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Chapter 2
THE IP UNIVERSE
2.1 IT’S MORE COMPLICATED
THAN YOU THINK
One of this book’s themes is that patenting in the IP Era of the Information Age
is more complicated than most people working in the technology world realize.
eIP universe is complex, and assumptions based on a spherical patent in a
vacuum quickly break down and yield the wrong answers in important situations.
is leads us to an existential question: Why is the IP universe so complex?
2.2 THE IP BIG BANG
To answer this question, consider the cosmology of the IP universe. We can trace
the origins of the IP universe in the United States to the IP Big Bang that hap-
pened on Septemb ...