Innovation Best Practices: 4 Tips from the 5 Most Patented Companies

By Peter Ackerman In today’s rapidly changing marketplace, innovation has become critical for companies both big and small. The question is: how do we quantify innovation? While companies like Google and Apple may appear to be among the most innovative in the public eye, neither company cracked the top 10 in terms of invention output […]

IP Risk Management Process and System

By Donal O’Connell Intellectual Property (IP) Risk: Risk is the chance of something going wrong, and the danger that damage or  loss will occur, whereas risk management is the process of analysing exposure to risk and determining how best to then handle such exposure. Risk mitigation means that you do something about it. By its […]

Trade Secrets Best Practices: Exit Interviews

By Eric Ostroff This is the next in a series of posts addressing best practices for protecting trade secrets and proprietary information. Today’s topic: exit interviews, which can be a powerful tool to avoid, or at least anticipate, unwanted disclosure. An exit interview is exactly what it sounds like. When an employee is leaving your […]

10 Patents that Launched Billion-Dollar Empires

By Rupert Mayer To pivot or not to pivot. That’s the question hundreds of technology startups ponder when their original vision fails to take flight. For some, it’s a successful move. Consider Pinterest, which launched in 2009 as a mobile shopping app called Tote, or Groupon, which began life in 2007 to promote consumer activism […]

Assessing a supplier from an IP perspective

By Donal O’Connell Supplier Relationship Management: Good supplier relationship management is the discipline of strategically planning for, and managing, all interactions with third parties that supply goods and/or services to an company in order to maximize the value of those interactions. In practice, it entails creating closer, more collaborative relationships with key suppliers in order […]

What Makes a Patent Valuable

By Louis Carbonneau In our last Pointers, we explained in detail how much recent court decisions and new rules at the USPTO had negatively impacted the value of US patents. This is not to say that all patents are worthless, far from it. Actually, based on the fact that we have recently received strong offers […]

Alternate Intellectual Property Valuation Approaches

By Weston Anson and Joshua Cawthorn Techniques for valuing intellectual property continue to develop, especially as access to information becomes easier and more efficient. The practice of valuing intellectual property has only been around for the past few decades, during which time the practice itself has grown and refined. Valuation is necessary in a number […]

Lifting the IP Fog of War

By Paul Adams In the 19th century the Prussian military genius Carl von Clausewitz coined the term the ‘fog of war’, to describe the uncertainty commanders face in battle. Clausewitz observed that officers who could pierce this fog, who could reduce relative uncertainty, consistently defeated opponents even when outnumbered and outgunned. This observation directly led […]

Top 5 IP challenges – and solutions – for all executives in 2015 (Part 2)

By Peter Cowan Last post I outlined the top 5 IP challenges all startups, investors, executives, and business leaders – not just IP focused leaders – will have in 2015.  These challenges directly impact R&D departments, legal groups, innovation teams, and even finance departments. The challenges revolve around the need for an evolving IP leadership. […]

Top 5 IP challenges all executives will face in 2015 (Part 1)

By Peter Cowan As much as the IP leaders wish IP to be top-of-mind in every business and investor, in reality this is not always the case.  In an ever more globalised environment, there are seemingly more immediate needs to speed up R&D execution, lower local manufacturing costs to compete globally, and constant pressures to […]