Law Department Management Blog
As explain in InsideCounsel, Oct. 2006 at 30, by Keith Newburry, chief patent counsel at Avery Dennison, the company’s worldwide database “creates a permanent record of every innovation, including the invention’s date and its creator.” The company had about 740 US patents in 2005 (See my post of Feb.1, 2006 for more on the IP management group at Avery Dennison.).
The database standardizes the company’s process to keep track of invention disclosures. It must also help the patent review committee of the company and reduce the amount of paper inundating the intellectual property department (See my posts of Jan. 3, 2006 on patent counsel and the value they deliver; March 8, 2006 on Six Sigma applied to patents at International Truck and Engine; and Nov. 13, 2005 about Motorola streamlining its patent function.).