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Excellent (IP) Strategy is knowing what not to do

Continuous change in the business environment creates myriad options to utilize intellectual property - but not always strategically.

However, the best intellectual property strategies are equally clear about what will not be done as they are about the set of actions to take. This is not a new concept - many business gurus have espaused it, and it was deployed to great effect by Sun Tzu (in 'The Art of War') and Alexander the Great (after capturing Elatea).

When you're thinking about your objectives and the intellectual property strategy to adopt to leverage them, be sure to formalise what you will not do as well as what you will do. So for example, Coca Cola did not file a patent for it's recipe, IBM did not seek to maintain an exclusive monopoly, but aggresively outlicensed a great deal of IP, and so on.

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