John Powers

Making errors is inevitable when you draft a large number of patent applications. But now you can self-correct before your patent application is even filed, thanks to increased automation at the USPTO.

The United States men's soccer team has everything it needs to succeed in the quadrennial World Cup that begins Thursday.

It was only one match in a tournament that has another five weeks to play out. But for the United States, its stirring domination of Paraguay on Friday night was a World Cup opener to dream on.

Eddie Andelman, the voluble voice who pioneered sports talk radio in Boston in the early 1970s, has died at the age of 89.

The current path to receiving a Notice of Allowance remains slow and expensive. Both of these critical problems can be solved by the USPTO right now through a simple but powerful new tool: an Automatic Allowance Option.

Not that winning its World Cup opener last week against Paraguay wasn't a significant accomplishment for the United States, especially by three goals.

The absolute imperative was not to let their continued presence in the World Cup come down to the third match. The US men's soccer team decisively didn't.

For its quadrennial tournament spanning a globe that is more than two-thirds water, soccer divides the participating World Cup countries largely into sharks and minnows.

What to do? Multiple options, multiple decisions. The United States men's soccer team never has been in this position, having secured a place in the second round of the World Cup with a preliminary match remaining.

The result didn't matter, of course. The US men's soccer team already had won its preliminary group and clinched a place in the second round of the World Cup.