IP is no laughing matter ... or is it?

PatentlySilly.com is a humorous outpost on the Web that catalogs the latest and greatest of the oddball patents that get awarded in the U.S. each month. Reading about these actual patents is great -- the Weed Cutting Golf Club and Pet Operated Ball Thrower are two of my recent favorites. PatentlySilly.com is a little like The Onion, but for real.

And that brings me to my main point: developing software as a corporate asset and intellectual property is serious business. At Black Duck, we've built our entire company around empowering organizations that engage in component-based software development – that is, almost every company that builds software – to successfully navigate the IP waters by managing licensing issues for all the open source code they find and reuse.

Without the threat of lawsuits hanging over their heads, these companies can focus on what's really important – planning the next corporate weed golf.

Have a great holiday weekend even if you don't play golf.