I am pleased to announce that Patently-O was selected by the American Bar Association (ABA) Journal as their favorite IP Law blog for 2011. It is an honor that Patently-O has been chosen as one of the top-100 legal blogs by the ABA Journal each year for the past five years. This year, the list includes two patent law focused blogs: Patently-O along with Gene & Renee Quinn's IP Watchdog. Gene was running his popular site and working as a law professor even before I started law school. IP Watchdog was a great resource for me during law school both for Gene's straightforward explanation of the law as well as his practical guidance for those new to the profession.
Along with the listing of top-100 blogs, the ABA also conducts a public voting for the most popular blogs. In 2010, IP Watchdog was the winner, this year Patently-O won with a 49% to 41% final vote. Thanks to everyone who supported our cause! It is a great sign of the community and cooperative spirit associated with patent law professionals that both of our sites received more votes than 99% of the other law blogs. (I.e., only one site received more votes).
Of course, the Patent Law "blog-o-sphere" is not limited to our two sites. A few excellent sites that would have made my list include PatentDocs (Noonan, Zuhn, et al.), FOSSPatents (Mueller), IPKat & PatLit (Phillips, et al.), Biotech IP Blog (Holman), Inventive Step Blog (Osenga), PharmaPatents (Brinckerhoff), IP Spotlight (Singer), Just-a-Patent-Examiner, Patent Librarian (White), Green Patent Blog (Lane), All things Pros (Hazzah), TacticalIP (ZWM), Kappos Blog (Kappos), Gray on Claims (Gray), and Patent-Post-Grant, Chicago IP Litigation (Donoghue), SpicyIP, and ReexamAlert. (I apologize for missing a few good ones here). In my view, two holes are the absence of Joe Mullen's Prior Art blog and Frankel's Patent Troll Tracker. Although they don't have "blogs" per se, Hal Wegner and Greg Aharonian both deserve honorable mention here as the Deans and perhaps the Dons of patent blogs.