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“…fools are able to ruin a friendship but wise people know how to profit even from enmities.” (Plutarch 46-120AD) You can do business so as to avoid bumping into other companies, or you can focus on your goals (and your strategy) and realise that inevitably, you are going to annoy others. You can believe the mantra that patents are evil, or you can invest in protecting your inventions so that you can… Read More
Some years ago I was discussing the structural features required in a new IP management system we were considering purchasing with my IT manager. We were looking at different interactive modules for docketing, products, agreements etc. After agreeing on the “must haves” and the “nice to haves”, my IT expert made the astute comment that, whatever system we select it will only be as good as the accuracy of the data entered:… Read More
You do your best work when you can sit down quietly and focus on the task at hand. It’s the same with IP strategy of course. You need to focus your attention, highly tune it to the situation before you. Identify what you’re trying to achieve, work out what you need to do to get there, then focus and prioritise these things according to the magnitude of their effect on achieving the… Read More
It’s the end of the first Batman movie from 1989 and Batman is fighting his nemesis, the Joker. Batman says, “I’m going to kill you!” The Joker says, “You IDIOT! You made me.” So it plays out in real life too. We make our own competition. From whom do you think the low cost airlines bought their used airplanes? Wasn’t Kodak a pioneer of digital photography? From where do the generic drug… Read More
Here are some reasons to give it all away, what would you add? 1 – you’re giving away some carefully selected IP to build a market 2 – based on hard data you are 100% sure that you don’t need it 3 – you know for certain that your market moves too fast and the IP you’re giving away today is already obsolete 4 – you’ve done the sums and the IP… Read More
One of the first rules of creating a winning strategy is to see things as they are and not as we believe them to be. Strategy is not forgiving of misinterpretations about the way things are. For example, if everyone believes that Microsoft is inhibiting innovation in an area when in fact the company is fostering innovation, that misinterpretation will not change the reality. To illustrate, open source thrives in the presence… Read More
‘Think globally, act locally’ – but do you really mean it? This has been the slogan of many multinationals during the years but still many fail in this respect. The new wave of expansions into China, India and Indonesia give probably the most vivid examples of the need to think locally: understand the culture, find key partners, understand the legal constraints and develop IP and business strategies that work within the given… Read More
One of the key tenets for any successful business effort is to gain and retain freedom of action. This tenet is aligned with the overall strategic goal of any person to not only succeed, but to succeed on his terms. You do not want your opportunity to advance your business to be limited by others, be it your customers, partners, and especially, competitors. In the IP world, freedom of action has a… Read More
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