Comments from Marshall Phelps and Bill Elkington

In a strikingly similar vein (and before Joff's post), Marshall Phelps (Microsoft) and Bill Elkington (Rockwell Collins) were kind enough to provide me with their thoughts on our recent post: Doers and communicators first  CIPOs after that . 

As Marshall has said a few times now, you might as well call a CIPO a Chief Aardvark Officer for all that the title matters.  Marshall's specific comments on the piece were:

"I think this is fine—you might want to clarify the “role” vs the “title”. One can have the role w/o the title. Indeed about 2 years ago the WSJ ran a lengthy article on the watering down of C suite titles—watered down by expansion and bloating. You may want to find that as a reference." 

Here's a link to the article Marshall mentioned:  'What's in a title? Ego Stroking, Chiefly'.
 

Here are Bill's detailed comments:

"First, the discussion about CIPO title is a bit misframed.  It isn't so much a discussion about a title as a role.  The implied question is whether the function of corporate IP strategy and management should report to a 21st century company's CEO or one of his direct reports, such as the Chief Legal Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Financial Officer, or the Chief Strategy Officer.  The two questions driving this implied question are these:  (1) Aren't the skills, knowledge, behaviors, and actions concerning IP strategy and management different enough from the other skills, knowledge, behaviors, and actions required of the other C-level executives that a separate C-level position should be created? and (2) Isn't enough value associated with IP in the 21st century corporation that someone expert in its strategy and management should be given responsibility for optimizing that value?

Second, of course performance is important.  Corporate growth and profit and ROI and ROC are all of paramount importance.  And to keep your job in a 21st century for profit corporation you must perform well.  This isn't what is being discussed when the role of CIPO is being recommended for our consideration.  What is being discussed is the lack of visibility of the beneficial effects and potential beneficial effects of excellent IP strategy and management on the financial metrics of the corporation.

Third, in order for us to formulate a coherant concept of the CIPO, we need to ask a couple of additional questions:  (1) What does excellent IP strategy and management look like in various kinds of industries, in various kinds of companies, and in various positions in the value chain? and (2) What are the most useful and effective ways of measuring IP strategy and management in these many different kinds of companies?

Fourth, and finally, to attempt an answer to the above questions, I suggest we move the CIPO discussion on to the real world.  Thusfar, in the articles in IAM Magazine and in the discussions in the 2009 IP Business Congress, we have been treated to a number of quite useful but also abstract and honorific notions about the CIPO.  I think the best way to provoke the development of a real understanding of the CIPO role is to look at case studies in which real people (with all their flaws) are acting like CIPOs (in real, messy, corporate circumstances), even though they may not be C-level executives.  And I suggest we use those case studies to first understand the activities, behaviors, and reasonable expectations of real human beings in the role.  And then, as we explore the role through the case study method, we may also try our hand at some principles and measures that will hold water."

Go on, tell us what you think.
 

(Photo credit: Thomas Hawk)

3 interesting things in this issue of IAM Magazine were:
(1) The twice yearly ‘Practice Business Review’ sessions held at Microsoft and their ongoing efforts to quantify the value that the IP function adds;
(2) Despite great strides made by numerous large pharmaceutical companies, Oxfam still finds much to complain about rather than congratulate and collaborate about; and
(3) William Barret’s piece on crazy inventions and their place in allowing innovation (and invention?) to flourish – particularly when contrasted with Craig Opperman’s piece on the ‘Elephant in the Room’ (which basically highlights the elderly chestnut that senior executives should focus on patent quality, not quantity).

Most surprising was the quote: “At present we don’t have a coherent, unified approach to applying antitrust principles to IP-related activities and transactions.” from Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s Chief Intellectual Property Officer.  Actually, after the initial surprise, it makes a great deal of sense.  The overlap between IP and Competition law is incredibly complex, particularly when you overlay the many differences that arise across national boundaries.

Find out more at: www.iam-magazine.com 
 

Check out this article by our online specialist, Ben Lehman - "The world's most popular free patent search engines are..."

Ben ranks the top sites in order of popularity and explains how this is derived (we won't spoil the results here.)  He also explains how to measure popularity without looking just at traffic rank and provides practical insights into some of the basics of the world of internet metrics.

As always, please let us know what you think.

I’ve explained some of the metrics we’ve used below.  Note that the numbers above change on a daily basis, so it might be different when you check for yourself.

The top result highlights some of the limitations of the available data.  The statistics for the Google patent search service are actually for the overall Google search engine!  So while the Google patent search service does offer some unique features for free, it’s not as popular as the above table makes out.  And it’s not possible with public data to really compare the Google service with others due to the popularity of its general search engine confusing the results.

