China may overtake Japan to become the world's second-largest economy this year. On its heels is India, and countries such as Brazil and Russia are not far behind. What does this mean for entrepreneurs? That, increasingly, the big opportunities lie outside the U.S.  Most people aren't aware of another advantage in emerging markets: you can freely leverage the wealth of proven intellectual property that has already been created in developed economies. Most countries outside the U.S. and Europe lie in a Patent-Free Zone—where companies have not filed patents because they believe there is no market for their goods. So this intellectual property is available to anyone in those nations who can find a use for it.

Take the iPhone as an example: it has over 1000 patents; yet Apple does not apply for patent protection in countries like Peru, Ghana, or Ecuador, or, for that matter, in most of the developing world. So entrepreneurs could use these patent filings to gain information to make an iPhone-like device that solves the unique problems of these countries. Apple has so far received 3287 U.S.-issued patents and has 1767 applications pending: a total of 5054 (for all of its products). Yet it has filed for only about 300 patents in China and has been issued 19. In India, it has filed only 38 patent applications and has received four patents. In Mexico it has filed for 109 and received 59 patents. So even India, China, and Mexico are wide-open fields.

Now consider diabetes technology.  At the end of 2009, there were more than 12,070 patents issued or pending in the U.S. In Jordan there were only 36, and none were filed in most of Africa. Big pharma considers these markets either too small or too poor; it also hasn't produced affordable drugs for the millions of desperate people who are increasingly suffering from disease in Africa and the developing world.  But there is nothing stopping entrepreneurs from completing these tasks. The blueprints are readily available in the U.S. patent database.

JiNan Glasgow, a North Carolina–based patent attorney and CEO of NeoPatents, has been researching the global patent system and developing technologies to explore and map the patent databases. She found that only 5–10% of patents that are filed in the U.S. are actually used to provide commercial value. The rest go to waste.

Glasgow also found that most U.S. companies have been ignoring emerging markets and not filing any patents there. When she compared the geography of patent filings with the UN Human Development Index, she noted a strong correlation: the richer the country, the greater the number of patents. This means that the wealth of the developed world's intellectual property is freely available for use in the emerging regions, where patents are not filed. Glasgow called this the Patent-Free Zone—which covers most of the world, except for the U.S. and Western Europe. BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) have only recently seen increases in patent filings—so all the patents filed in the U.S. over the past few decades are still within the free zone.

The way the patent system works is that when you have an idea that is new and unique and you want to protect it, you file a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). If the USPTO determines that you are indeed the original inventor, it grants a patent, a temporary monopoly that stops others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing your invention in the U.S. for 20 years. But this is only in the U.S. To restrict people in other countries, you need to file a patent in that country, and to do so within one year of receiving a U.S. patent. Most U.S. inventors don't care, because they are focused on local markets.  But multinationals do usually file patents in every country where they expect to do business. It is legal for anyone in the countries where patents aren't filed to use these ideas.  And this opens up big opportunities in those countries.

Take desalination, in which GE is one of the largest players. GE has spent more than $4.1 billion to acquire its part of the desalination business. Yet a decade after commencing, they’re still nowhere close to making desalination affordable and sustainable. GE's progress depends on the patents it owns. As of 2009, GE invented 47 of the 832 U.S. patents in this field—just 5.6%, or a little more than one-twentieth. Consider the progress that GE could make if it could also use any of the patents that it doesn't own—of which there are many.

How much better would the world be if we didn't have to spend another ten years waiting for innovation in the desalination space? There are many areas of collaboration in the Patent-Free Zone that could produce innovative solutions for our world. Solar power, electric cars, mobile technologies for the poor, disease eradication, medical devices, food processing—to name a few. Wouldn't it be ironic if poor countries ended up solving the problems of the rich? And I'll ask my entrepreneur friends the same question I've asked before: What's Better: Saving the World or Building Another Facebook app?

Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

Images: Women Barefoot Solar Engineers of Africa by Barefoot Photographers of Tilonia, Jerry Stifelman, and United Nations Human Development Index

Due to the proliferation of deals sites like Groupon and Livingsocial, couponing is currently the hottest thing on the Internet. At yesterday's Social Currency CrunchUp, TechCrunch CEO and resident coupon expert Heather Harde sat down with News America Marketing VP Ginny Byrnes to dispense couponing advice to startups, which tend to approach the problem from a technical perspective.

