IPWatchdog’s New Publication Policy: No Paywall, But No Free Ride

IPWatchdog.com has been publishing online continuously since 1999. As a result, we enjoy excellent search engine ranking and placement, with articles immediately becoming indexed by the major search engines, including Google. We have always accepted guest contributions for publication, and while that is not changing, our publication rules and guidelines have recently changed. For full transparency, I wanted to explain what has changed and why.

Never Behind a Paywall

Unlike virtually every other publication in the industry, IPWatchdog has never published articles behind a paywall. And we diligently work to index all the articles we publish with LinkedIn, and we publish a free daily newsletter received by our most dedicated readers. Our approach to publishing and promoting articles—and the fact that they can be easily found and freely read by anyone and everyone—is why IPWatchdog.com is one of the largest intellectual property publications in the world, with nearly 1.1 million different, unique individuals visiting IPWatchdog.com in 2024 alone. Indeed, we know that in many respects IPWatchdog.com has become the publication of record for the industry, with many firms and individuals telling us they have canceled subscriptions to expensive news services because they view them as unnecessary.

Our plan is to continue to put our foot on the accelerator, and to publish the best news and most accurate analysis and to keep that free of charge from the readers’ perspective. And truthfully it is hard to imagine any circumstances where we would ever change this core belief. We are fundamentally opposed to publishing articles behind a paywall and charging readers because, overwhelmingly, people will not pay for content. Whether that is good or bad is irrelevant. Internet readers simply do not pay for content in numbers large enough to make charging readers to read a viable business model.

So, ruling out charging readers to read means that we must monetize IPWatchdog.com in other ways. And over the years we have increasingly moved to monetize through sponsored webinars, in-person programs, banner ads and podcast sponsorships.

Why the Change?

Increasingly, as more publications charge fees to publish, require assignment of the underlying copyright, and place content behind a paywall, we are receiving more (and numerous) requests to publish on our platform. And the increase has largely come from attorneys at large firms who never (or only rarely) financially support us. Ironically, the pitches we receive typically come from an outside PR firm who is being paid to get us to publish articles for free. So, it has been hard not to notice that these firms never support us financially, they do support others financially, and—instead of supporting us—they are paying PR people to get us to publish for free. Clearly, we are doing something wrong and need to course correct.

Who is Eligible to Publish on IPWatchdog.com

Moving forward, we will only allow law firms and service providers who financially support IPWatchdog to write for our platform. Specifically, we will only publish articles from those who have financially supported IPWatchdog in some way within the last 12 months. This financial support can be through some combination of sponsoring webinars, sponsoring in-person programs, buying banner ads and/or sponsoring our podcast. As a small business ourselves, we understand that it is unrealistic and inappropriate to have bright-line expectations that equally apply to big and small firms. We will not expect the same level of support from solo practitioners and small firms as we will require from larger firms.

Any articles submitted by law firms and service providers must still satisfy our other publication criteria, including being primarily non-commercial in nature. And this new policy does not apply to in-house attorneys, industry thought leaders, newsmakers, such as current and former government officials and judges, who are welcome to continue publishing on IPWatchdog.com.

Support IPWatchdog and Join the Community

In short, if you want to build a reputation as an authority and you want people to actually find and read your articles, you need to be publishing with IPWatchdog.com! After all, it takes the same amount of time to write an article that no one will find and read, so why not publish with IPWatchdog.com instead?

Support us and become a member of the IPWatchdog community. From a business development perspective, I assure you it will be the best decision you and your firm have ever made.

If you have interest in supporting IPWatchdog, please contact us using this form.

Image Source: Deposit Photos
Author: alexmillos
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