At a recent networking event I met some scientists from a new biotech startup. They told me about several provisional applications in their pipeline. They were so proud they had drafted and filed them on their own. They saved “a ton of money.” But did they do more harm than good?
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Don’t Try This at Home
May 15th, 2010Celebration or Regret?
April 26th, 2010Today is World IP Day 2010. Are you celebrating today or looking back wishing that things had gone differently?
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Who’s Minding the Store?
April 7th, 2010By now you surely understand the importance of paying close attention to your IP portfolio. So the next question is, who in your company is doing it? Many companies rely on outside counsel to prepare and prosecute their patent applications. But you could be getting more out of the money you are spending for that time and effort.
Time to Spring Clean Your IP Portfolio
March 16th, 2010The arrival of spring in San Diego isn’t a big deal. The weather is nearly perfect year round. But in some parts of the country, folks are just beginning to open the windows and clean the house from winter.
What does this have to do with intellectual property?
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Hope Is Not A Plan
March 3rd, 2010Does this sound familiar? “The Board meeting is tomorrow and I hope they don’t grill me on the IP!”
A wise friend of mine once told me, “Hope is not a plan.” This is especially true when it comes to IP protection for your product and business. Having a real IP plan, instead of hoping that all of those applications you’ve been filing will stop infringers, is fundamental to your business. And it’s well within your grasp.
SWOT – A Tool to Help Determine the Real Value of your IP
February 18th, 2010Understanding the value of your IP consists of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each application in a portfolio and of the portfolio as a whole. It also means understanding the opportunities and threats presented by your competitors’ IP. Using that information you can begin to craft a realistic and manageable strategy to maximize your IP protection and value and to manage associated risks.
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Positioning Your IP
February 15th, 2010Simply having the next greatest product with patent protection is not sufficient for success in the market. You are seeking patent protection to enjoy exclusivity and to keep competitors out of your market space. And so are they. Eventually, however, the patents will expire and lower cost versions of the previously protected product will enter the marketplace. Knowing when this will happen to both you and your competitor(s) will help you position your product and IP for maximum value.
Charting Patent Expirations
In Part 1 I showed how to identify competitors and the key patents they rely upon for exclusivity. The first step to positioning your IP is to know where you currently stand in relation to those patents.
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Thirty Minutes a Week Keeps You Ahead of the Competition
February 8th, 2010You can’t compete in today’s marketplace without tracking the activities of your competitors. It’s the only way to know that you are really out in front or if you will be late to the party. While you naturally read all of their scientific publications, are you also tracking their IP activities? There is a lot of competitive intelligence to be gained by monitoring patent and trademark applications.
In this installment, I show you how to do some of this competitive intelligence on your own. And, you can do it using free, on-line databases. Once you see the benefits, you can then decide whether to allocate funds for external support of this valuable information-gathering function. In Part 2, I’ll show you how use IP positioning to maximize your competitive edge.
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Is Your IP Program Missing These Elements?
January 27th, 2010I am often asked, “How can I get my company’s intellectual property to perform at the same level as a larger more established company?” The person asking the question is almost always concerned with the enormous costs that come to mind when raising the topic of patents and intellectual property, and is mindful that more established companies usually have larger budgets for just about everything. To them, and you, I offer the following steps for revving up your IP portfolio performance in a cost-effective manner.
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