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Vince Lombardi, the famous American football coach, said that, “Excellence is achieved by the mastery of the fundamentals.” His football team were known to spend a lot of time practicing the fundamentals of blocking, tackling, and catching the ball. All great plays are derived from these fundamentals. For the IP strategist, the most fundamental aspect of IP protection is to have first rate IP prosecution. Well-drafted and prosecuted IP can make up… Read More
I suspect that most IP Strategists have, at one time or another, used or referenced the Intellectual Capital Pyramid from Edison in the Boardroom (Davis & Harrison, 2001) to try to expand the C-Suite understanding of the value of IP/IC beyond the Legal function. You’ll recall the five levels from the base “Defensive” to “Cost Control”, “Profit Center”, “Integrated”, and finally to the apex level “Visionary”. Clearly, it’s important in most organizations… Read More
Nature provides useful strategic ideas we can draw upon in IP strategy because principles of strategy are universal. For example, nature tends to abhor inefficiencies unless those inefficiencies are somehow used to show reproductive strength. To illustrate, birds need to be light and highly streamlined to fly, but some male members of many species have excessive plumage that has the effect of showing superior genetics because an individual can still thrive while… Read More
Another truth of classical strategy is that if you try to be strong everywhere, you become strong nowhere. IP portfolios are not exempt from this truth. Comprehensive protection of all the IP around many product solutions can be expensive, and every possible element that could be protected needs to be prioritized in accord with the resources at hand and merit for doing so. The first step to balancing the associated IP budget… Read More
Global LPO put on by KPO was different from what I had expected and a little light on expected attendance. It did have a feed to a Web audience, and KPO videotaped all of the session, which will play out for some time for CLE credits for sure. So how this will play out for the long term on exposure, we will see. The discussion with the people that attended, maybe 30… Read More
Next week I will be on a panel at the Global LPO Conference titled How Can You Outsource Patent Prosecution and Litigation Support with the Cost Benefits of Low Cost Countries but the Quality of US Solutions? One of the immediate questions that I will address on the panel is whether this is the right question to ask? There are going to be qualitative differences in the work product received from domestic… Read More
IP outsourcing is becoming the norm and not the exception, especially for large multi-national companies. The three benefits of IP outsourcing sought are: Lower operational costs (lower salaries overseas) Greater proficiency in the work done (specialists) Faster workflow (added support when needed) Mismanaging outsourcing, however, can negate any or all of these benefits or create new problems altogether. What can happen? Here are some examples – by no means comprehensive. Air… Read More
I’ve just finished reading the book ‘Don’t file a patent’ by John Smith and want to share with you some thoughts. Although, in my opinion, the author is presenting a sketchy image of the entrepreneurial business (to a large extent overly simplified and generalized), the book is an easy read through material that entrepreneurs, patent attorneys and patent office officials should consider reading. Why? Because each of the above mentioned groups would… Read More
What is the value of outsourcing for an IP department manager? For many IP departments I have worked with, the value of outsourcing is calculated in terms of money saved. If you can accomplish a task in another part of the world for less than it would cost a domestic employee to perform that work in country, then the costs of salary and benefits saved can contribute to the company bottom line… Read More
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