As we enter the next generation of couponing, this list of tried and true lessons is a must-read for those vying for the top of the heap.

10. There are two types of shoppers: Planners and impulse buyers

Planners take time, make a list, look at the circulars, check coupon sites and clip coupons at home. The impulse purchaser prefers to make buying decisions on impulse while they're in the store.

These two types need a two-prong approach to in order to best be reached when buying decisions are made: Home (planners) vs. Point of purchase (impulse buyers). For example, an impulse buyer needs an advertisement or promotion that calls out and draws attention to the product – i.e. "tell me how this will make my life easier."

9. Brand tactics are different for each consumer: Loyals, Switchers, Non-Category User

Loyal: Encourage  a loyal customer to continue purchasing in high volume, perhaps offering “buy two get one free” types of offers.

Switcher: Switchers are price sensitive, so a discount of a few cents over your leading competitor can hook them and bring them into the category.

Non-Category User: Oftentimes offering a trial of your product can give people incentive to continue using it.

8. Premium brands need to pretend they don’t discount

Because high price points equal higher quality in the minds of consumers, premium brands need to be more delicate with their discounting, using promotions that are more targeted to an elite niche market. Luxury brands succeed by providing a higher quality free sample, as well as cultivating a higher end look and feel.

7. Create promotional patterns to match purchase cycles

Each product has its own shelf life so businesses need to take into account when and what is the best way to reach their target consumer. Luckily this is getting easier with technology’s ever expanding capabilities to profile and target consumers.

6. Consumer targeting: Know when to use a hammer and when to use a scalpel

Targeting is a double-edged sword — You don’t want to be too targeted because you don't want to miss out on growing your market. Still some products, such as septic tank cleaner, are better served using a direct approach.

Don't be too narrow minded with your targeting; If you don’t see toilet paper on a customer's Safeway loyalty card data, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not buying toilet paper, they might be paper pantry loading at CostCo and not Safeway.

5. Redemption rates, highs lows, & truth

While coupon redemption rates are relatively low (.5% to 1% according to CMS) when you launch a coupon campaign you are generating awareness. Customers recall seeing a coupon promotion, so even though they might not be redeeming the offer, they are still purchasing your product.

4. All promotions need a little pain

You want to make sure that the customer works a little, giving someone a coupon for a latte while they're in line at Starbucks feels like cheating. "If the consumer gets the discount without any work, then the brand doesn't feel like they got credit for the discount or helped to really change consumer behavior," Heather Harde points out.

3. 360 degree marketing works

With currently available technology (like QR or shortcodes) it's now more than ever possible to interact with your customer at multiple touch points. Touching the consumer no matter whether they are outside, at the store, in home or at point of purchase is crucial for brand absorption.

2. Build for your currency: Virtual vs. real money

While with virtual currency you can always change your plan, if you're using monetary coupons you first need the correct infrastructure and security to complete what amounts to financial transactions.

1. Don’t slow down the checkout

You want to make it as easy as possible for consumers and retailers to buy your product. You don’t want a consumer to give up on a purchase because the process is so slow, or because there are issues or concerns or point of purchase.

Frictionless options such as integrating customer coupons into loyalty cards, with all coupons preloaded for redemption at point of purchase, are currently at the bleeding edge of coupon marketing innovation.

Yelp’s CEO Jeremy Stoppelman deserves credit for trying to play nice with Google, even appearing onstage at the Social Currency CrunchUp with John Hanke, a Google VP of Product Management. As expected the tension was palpable, as Hanke and Stoppelman discussed Google Places and the goliath’s heavy reliance on Yelp’s content.

As an increasingly robust aggregator of local reviews, Google Places is turning into a formidable opponent. Several years ago, Google paid Yelp for access to their huge database of reviews; however, eventually Yelp terminated the deal. All was well until Google started crawling Yelp’s pages for unlicensed content to populate Google Places. Adding insult to injury, Google often pushes Yelp’s data to the bottom of its review areas, favoring instead licensed partners like Zagat. Oh, what a tangled web of reviews we weave.

Beyond the professional veneer, there’s no question that Stoppelman feels burned.

The recent developments, he says, were unexpected:

“Well I think we were surprised because we hadn’t participated in Place Pages over the years. Like we were in sort of the precursor to Place Pages back in something like 2006 and then we left because we weren’t really happy in the direction it was going and we thought OK we’ll just show up in organic results and everybody is still happy. And then yeah, we found our content was showing up there and it is ranked dead last right now. I don’t think that’s sort of a permanent situation from what we gather from talking to Google, they are sort of  headed in a new direction that which hopefully will be more positive.”

