November, 2011

Feld Thoughts

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Another Day, Another Patent Troll

Feld Thoughts

These days I’m regularly exposed to patent trolls. Sometimes I read about them, sometimes friends email me about them, and sometimes companies I’m an investor in gets sued by them. Whenever I read the claims in the lawsuits, I often think that the claim in question is “obvious.” For those of you out there who know how patents are supposed to work, for something to be patentable it needs to be “non-obvious” as well as “unique.” While the specific cl

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Are You An Internet Entrepreneur In Colorado? Oppose PIPA!

Feld Thoughts

If you are a entrepreneur in Colorado who is working on something related to the Internet, please consider signing the following letter to Senator Udall and Senator Bennet opposing the Protect IP (PIPA) Act. I’ve written why I believe PIPA is effectively censorship and an incredibly dangerous and destructive bill to our economy, entrepreneurship, the Internet, and free speech.

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15 Years Of Technology Progress

Feld Thoughts

Next week at Defrag I’ll be giving a talk titled “Resistance is Futile” I’ll be talking about my premise that the machines have already taken over. A few days ago a friend of mine emailed me a perfect image to summarize where we are today. Ponder and enjoy.

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American Censorship Day Is Tomorrow (11/16/11)

Feld Thoughts

There are two very disturbing bills making their way through Congress: Protect IP Act (PIPA - S.968 ) and Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA – H.R.3261 ). These bills are coated in rhetoric that I find disgusting since at their core they are online censorship bills. It’s incredible to me that Congress would take seriously anything that censors the Internet and the American public but in the last few weeks PIPA and SOPA have burst forth with incredibly momentum, largely being underwritten

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The Real Cost of Patent Trolls

Feld Thoughts

James Bessen, Jennifer Ford, and Michael Meurer of BU School of Law have written a phenomenal paper titled The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls. Rather than be politically correct and refer to NPE’s simply as “non-practicing entities”, they cut through all the noise, define what a patent troll is, and go through a detailed and rigorous analysis of the private and social costs of patent trolls.

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Don’t Forget To Bootstrap

Feld Thoughts

I recently spent some time with a long time friend and entrepreneur who I’ve funded in the past. He’s working on a new company which I think is really neat and I’m already a user of. He called me for feedback on his fundraising strategy as well as to see if it’s something that we’d be interested in investing in. It’s outside our themes and different than the type of business we invest in.

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Standing Cloud Raises $3 Million

Feld Thoughts

My friends at Standing Cloud have closed another $3 million financing from us ( Foundry Group ) and Avalon Ventures. They’ve also added a long time friend, co-investor, and amazing entrepreneur Will Herman to the board. Standing Cloud is a great example how one of our funding strategies plays out. We are the seed investors and have been working closely with the company since inception.

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