Therefore, the most popular free patent search website is FreePatentsOnline, which has also recently added a free chemical search service.  At 1.6 million unique users per month it’s well ahead of the pack. 

But sheer traffic popularity alone shouldn’t be the sole metric by which you measure the popularity of a website.  For a service based website, it’s sometimes more interesting to compare visits per person over the month, which speaks more about the service and type of person accessing the site than raw traffic numbers alone.  For FreePatentsOnline, there are at most 160k users which return to the site more than once a month, a small fraction of its overall traffic.  For sites like PatentLens, all of its users return more than once a month, but it’s still a drop in the ocean compared to FreePatentsOnline overall returning traffic.  Patents.com has 12 times the traffic of PatentLens, but only twice the number of returning users.

It’s difficult to draw any conclusions from that information, particularly given that these services are freely available for anyone to use.  Perhaps the number is more a comment on the consequences of being prominent in Google.  Often being listed high in Google’s search results for generic terms like “patents” will generate significant traffic, but not necessarily traffic that is highly targeted to your particular service.  While other, more targeted links might send only a small trickle of users, but all of them are high users of the service.

Of the government sites, the US sites receives the most attention by far.  Even though it’s scope is narrow, it beats some of the more general free search sites.  Next is the European Patent Office.  Looking at the government sites shows the imprecise nature of the data – there is some significant differences between the Alexa traffic ranking and the Compete.com unique users per month.  There are a number of reasons for these differences, but sometimes it’s the result of advertising increasing the number of users hitting the site, but not actually using the service.

As mentioned above, the data for these sites is changing all the time, as are the services provided by those sites.   It will be interesting to review these services again in 6 months time. 

Please let us know if you have any favourites that should be added to the list.


Notes on the metrics used.

Three popular ways to compare website performance are Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rank and Compete.com.  There are many others, but these three are free and commonly used.

Google PageRank is the method used by Google to rank websites on its search engine.  The higher the PageRank (out of a possible score of 10), the more important Google thinks the website is.  While the finer details of the method are known only inside Google (and for good reason), the basic algorithm uses the number of sites linking to a particular site as a measure of its popularity.  The more sites that link, the more important it must be and the higher the PageRank.  When ranking the relevance of search results, Google combines the PageRank value of a website together with the prominence of the particular search term on the page, which determines the order of results.  You can check the PageRank of a website here.

Alexa Traffic Rank is a little different.  Alexa ranks websites based on the overall traffic to that website.  The lower the rank, the more traffic Alexa thinks your website receives.  It’s almost an impossible task to determine the real traffic going to a website, but Alexa makes a reasonable estimate using the log files from many different ISPs and other service providers.  One of the issues/features of using Alexa is that it measures traffic at the domain level, not the page.  So, using Google as an example, Alexa doesn’t distinguish between http://www.google.com and http://www.google.com/patents

Compete.com is similar to Alexa Traffic Rank, but keeps data on subdomains, one of the key reasons for significant difference above. 

And just so you can find them, here are the URLs:

#    Name    URL
1    Google Patent Search    http://www.google.com/patents 
2    Free Patents Online    http://www.freepatentsonline.com
3    EAST (US Govt search)    http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/pssd/
4    European Patent Office (EPO)    http://ep.espacenet.com/
5    Patents.com    http://www.patents.com 
6    IP Australia (AusPat)    http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/auspat/index.htm
7    Delphion simple search    http://www.delphion.com/simple
8    Patent Lens    http://www.patentlens.net/daisy/patentlens/patentlens.html
9    Surf-IP    http://www.surfip.gov.sg/_patent-f.htm
10    Patent Analysis Search System    http://www.patentanalysis.com/

(Post by Ben Lehman)

• Pharmaceutical and biological data exclusivity in the United States and Brazil;
• Geographical Indications in Europe and Brazil;
• European Court of Justice decisions on the Madrid protocol, ownership of Community Designs and Geographical Indications;
• Communicating IP Value; and
• Using social networking for good - Jeremy's Tweet and Retreat principle.

We hope you enjoy this week's show, and as always, we look forward to your comments and feedback.

Links:

People

Jeremy Phillips - http://www.jeremyphillips.eu;  http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/

Jose Carlos Vaz e Dias - http://www.diblasi.com.br/?mod=profissionais&sec=escritorio&prof=Jose-Carlos-Vaz-e-Dias

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

(Photo credit: gopal1035)

Firstly, thanks

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)

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~)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and can not be attributed to the University of Oxford, its colleges, students, faculty or various departments (nor of Duncan Bucknell Company, for that matter)).

