Wasted WSJ and interesting graphs

Browsing through back issues of Saturday (6/12/07-ish) Wall Street Journal, page A8, has an article on patent reform: "Businesses Battle Over Patent Law", not even getting the captions right. It has "Technology" companies like Microsoft on one side, and "Biotech etc." companies on the other. Hey, Journal - "biotech" is short for "bioTECHNOLOGY"!

The article has a few interesting statistics:

- intangible assets, including IP, account for nearly one-third
of the value of all U.S. stocks, about $5 trillion

- software patents make up about 15% of all issued patents (hey,
people, send me more invalidity search requests :-)

- more patent cases are settled out of court than for other
bodies of civil law

They have one dishonest graph - the number of patent lawsuits filed in the US courts each year. The graph itself has accurate data, and looks ominous, until you normalize the data to the number of issued patents each year or to the number of companies in the US each year or to the
GDP each year, and the result is a boring fact - the percentage of issued patents litigated each year has remained constant for decades.

And those who know me - I do love interesting graphs.

(the same stupid graph again, that of the intensity of my glittered lipstick, the amount of hazel mocha in my Euro design mug, and the speed of my internet connection plotted against time)

Someone is keeping track of Wall Street, and is being very inventive about it - DeepMarket- the blog analyzes stock performance like a wizard, and anyone who has had Calculus back in college will appreciate the blog's inverted head and shoulders chart report. So many stock opportunities! I have hedged it all in gold.