A bill aimed at cracking down on “patent trolls” has stalled almost a year after it was reintroduced with fanfare by House Republicans after conservative groups, universities and businesses warned that the legislation will harm innovators.

Last February, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, reintroduced the Innovation Act, which in late 2013 passed the House with a massive, bipartisan vote of 325-91. The bill then died in the Senate.

Image: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. listens to the testimony of Attorney General Eric Holder, during the committee’s hearing on the oversight of the Justice Department, Tuesday, April 8, 2014, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce 

NEW YORK -- Bill and Melinda Gates want young people to get involved in solving major world problems, like finding clean energy sources and changing the division of household and childcare labour between men and women. The couple, co-chairs of the largest private foundation in the world, has made a tradition of releasing an annual letter on philanthropy. This year's edition, released Monday, called on the young to be a driving force for innovation and change.

Image: Bill and Melinda Gates in New York, on Feb. 22, 2016. (Seth Wenig / AP)

BARCELONA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Finland introduces the world’s most advanced 5G test network at Mobile World Congress 2016. This unique innovation ecosystem unites global telecommunications vendors, SMEs, network operators, public authorities, universities and research institutes to develop our digitalized future together. The 5G Test Network Finland is also open to companies from outside Finland, offering a robust test bed, which can be used to ensure new products and services are equipped for the new technology.

A crowdfunding campaign to buy a New Zealand beach has had its bid accepted after reaching its funding target. Nearly 40,000 people donated almost NZ$2.3m (£1m, $1.5m) to buy the Awaroa beach in the Abel Tasman National Park, on the north coast of South Island, which went on sale last year. Campaigners said the government and another major donor also contributed. The project was launched after a group of friends vowed to secure the beach for public use.

Image: http://www.bbc.com

There is one question that comes up every time I talk about the accelerator program we run at Microsoft. Once people realize we don’t take equity from the startups participating in the accelerator program (which basically means it’s free), they immediately raise the question “so what’s in it for you?”

A new fund that would invest in Iowa startups is in the works after receiving certification from the state.

River Glen Venture Partners aims to raise a pool of $25 million it would invest in early-stage companies, fund founder Matt Busick said.

"We think that’s the right number to build a portfolio over four to five years of 10 (startups) of between $2 and $2.5 million each" in investment, Busick told the Register.

The traditional career path is an anachronism. Stats show 40 to 50 percent of students entering college in 2016 will be self-employed or will freelance at some point in their careers, according to a study commissioned by Intuit. The economy, students’ desires and the world’s expectations of students are all very different than what I faced when I graduated college. 

I went to work for IBM, one of the largest companies in the world. I fully expected to stay there my entire career. The global economy, technology and social changes have all served to alter the traditional contract between an employer and employee, and no graduate today has expectations of decades-long employment at one company. Five years later I resigned to complete my MBA in Australia, and upon my return, I started my first business — a barbecue sauce company.

Image: http://msutoday.msu.edu

This week, I’m continuing my 12 Steps to Transitioning From Employee to Entrepreneur series. Our steps so far:

Step 1: Decide what you want your life to look like

Step 2: Research your industry options

Step 3: Consult your family

(Did you do your homework?)

Step 4 is all about paving the way for a smooth departure from your job.

Now that you know you’ll be taking your exit when the time comes, you must pave the way for a smooth departure. It’s never too early to make sure you set yourself up for a successful transition that does not burn any bridges and helps turn your co-workers into advocates for your new brand.

New Years has come and gone, but that doesn't mean you've missed your chance to set some goals for the year ahead. I personally like to set goals quarterly as it helps me stay a little more active. As spring approaches (though perhaps not as quickly as you might like), it can be helpful to look ahead and think about what you want to accomplish over the next 12 months.

Steve Blank is a legend in Silicon Valley. 

With four IPOs and eight startups under his belt, students and budding entrepreneurs frequently seek him out for advice, including what to do with their careers. 

But one thing Blank has learned from working in Silicon Valley since 1978 : building a startup or becoming a consultant isn’t a hard choice. If you're cut out to be a startup entrepreneur, you already know it.