Perceptions of Intellectual Property are, to say the least, controversial, as I sought to illustrate in depth in the online draft discussion paper on “Perceptions of Intellectual Property. A Literature Review.1”

The TRIPS Agreement marks the cornerstone in the public view on intellectual property. While prior to TRIPS, IP passed more or less as a technical non-issue primarily of interest to a few experts, the creation of an international treaty on Intellectual Property under the umbrella of the World Trade Organization caused the most heterogeneous group of people to contest the concept of intellectual property rights. The sharp contrast of “pre-WTO” speak on intellectual property, compared to “post-WTO” IP talk can be best illustrated at the difference in international perceptions of the “WIPO” – the World Intellectual Property Organization and the “WTO” – the World Trade Organization. The WTO is a very recent international body that, which at the time of WIPO’s Director General Dr. Arpad Bogsch, was not even international organization, but nothing than a forum (the “GATT”). Clearly, Dr. Bogsch underestimated the impact of the TRIPS agreement at the time when he said, no doubt with a feeling of superiority that certain countries are proposing to accommodate Intellectual Property Rights in a forum that does not even have the status of an international organization.2 

Why eventually intellectual property found its space in international trade3, is not yet researched. While some say that intellectual property has intrinsic features that link it to trade , others contest this view and argue that the mere reason why the concept of “strong” intellectual property rights was established on the agenda of trade ministers was that it was probably easier to establish a new international perspective on IP within a forum that was created from scratch, proving in this sense Schumpeter’s ideas of creative destruction as a crucial element of innovation.4  Be it as it is, when the U.S. trade representative suggested in the Uruguay round negotiations to establish intellectual property on the trade agenda most negotiators had no idea what they were actually committing themselves to. Dr. Bogsch and WIPO were more or less bypassed and even though the TRIPS agreement at many instances refers to treaties administered by the international bureau of the WIPO, it still constitutes a piece of work on its own. The TRIPS agreement not only reflects the full architecture of the WTO system, but also allows signatories to the treaty to actually go into litigation.

From the perspective of international business the TRIPS agreement had strongly contributed to resolve major business challenges, yet from a mere legal perspective. The physical infrastructure of doing international business was more or less established through excellent means of transportation and the internet, which gave space and time a new meaning. Engaging with business partners in the most remote corners of the world became affordable at low cost, in an easy and uncomplicated manner. Opportunities to move from a traditional Fordist production chain to a network economy were established through means of new technology and transportation. No physical obstacles were in the way to leverage low labour and cheap production costs at the international level. Arbitrage or the leverage of different income levels turned out to be a rewarding business model. Operating as networks and abandoning linear value chains offered knowledge intensive companies previously unknown business opportunities. Yet, the legal infrastructure was and probably still is not at the same height as the technological infrastructure provided for international business.

What TRIPS did, was to resolve at least some of these short comings by providing a minimal legal international context for intellectual property. However and here lies the dilemma of any exercise of branding IP, what was perceived to provide enabling opportunities for international business, was equally perceived as strongly harming human development. Civil society’s outrage against the TRIPS agreement was unheard of before. Human rights advocates, feminists, peace activists, representatives of various churches, health advocates, in a word, the most various interest groups protested against intellectual property. While heterogeneous by background, the Globalization movement not only had the liberalization of international trade as its target, but also intellectual property rights. Best summarized in the slogan “IP kills”, the concept of proprietary knowledge got interwoven with issues such as “gender discrimination”, “famine”, “health gaps” and the further increase of gaps prevailing at the international level. To put it shortly and summarize the comprehensive report on “Perceptions of IP”, intellectual property rights were very much seen as yet another weapon and powerful tool protecting the wealth of those who “have” from those who don’t.5  The debate reached a level of polarization and aggression that it justified Clausewitz view that “war is just politics by other means. ”6 It may however also justify, but no scientific prove of the argument is possible, that the debate was and still is strongly gendered and male dominated. 

It is crucial to understand this historical context when seeking to “brand” intellectual property. Currently, the brand value of IP is somewhere between “patent kills” and a general lack of awareness what IP actually is, a left over from the Pre-TRIPS time.

