How much the mythical man month applies to your project depends on how you structure your team, architecture, and communications.

This is a great list of some great VC blogs. They’re earning their uniques, imo…

caterpillarcowboy:

1. Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, A VC (100,279)
2. Guy Kawasaki, Garage Technology Ventures, How To Change The World (82,838)
3. Paul Graham, YCombinator, Essays (71,924)
4. Brad Feld, Foundry Group, Feld Thoughts (45,633)
5. Mark Suster, GRP Partners, Both Sides of the Table (39,389)
6. Bill Gurley, Benchmark Capital, Above The Crowd (23,084)
7. Dave McClure, Founders Fund, Master of 500 Hats (21,462)
8. Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital, Redeye VC (12,972)
9. Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital, Bijan Sabet (12,451)
10. Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Ventures Partners, LSVP (12,097)
11. Mark Peter Davis, DFJ Gotham Ventures, Venture Made Transparent (12,010)
12. Larry Cheng, Volition Capital, Thinking About Thinking (11,851)
13. Eric Friedman, Union Square Ventures, Marketing.fm (11,520)
14. Multiple Authors, Union Square Ventures, Union Square Ventures Blog (11,408)
15. Albert Wenger, Union Square Ventures, Continuations (9,729)
16. Christine Herron, First Round Capital, Christine.net (9,561)
17. Mendelson/Feld, Foundry Group, Ask The VC (9,270)
18. Seth Levine, Foundry Group, VC Adventure (8,206)
19. Nic Brisbourne, Esprit Capital Partners, The Equity Kicker (8,052)
20. Fred Destin, Atlas Venture, Fred Destin’s Blog (7,928)

“In its fourth precedential opinion of 2009, an enlarged panel of the BPAI has created a new test for judging whether a claimed machine (or article of manufacture) that takes advantage of a mathematical algorithm falls within the patentable subject matter requirements of 35 U.S.C. Section 101. The two-part test parallels the Federal Circuit’sBilski decision that focused on the patentablility of method claims. Of course, Bilski is now pending before the Supreme Court and a decision is expected in the Spring of 2010.”

http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/12/patentable-subject-matter-of-a-machine-that-uses-a-mathematical-algorithm.html

Human translation:  (disclaimer: IANAL)

1) More software patents are going to be rejected by the PTO starting today due to the new test criteria for patentability.

2) You can’t just patent a mathematical algorithm that runs on pretty much any hardware. It must have a specific tangible use (emphasis mine)

3) What you’re trying to patent must be very narrow and tied to the tangible use. Creating a computational algorithm which compresses data using an algorithm could be considered overly broad, for example. (would existing patents such as the LZW patent pass this test? I doubt it! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lempel–Ziv–Welch#Patents )

A couple of questions:

1) How does this change the value of patents as IP for venture or M&A purposes?

2) What about the existing software patents which might fail the new tests? (e.g. what does the PTO plan for a transition policy and how will this be implemented?)