The City of Loveland hosted an innovation event in early September. Part of the impetus of the event was President Obama’s memorandum to heads of all government departments to accelerate transfer of technology from the government to small businesses. Many people were unaware of all of the efforts the current administration is taking to support small business and the ease of acquiring technology developed by government.

I was surprised at the number of other misconceptions I heard, when walking around and talking to people. The three most common: We don’t have any intellectual property to protect; we’re not doing anything new, just combining old elements; and, the changes in the patent laws don’t make any difference.

OK, so let’s bust some myths, shall we?

Myth one: We don’t have any intellectual property to protect. The first person saying this was standing next to a rack of documents the company had prepared that displayed a professionally created logo. Taking a look at the documents, it appeared that the company had spent considerable resources creating them. I suspect they would not like someone to copy the documents and use them to promote competing