With that in mind, one question arises: 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. For business the increasingly negative publicity that IP is giving it, may actually translate into serious bottom line profit losses due to loss of reputation and image. For civil society again, the stage of continuous critique can not be maintained either. At some point in time donors do want to see solutions and constructive output. Thus, there are good chances to move from a “win” to a “win-win” situation.7 

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. Economists, political scientists, sociologists, historians or even engineers know most of the times very little about intellectual property.8  A pity, since it is exactly this multidisciplinary perspective that is needed to turn IP into a tool for economic, social and cultural prosperity and leverage it as a means for wealth and welfare creation. 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.  While so far, the readjustment of the IP system has primarily been looked upon through the perspective of compulsory licensing (again a very legal approach to IP management), few have taken a more pragmatic approach and asked what types of management choices may work towards obtaining inclusion and an equitable distribution of research and development findings within the existing intellectual property framework.

Public interest IP management seeks to offer strategic choices on how to reconcile the existing contradiction between the exercise of exclusive rights and the universal right to equitable access. Innovation functions as a public private partnership; according to current research by Ashley Stevens at Boston University the vast majority of FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved pharmaceuticals were developed with public sector support. While the public sector is asked to thoroughly negotiate agreements in the public interest, business can explore opportunities to leverage IP for the wider public interest.  Public interest IP management comprises different approaches to ownership and access of IP and makes use of market and non-market incentives. It includes defensive publication, the pre-emptive creation of a public domain (including waiving of IP rights) and a deliberate deployment of legal exclusions. The application of the right to exclude can further be used to safeguard the open quality of a shared innovative domain.9  A good example is “humanitarian licensing” where IP is being licensed to market participants on the condition of several tied in arrangements.  In this case the licensor tends to reserve the right to license the technology also out to developing country producers or allow for parallel trading. It is further common practice to assure in licensing agreements “public interest” clauses that aim not only to assure commercial, but also public welfare gains. In practice, “humanitarian licensing” works if regulatory frameworks are in place clarifying ownership over IP developed in the public domain as well as sufficient practice in managing IP.  A comprehensive, strategic IP approach furthermore represents the public interest as early as the selection phase of a research topic and plays a decisive role in the interaction between the public and the private sector. An ex-ante IP strategy is different from an ex-post intervention. The latter are only public interest remedies treating IP as a commodity, where negotiation is only possible over price.10  

Yet, public interest intellectual property management faces several limitations:
It can not refer to successful private sector IP management approaches, which are hampered by inadequate accounting and financial standards, as well as by a general lack of awareness of the pro-active IP management, as compared to the defensive focus on IP protection. In addition, it is limited by the wider constraints associated with public sector management, such as difficulties with the impact assessment of public policies or the provision of incentives within a public sector context.

While Sun Tzu says that one needs to understand who one is fighting, the greatest strategist in time,  also says that the best war is the war that can be avoided.11  In this sense, the management of intellectual property in the public interest, the illustration of the enabling opportunities that can be provided by intellectual property constitutes a clear way to move from the battle field to constructive solutions. Intellectual Property does have the potential to provide enabling opportunities for all the Peoples of the world. Yet, this will not happen by itself. 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.

References
1  Roya Ghafele: Perceptions of Intellectual Property: A Literature Review, free for download at http://www.ip-institute.org.uk/pdfs/Perceptions of IP.pdf
2  Michael P. Ryan: Knowledge Diplomacy: Global Competition and the Politics of Intellectual Property.  Brookings Institution Press, New York 1998
3  Keith E. Maskus: Intellectual Property rights in the Global Economy. Institute for International Economics, Washington D.C. 2000
4  Joseph Stiglitz: How to fix the IP imbalance: Too much IP Protection is Bad for the Economy.” Managing Intellectual Property October 28 2004, p. 35-39
5  Roya Ghafele: Perceptions of Intellectual Property: A Literature Review. ibid
6  Carl von Clausewitz: On War. Wordsworth. Hertfordshire 1997
7  Caroline Kamerbeek. Director of Communication. Philips IP. Intervention at the IPI meeting on IP Branding, 2.12.2008
8  Roya Ghafele and Alexander Wurzer: The Clash of Mindsets. Intellectual Asset Management Nr1/2006
9  Antony Taubman: Public–Private Management of Intellectual Property for Public Health Outcomes in the Developing World: The Lessons of Access Conditions in Research and Development Agreements. Initiative on Public Private Partherships for Health. Global Forum Health. Geneva 2004
10  Antony Taubman: Public–Private Management of Intellectual Property for Public Health Outcomes in the Developing World: The Lessons of Access Conditions in Research and Development Agreements. Initiative on Public Private Partherships for Health. Global Forum Health. Geneva 2004
11  Sun Tzu: The Art of War/ Die Kunst des Krieges. Knaur. Muenchen 2001

(Photo credits: 'ip' by Paul Mutant and 'Miniature Warriors' by Susan Renee)

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)

(photo credit: Michael Aston)

A (the?) pioneer in communication strategy in the intellectual property space is Bruce Berman - the IP ecosystem would do well to listen to him.  In fact, they are - you'll see many of the things he has been saying for years being repeated at conferences like IPBC.  So hat tip to Bruce, for all of the ground work he has done.

