Christopher Pike’s book ‘Virtual Monopoly‘ provides an interesting set of four choices in the way to respond to the ‘crowded canvas’ created by the large and ongoing boom in IP – generating activity. Here they are:

1 – ‘Fervent firefighters’ view third party IP as an operational matter – make assessments at the project management level along with other project risks, such as market, regulatory, financial, organisational, etc.

2 – ‘Earnest evaluators’ engage in early, diligent analysis of the legal risk posed by third party IP and invest heavily in reources for thorough IP research and analysis.

3 – ‘Dynamic dealers’ make little or no proactive assemsment of third party IP. Instead, they deal with IP issues as and when they arise – through settlements, cross-licenses, defending litigation and so on.

4 – ‘Confident creators’ view the crowded IP environment as a creative challenge. They invest in resources for researching third party IP and use it to their competitive advantage.

Its not hard to see which one Christopher recommends – the confident creators.

However, each of these models can be useful at different times and in different situations. More importantly, each of these approaches may need to be applied by the same entity to different aspects of its IP Strategy.