Posts Tagged: "intellectual property"

Many great companies accomplish innovation objectives under the leadership of household-name visionary leaders such as Bill Gates and Andy Grove. But we all know that people don’t stay with companies forever, and the culture must be prepared to innovate with or without their day-to-day presence. Companies that are overly dependent on the physical presence of their founders cannot be sustained. The marketplace seems to be confident, for example, that Apple® will continue to thrive without the dynamic leadership of Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, because he established a genuine and sustainable culture of innovation. Team-driven innovation will create leaders at all levels that can sustain, perpetuate, and strengthen the founder’s vision long after he or she steps down from the helm of the company. Investments in training, commitments to empowerment and delegation, and the development of meaningful succession plans are all critical elements of this process.

In the last 35 years, there has been a shift from a labor economy to a knowledge economy. Consequently, intangible assets (and thus, IP rights) have emerged as the most powerful asset class, overtaking more traditional capital assets such as real property, plant and equipment. Multiple studies have shown that a majority of the value of a U.S. publicly-traded company comes from intangible assets. In fact, one study has even placed the value of U.S. corporations included in the S&P 500 Index as coming 80% from intangibles.

The IP Law Summit will be held from September 14, 2014, through September 16, 2014, at the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, Palm Beach, Florida. The event will bring together senior IP Counsel from large corporations and mid-market organizations with service providers. The Summit is an invitation-only event that will take place behind closed doors.

Stealing originally created content is extremely problematic, whether it is a blog article, a newspaper article, a book, painting, photograph or movie. If you search the Internet for practically anything you will be inundated with the same text over and over without really finding useful answers. Of course, the websites that engage in widespread plagiarism, which is just a less judgmental way to say “widespread copyright infringement,” are reaping the economic rewards of their stealing while making it increasingly difficult for those who actually create original content to survive. The infringer business model is frequently to simply copy from others who don’t have the means or ability to seek redress, and Congress is held hostage by protesters who don’t want to have to pay for free original content.

The IP Law Summit will be held from September 14, 2014, through September 16, 2014, at the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa, Palm Beach, Florida. The event will bring together senior IP Counsel from large corporations and mid-market organizations with service providers. The Summit is an invitation-only event that will take place behind closed doors.

Short-sighted decisions by CEOs and the lack of any leadership, let alone meaningful leadership, in Washington, DC, has placed America on the path of economic ruin. The lack of manufacturing in America coupled with the increasing loss of associated intellectual property and innovation explains the “new normal,” which is represented by stagnant growth, high unemployment and substantial under employment… Unfortunately, the collective narrative supports the erroneous conclusion that there is nothing that the United States can do to turn things around on the manufacturing front.

While all nations have a great deal to gain from attracting foreign direct investment and research spending from multinational firms, developing nations in particular stand to gain tremendously. These investments create jobs, enhance productivity, and foster economic growth and development. However, robust intellectual property rights are a necessary prerequisite. The activists and government policymakers who claim that IP rights are a barrier to economic development have it backwards. Strong intellectual property rights incentivize innovation which facilitates economic growth and development.

“Without a strong healthy business nothing else really matters–not even IP. A successful IP [plan] is one that follows the business and strategizes to meet its goals,” says Cynthia Raposo, Senior Vice President of Underarmour. The questions that need to be answered that go into formulating an intellectual property strategy–like when the company wants a profit, whether it is interested in attracting investors or academic collaborations or buyers, whether it will become a public or global company, what its niche in the market is, how fast developments in the field are– can’t be fully answered without not only consulting the business people, but being on the exact same page as them.

Prosperity in the United States is now almost completely tied to innovation, and a prerequisite to successful innovation is access to capital. The central theme of Bruce Berman’s new book of timely essays, The Intangible Investor, focuses on the issues surrounding our innovation economy: capital, valuation and leveraging IP for business advantage. While are there are many sophisticated investors and business executives, the domain of intellectual property and intangible assets is very different from the bricks and mortar world that they inhabit. Unlike real estate, intangible assets are not scarce, can be infinitely replicated and wholly divided. That makes monetizing those patents that have value a formidable challenge.

Over the past few months, a groundswell of voices in the U.S. business community and U.S. Government has arisen to express frustration with India’s IPR policies. In May, USTR’s annual Special 301 Report highlighted India for the 24th consecutive year, citing growing challenges to IPR protection which raise “serious questions regarding the future condition of the innovation climate in India across multiple sectors and disciplines.” In June, the Alliance for Fair Trade with India was launched by over a dozen leading U.S. business associations, including the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center, to bring attention to India’s discriminatory trade practices, including the erosion of IPR in India. In July, Vice President Joe Biden cited IPR protection as an obstacle to expanded U.S.-India trade. Following a hearing on how India’s industrial policies are hurting U.S. companies, House Energy & Commerce Trade Subcommittee Chair Lee Terry (R-NE) introduced legislation in September to block duty-free access to U.S. markets for countries without adequate protection for intellectual property.

The Court will hear oral argument as follows: on February 26, in two cases on granting (Octane Fitness) and reviewing (Highmark) attorneys’ fee awards; on March 31, in a case (Alice Corp.) on patent eligibility of system and computer-implemented method claims; on April 21, in a case (POM Wonderful) on claims under Section 43 of the Lanham Act challenging labels regulated by the Food and Drug Administration; on April 22, in a case (Aereo) on whether a provider of broadcast television programming over the Internet violates a copyright owner’s public performance right; on April 28, in a case (Nautilus) on the proper standard for finding indefiniteness invalidity for patents; and on April 30, in a case (Limelight) on joint liability for method claim infringement where all of the claimed steps are performed but not by a single entity.

GROSSMAN: “A report released by the Global Intellectual Property Center found that IP-intensive industries employ 55.7 million Americans across dozens of sectors of the economy. In every state of this nation, millions of jobs hinge on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights and supply wages 30% higher than non IP jobs. I think that increasingly reports such as these, will demonstrate, with hard facts and figures, to public policymakers the importance of intellectual property rights in promoting creativity and innovation in the U.S. economy, and thereby counter the popular and trendy notion that consumers should get everything they want instantaneously and for free.”