Communicating value sounds easy, doesn't it?  It's not.

You first have to figure out what value is (and it may have nothing to do with money).  This is tremendously context specific. 

Perhaps the intellectual property evangelists would do well to learn from change management and communication specialists to succeed in the quest for wider understanding and therefore, one would assume wider utilization of IP to leverage business strategy.

What do you think?

(Photo credit: katiebate)

With that in mind, intellogist.com is definitely a site to spend some time on.  I've recently become aware of it and I think it is fantastic.  It has separate sections for:

1. reports on patent an dnon patent search systems;
2. an interactive map showing geographical coverage of leading patent databases;
3. a tool to easily compare patent information and search databases;
4. a section on best practices in prior art searching; and
5. an enormous prior art resource finder.

Hat Tip to Landon IP for creating this and making it freely available.

Thanks to David Donoghue over at the Chicago IP Litigation Blog for setting this up, and to Ed at Blawg Review for also publicising the event.

See you there.

David's directions - "The Billy Goat is just down and below the street from the Four Seasons at 430 N. Michigan Avenue.  Go to the Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue and take the stairs below the sidewalk to find the Billy Goat."

3 interesting things were:

(1) Francis Gurry's description of his approach to his role as Director General at WIPO;

(2) predictions by some that the drop in patent litigation in 2008 is only a temporary lull (I'm not so sure about that); and

(3) Richard Brass's characterization of online IP auctions as an ongoing game

Most surprising was that Ronald Crawford (IP manager at Arsenal) hadn't been fully aware of the passion behind Arsenal IP assets.

Find out more at: http://www.cpaglobal.com/ip-review-online

In 2006 I came up with the 6T's, a simple tool to use to get a quick handle on IP issues, including a due diligence.  Although helpful, maybe that's a bit simplistic here.

So, what are you thoughts on how to pick the winners?  Clearly some searching of patent and trademark databases is going to give you some extra insight - but does that only help you select amongst the ones you're already aware of?  And how will you gain insight into what's been going on internally?  What indicators would you look for to find an 'IP Bargain'?

(Photo credit: PetroleumJelliffe)

•    Damon Matteo, PARC
•    Carl Horton, GE
•    Sherry Knowles, GSK
•    Peter Cicala, Shire Pharmaceuticals
•    Todd Dickinson, AIPLA
•    Ruud Peters, Philips IP & Standards
•    Marshall Phelps, Microsoft
•    John Squires, Chadboure & Parke (ex Goldman Sachs)
•    James Malackowsi, Ocean Tomo
•    Bo Heiden, CIP Gothenburg
•    Shinjiri Ono, Yuasa & Hara
•    Bill Elkington, Rockwell Collins
•    Beatrix de Russé, Thomson
•    Ian Harvey, IP Institute
•    Anne Culotta, Halliburton
•    Scott Frank, AT&T

(Here's the press release, and the story at TradingMarkets.com).

It will no doubt be a lot fun and very productive.  With Luke Hohmann's assistance, the group will explore the ideal CIPO profile and the organizational environment within which the CIPO should operate, as well as the responsibilities that should come with the role and the metrics by which CIPO performance should be measured.

The results of the meeting will be shared with IP Business Congress delegates during breakout and plenary sessions.  Looking forward to your thoughts on what we come up with.

I'd be delighted if you wanted to share your thoughts before the meeting by adding comments to this blog post.

1 - Develop a common language

2 - Get some perspective

3 - Educate

4 - De-emphasize the litigation effect

5 - Communicate clearly

What would you add?  Do you think there really is a problem?

I think that the IP ecosystem tends to think of itself as in some way separate or more important than the rest of the world.  It's not.  Intellectual Property needs to be thought of in the context of the broader goals of an organization, whatever they may be.  It should be used to inform and leverage the broader strategy, it should not drive it.  Once this is properly understood, then it becomes much easier to fit IP and its concepts into the broader context - which is much more digestible for those not so familiar with IP.

(Photo credit: Desiree Delgado)