Review: IPWatchdog.com

The following is a paid review.

Foreword

I've turned down many review opportunities for sites unrelated to games, but I decided to do this one. After all, intellectual property is one of the sub-themes of this blog, what with my poetry IP codes, board and card game patents, and so on. And I really liked one of the features of this site, the Museum of Obscure Patents.

It's a weekly feed containing a ridiculous patent of the week, from disposable boxer shorts to a "beerbrella" to a "stick" for playing with a dog. Some of them are games, too, like the "skin-irritating game". A great read.

Intellectual Property

IPWatchdog is an information resource for all areas of intellectual property (IP). Its main contributor is a New York patent attorney named Eugene R. Quinn, Jr.

Interesting features include:

IP Articles: Hundreds of articles on intellectual property, including basic and advanced information on copyrights, patents including provisional patents, trademarks, and trade secrets.

Business Articles: Including information how to build a web presence, as well as IP issues, of course.

Invention Articles: Including information about keeping an invention notebook and invention marketing, as well as IP issues, of course.

The Museum of Obscure Patents, as noted above.

Other sections have recently been introduced and so don't contain much information yet, such as sections on the Internet, International IP law, IP cartoons, a user forum, and an Inventor's Hall of Fame.

Review

There's not much to say about all these features except that they're good. It's a well done site, well organized, with useful information.

There are some minor navigational issues. Some of the menus are not consistent, which looks like an oversight; the menus were updated on some pages but not on others. Also, the fonts are a little wacky. A single article might change fonts and font sizes three times or more. It might be a Firefox issue, but I suspect the CSS needs some clean up.

Professional Services

Of course, what's a nice site without an offer of professional services. In another strange navigational issue, the professional services offered by the company behind the site are available only from the Site Map page. The services offered include help with business and inventions, as well as consultation and legal preparation of IP services.

I like that the promotional aspect of the site is low key, but surely they could make the link to their professional services just a little more prominent.