Yelp, of course, is not always the victim. The site has been criticized for ripping Foursquare’s techniques, with this year’s introduction of check-ins, leader boards, badges and the not-so-subtle “dukedom” honor. Now, Yelp is tiptoeing near Groupon’s turf, as it tests limited deals in cities like Sacramento. During our post-panel video interview, we got a chance to talk to Stoppelman about Google Places and Yelp’s budding rivalries with Foursquare and Groupon. See full video above— below are a couple key highlights:

On Check-Ins
-Android has been a particularly strong platform— the number of Yelp downloads grew 40% week over week for about a month. Now, its growing 15% week over week.

On Limited Sales
-Yelp will eventually roll out a product that will capitalize on its strength as a destination for time sensitive searches. “We have all this traffic, we have 35 million monthly visiting the site and so what could we do for people that are actually looking for a massage right now versus you know alerting them hey there’s this deal is available. So are there some interesting twists on just the Groupon model that we can apply because we’re Yelp.”

Well this is interesting. One of the key points at Apple’s recent press conference to discuss the iPhone 4′s antenna, was that the problem (called “attenuation”) is not unique to the iPhone 4. To highlight this, Apple showed videos of the problem on smartphones by rival companies. Those videos were then posted to a special antenna page on Apple’s website. Those videos are now gone.

As you can see on this page, the videos are nowhere to be found. Instead, the page now only shows the overview of the antenna design and test labs. A search of Apple’s website brings up a few of the landing pages where the videos used to be — here’s the Droid X one, for example — but now those just redirect to the antenna design page as well. Odd.

Here’s what else is interesting: the original page with these videos still does reside on the Canadian version of Apple’s website. Here’s you’ll find the videos for the BlackBerry Bold 9700, the HTC Droid Eris, the Motorola Droid X, the Nokia N97 Mini, the Samsung Omnia II, the iPhone 3GS, and the iPhone 4. However, the Asian version of Apple’s site has the videos removed as well.

The videos are still up on Apple’s official YouTube channel, but they are no longer featured, and are a little bit trickier to find.

We’ve reached out to Apple for an official response as to why they removed them from the website. Obviously, they caused quite a bit of controversy – with some rivals, like RIM (makers of the BlackBerry), even responding. Has the threat of lawsuits from rivals forced Apple to take them down? Or did they take them down due to some of the negative backlash they were receiving? Or perhaps Apple is simply trying to move on from the situation — but again, the antenna design and test lab page is still there (though it doesn’t call out rivals specifically).

At the top of this post, find what the /antenna site currently looks like in the U.S. Below, find what it used to look like — and still does for the Canadian version of the site.

[thanks Noah]

Let’s call this a single source rumor. But the source is Paul Carr’s camera, so we feel pretty good about it. The picture was taken last night at the TechCrunch summer party at August Capital.

Tello, says our source (the camera), has raised $100,000 from angel investor Dave McClure, who’s checks appear to have an imprint of the Twitter fail whale in the background. This is one of his first investments from his shiny new 500 Startups fund.

What’s Tello? We don’t actually know. Founder and CEO Joe Beninato was previously the CEO of Presto. We had a lot of fun with that one. Cofounder and CTO John Cwikla has experience at GameLayers, Doostang, Xoom and other startups.

The total size of this round is around $1 million, we hear.

Does a picture say a thousand words? I dunno. Someone please count them. More details as they come in.

The Magic Trackpad (if I must call it that) has generated some controversy on the TC network. MG thinks it signals the end of the mouse era. I think it’s a great tool but is being lauded by a group of people unfamiliar with decent mice (read: Mac users). I happen to love both Apple’s trackpads and great mice at the same time, but it seems to me that we’re overlooking the real conflict here. And as it turns out, mice and trackpads (magic or otherwise) are on the same side.

The next generation of input is already here; chances are you have it in your pocket. Yet, advanced as it is, there are fundamental shortcomings that will prevent it from completely supplanting the interfaces we’ve grown up with.

Continue reading…

You Americans have all the good stuff. Stuff like BP pumping oil in the Ocean and guns, lots of guns. And then you have Netflix and we people outside the U.S. are wondering what could it feel like to have a service like that. Now I know.