Francisco save nearly 13,000 kilometers going through the Canal. This saves an average slow-steamer cargo ship 20 days of sailing time!)

The Canal was managed by the US until the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for handover to Panama. From 1977 to 1999, the canal was jointly controlled by the American and Panamanian governments, until the canal was taken over entirely by the Panamanian government in 1999.

The amount of traffic that flows through the Panama Canal on an annual basis is staggering. When it first opened in 1914, about 1,000 ships went through the Canal a year. In 2011, total traffic reach 14,685 ships that generated $1,730,052,192 in tolls on 222,358,944 long tons of cargo with a net tonnage of 321,845,065! (Original table no longer available, updated transit statistics available on the Panama Canal site.)

It’s not only a modern wonder, it’s a major empowerment to the ocean trade that your global supply chains are so reliant on!