On Friday, January 8, several high-level officials from the Obama administration—including the attorney general, the White House chief of staff, and the directors of the FBI and the NSA—met at a federal office in San Jose with senior executives from Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Apple (including CEO Tim Cook himself). On the agenda for the discussion, according to a one-page memo widely leaked to the press, was this question: “How can we make it harder for terrorists to (use) the Internet to recruit, radicalize, and mobilize followers to violence?”

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com

It might feel positively retro to apply discounted-cash-flow valuation to hot start-ups and the like. But it’s still the most reliable method.

For the past several years, investors have once again been piling into shares of companies with fast growth and high uncertainty—especially Internet and related technologies. The rapid rise and sudden collapse of many such stocks at the end of the 20th century raised questions about the sanity of a stock market that appeared to assign higher value to companies the more their losses mounted.

The best part about your 20s is that you can recover quickly from the inevitable mistakes you'll make as you figure out how to make it in the real world.

That said, there are some poor choices that have lasting effects — like not starting to save money and neglecting your health — that are easily avoidable.

Image: zoetnet/Flickr

After experiencing and writing in a recent blog about Serendipity – a fortunate happenstance, I wound up having what seemed like the opposite, an unfortunate happenstance. This occurred when I forgot to make a reservation at a hard to get into restaurant for a dinner with an out-of-town client passing through Birchrunville.

If you follow the food media you might know the place I’m referring to, the Birchrunville Store Café. As you might expect from the only business in Birchrunville, the Café is a quirky place. It’s located in the old general store, it only takes cash or checks, is BYOB, and it’s open just four nights a week. And it seats just 42 people. One table for 8 and the rest for 2 or 4 and no, you can’t push them together.

Highly educated immigrants play an outsized role in driving technological progress in the United States, while women and minorities are significantly underrepresented among the country’s innovators, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) reported today in a first-of-its-kind study.

To paint a detailed portrait of who contributes most to technological innovation in America, ITIF conducted an in-depth survey, gathering responses from more than 900 individuals who have won prestigious awards for their creations or have applied for international patents likely to have significant economic impact. The study found that the demographics of U.S. innovation are strikingly different from the demographics of the country as a whole—and even from the demographics of college-educated Americans, or those with a Ph.D. in science or engineering.

Trouncing patent trolls and achieving tort reform.

These twin goals of a House patent-reform bill helped garner support from Republican conservatives, libertarians and Democrats — which is why it sped to a lopsided victory vote of 325-91 in late 2013. Companion bills on patent reform never cleared the Senate.

Patent-reform was reintroduced in 2015, and both H.R. 9, the Innovation Act, and S. 1137, the Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship (PATENT) Act, have cleared key committees in their chambers.

After experiencing and writing in a recent blog about Serendipity – a fortunate happenstance, I wound up having what seemed like the opposite, an unfortunate happenstance. This occurred when I forgot to make a reservation at a hard to get into restaurant for a dinner with an out-of-town client passing through Birchrunville.

If you follow the food media you might know the place I’m referring to, the Birchrunville Store Café. As you might expect from the only business in Birchrunville, the Café is a quirky place. It’s located in the old general store, it only takes cash or checks, is BYOB, and it’s open just four nights a week. And it seats just 42 people. One table for 8 and the rest for 2 or 4 and no, you can’t push them together.

Companies often complain about the unrealistic expectations of millennial workers, but heeding their call to action can improve the work environment for everyone.

We recently came across the following quote about the younger generation:

Because all the peoples of the world are part of one electronically based, intercommunicating network, young people everywhere share a kind of experience that none of the elders ever had. . . . This break between generations is wholly new: it is planetary and universal.

MIT electrical engineering and computer science professor Anant Agarwal was a guest on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” a few years ago. He told host Stephen Colbert about his online learning site, edX, saying, “You can take these great courses from MIT, from Harvard … and it’s free.”

The comedian quipped, “(If) I go to an elite university — let’s say I go to your Harvards or your MITs or your Berkeleys out there — I get to say ‘I went to Harvard.’ That’s half of what you’re paying for!”

Imagine you are admitted to a hospital for treatment of a serious but treatable illness, and then your records are stolen. The medical staff is now at a complete loss about your care. While the doctors are scrambling to figure out what to do, they soon realize that all the hospital’s records are missing and that someone is demanding that the hospital pay a ransom in exchange for their release. Now imagine further that the hospital has no alternative but to pay the demand (in Bitcoins) in order to ensure the safety of its patients.