Blog Archive

Doers and communicators first, CIPOs after that

Today’s corporate leaders don’t understand and don’t care about intellectual property – and so say all of us, went the tune at the recent IP Business Congress in Chicago.

Wow.

If that’s right (and it is only anecdotal so far) then let’s put off trying to make CEOs anoint a Chief Intellectual Property Officer (CIPO), ok?

Let’s work on the basics first.

Don’t get me wrong, the debate around CIPOs, their preferred attributes and metrics to measure them is incredibly important. Many companies would ideally have a CIPO and if nothing else, the debate has become a touch point for what is clearly the bigger issue – raising the profile of intellectual property as a source of strategic advantage.

Ok, so give me something practical, I hear you say. How do I make the intellectual property story more compelling?

This is not rocket surgery, it is being done all the time in countless ways in every corporation. You have to build your own credibility within your organisation as someone who reliably gets the job done. As you build trust with those senior to you, then your (ongoing?) commitment to communicating the value that can be added using intellectual property will become more prominent.

Make some (achievable) promises and then deliver. The more that you do this, the more credibility will be given to the IP function, and the greater awareness those senior to you will have. Some would call such a person an ‘IP Evangelist’ – I would say that they are just doing their job. People executing on difficult tasks bit by bit has always been what success is about.

Forget about what you’re called. Focus on delivering value using the tools of IP, and the rest will follow. Perhaps we will one day get to a position where all smart companies have a designated CIPO. But then again, perhaps not. Either way there should be someone in the organisation championing the use of intellectual property to deliver value.

Call them what you want, just as long as they get the job done.

(Photo credit: gopal1035)

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 7:00am — IP ON THE NET, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF IP, IP WARS, PHARMA, BIOTECH & CHEM IP STRATEGY, GLOBAL IP STRATEGY

20 client engagements 35 countries June 2009 insights from Duncan Bucknell Company

Firstly, thanks to our clients who involved us in 20 exciting engagements across over 35 countries in June 2009. Clients we worked with this month were based across North America, Europe, India and the Asia Pacific and we worked with them on corporate, product and contentious intellectual property strategy.

Here are some of our insights from the month that was:
The key message this month came out of IP Business Congress 2009 in Chicago – forget patents and focus on communicating value.

In our opinion, the biggest news in the IP world this month was the Swedish Pirate Party winning a seat in the EU parliament.

There were also some big IP wins for some of our clients in the news, but we can’t mention them here, except to say congratulations again.

The best podcast moment was the US, Europe and China discussion with Hal Wegner, Weijiang Si and Jeremy Philips.

In other news we’re delighted to be adding a second outstanding Indian team member to our firm. We’re looking forward to when she can start. We’re currently in discussions with potential team members from China and the USA.

Finally, we’ve decided to open up the IP Think Tank’s virtual doors to allow others to publish high quality articles in our articles area. We have a number of research projects ongoing and will be keen to collaborate when appropriate as well. Please do let us know if you would like more information about this initiative.

(Photo credit: marcelgermain)

Friday, June 26, 2009 11:35am — IP ON THE NET, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF IP, IP WARS, GLOBAL IP STRATEGY

Moving from 'patents kill' to sensible debate - new article at IP Think Tank

The brand value of IP is currently somewhere between 'patents kill' and a general lack of awareness of what IP actually is. So says Dr. Roya Ghafele in the most recent article to be published at IP Think Tank - 'Make patents not war'. Dr Ghafele is of course a lecturer at the University of Oxford.

And, yes, we're opening our virtual doors to publish (or republish) high quality, research based articles from others. We will collaborate on some of these articles, when appropriate.)

Here are a few interesting excerpts from the article:

'What can be done to calm the situation and to stop the international “IP war”? The crucial element in this exercise is to understand the concept of “incentives”. Both, business and civil society have an “incentive” to move from a stage of war to a constructive, solution driven approach.'

'So far, IP has been largely looked upon from a legal perspective, which comes as no surprise since current educational systems worldwide only train lawyers in IP.'

'A different perspective on IP, one that looks at it as a strategic asset more than a legal framework gives way to new managerial perspectives on intellectual property.'

'It needs political will, business initiative and the concerted effort of both business and the public sector to foster inclusion and knowledge equity rather than further marginalization and discrimination.'

Please do come and add your thoughts to the debate.

(Photo credit: ~jjjohn~)

Thursday, June 25, 2009 8:52pm — STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF IP, GLOBAL IP STRATEGY

Let's be practical about communicating IP value

There's some interesting buzz going around about our recent post 'Forget patents and focus on communicating IP value'.

The discussion in the comments section of the post so far has been particularly interesting and as part of it I asked for suggestions about the next, practical step to take to move things in the right direction.

Bruce Berman wrote in with some great suggestions, here is an excerpt from his email:

"The first steps are for IP holders to acknowledge and answer some basic questions:

Who are your IP stakeholders? (Most companies have at least seven key audiences.)
What do stakeholders already know about IP? Is it accurate?
How can IP holders help them to be better-informed?
What about your IP assets or strategy do audiences need to know? Why?
When and how should the information be conveyed?
How does your business define patent “performance”?
Whom at your company should be point-person(s) for communicating IP strategy, results and value?
How can they be supported?
What can outside advisors bring to the table?
To what extent should c-level and other executives be involved in IP reporting?
If IP holders, especially publicly held ones, do not provide some form of IA disclosure, what is the likelihood they will be forced to by the SEC, FASB or other regulatory body?

Smart IP holders should view increased transparency as an opportunity; not as a burden. It lowers risk factors rather than increases them."

So what do you think. What would you add?

(Photo credit: ucumari)

Thursday, June 25, 2009 2:28pm — STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF IP, GLOBAL IP STRATEGY

Feeding the sharks or fuelling the economy?

There’s been a lot of rubbish written and spoken about the ‘patent troll’ threat to the world. Truth be known, anyone who invents truly patentable subject matter should have the right to obtain the fruits of their labours. What’s so unfair about that?

Most innovation is done in the crowd, not in large companies. This is clear cut. An example of this is the increasing trend towards outsourcing innovation undertaken by large companies – many pharmaceutical companies now outsource 50% or more of their discovery and development work. (Or, more accurately, select from amongst an ever burgeoning pool of in-licensing opportunities.)

The mere fact that an entity does not (cannot?) produce and market a product themselves should not count against them.

And sure, it is incredibly difficult for companies in certain industries to secure freedom to operate for products which could conceivably infringe patents covering hundreds of components. The mere difficulty of this exercise is not enough, in my view. This is clearly an issue that can be substantially addressed by better technology and is indeed being addressed by creative business models such as those of AST and RPX.

We should analyse the factors which have created the underlying causes and seek to address them (actually we already know what they are...), if we want to turn the ‘troll problem’ into the NPE opportunity that it should be. And it really is an opportunity for all – access to innovation for large companies and a chance to monetize inventions for those unable to practice their inventions commercially.

Perhaps we should focus less on trying to bend the system (eg. patent reform) to add yet another ineffective quick fix on an already complex system, and instead look for more elegant and longer term opportunities.

(photo credit: Michael Aston)