November 14-20 is Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW)

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Richard Gearhart

ARE YOU READY?!

November 14-20 is Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW)

www.unleashingideas.org

Created by the Kauffman Foundation, participation in this event gives you a chance to meet experts, get help, and maybe even win a contest – see a few below.

If you haven’t checked out the Kauffman Foundation website, www.kauffman.org,

you should! The Kauffman Foundation is the world’s largest foundation dedicated to entrepreneurship.

Global Entrepreneurship Week kicks off with start-up weekends in cities around the globe. The US dates and locations are:

November 11-13:                                November 18-20

Baton Rouge, LA                                 Bloomington, IN

Champaign, IL                                     Boulder, CO

Kansas City, MO                                  Cambridge, MA

New Haven, CT                                    Indianapolis, IN

Princeton, NJ                                        Las Vegas, NV

Seattle, WA                                            Lexington, KY

                                                                Orange County, CA

                                                New York, NY

                                                San Francisco, CA

 

For our clients and friends outside the US, dates and locations for other countries are:

                                                                                   

November 11-13                                 November 18-20

Aarhus, Denmark                                 Cairo, Egypt

Bucharest, Romania                           Calgary, Canada

Buenos Aires, Argentina                     Copenhagen, Denmark

Manama, Bahrain                                 Geneva, Switzerland

Skopje, Macedonia                               Halifax, Canada

                                                                  Sao Paolo, Brazil

                                                                 Strasbourg, France

                                                                 Toronto, Canada

                                                                 Vancouver, Canada

                                                                 Warsaw, Poland

 

The Gearhart Law patent firm is based in the US but we have clients worldwide. Visit us at www.gearhartlaw.com to see the range of languages our team is fluent in. 

To learn more about GEW, visit their website at www.unleashingideas.org. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some of the GEW contests are:

Startup Open – see their website at www.startupopen.com .

Cleantech Open Global Ideas Competition – see their website at www.cleantechopen.com – this one gives you a chance to win $100,000 in support and services.

Your Big Year – DEADLINE 9/1/11 – travel the world for a year! See their website at www.yourbigyear.com.   Even if you miss the deadline, there’s other great info. waiting for you there.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We hope you find this information useful, and whatever your endeavors, we wish you success!

Elizabeth Gearhart, Ph.D.

Patent Agent

Gearhart Law

Tags: , , , , ,

Tax Patents and the Law of Unintended Consquences

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Richard Gearhart

 

Jim Singer in his IP Spotlight Blog ipspotlight.com/2009/05/23/new-federal-bill-seeks-to-ban-tax-planning-strategy-patents/  points out:

On May 21, 2009, Representatives Rick Boucher (D-Va) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va) introduced introduced a bill that would ban patents that cover tax planning strategies.  The bill would amend Section 101 of the Patent Act to provide that a ”tax planning method” is not patent-eligible subject matter.   Under the bill, a prohibited “tax planning method” is:

a plan, strategy, technique, or scheme that is designed to reduce, minimize, or defer, or has, when implemented, the effect of reducing, minimizing, or deferring, a taxpayer’s tax liability, but does not include the use of tax preparation software or other tools used solely to perform model mathematical calculations or prepare tax or information returns.

Similar bills were introduced into the House and Senate 2007 and 2008, but the prior bills never got very far. 

Interesting question where this will go.  With all eyes on patent reform, this seems to fit right in. 
On the other hand, does allowing monopolies on tax strategies  reduce the availability of those strategies generally? (assuming only one firm can practice them).  And if that is the case, then doesn't having a tax patent increase tax revenue for the Federal Gov, since fewer tax practioners can use the strategy?  I thought the Federal Govenment was looking for ways to increase, not decrease revenue.   Is this the law (pardon the pun) of unintended consequences?
 

 

Tags: , , , ,