Springtime IP (In Paris that is…)
Icelandic ash clouds, British Airways and French general strikes notwithstanding, Thomson Reuters IP Solutions staff, invited speakers and guests gathered together last month at the Hotel Scribe in the Opera district of Paris to conduct the fourth in this year’s series of Global IP Leader Exchanges. This seminar series provides valuable, strategic insight for professionals in charge of IP operations at their organization through presentations and discussion with industry thought leaders on today’s major IP issues.
The day began with an overview of some market dynamics impacting Intellectual Property including monetization and valuation of IP assets, the demands of increased collaboration through open innovation and the continuing seismic shift in patent filings towards Asia. This was followed by a presentation of the key findings of a benchmark survey, “The State of Global IP”, conducted last year jointly by Thomson Reuters and IAM Magazine and now published in the July/August 2010 issue of IAM Magazine.
One of the key themes of the day was the level of engagement of executive management in IP strategy development. Jeroen Gaasbeek, Senior IP Counsel for Shell, described how at Shell the executive committee now has direct involvement with the IP strategies of different businesses of Shell with the Head of IP reporting to the Legal Director who is part of the executive committee. Maria Thompson, Director of Intellectual Asset Management Process and Tools at Motorola, talked about the IP Policy Creation initiative at Motorola which established management’s commitment to and involvement in IP management statement of policy. This was instrumental in the successful implementation of the IP strategy at Motorola. A workshop in the afternoon considered a case study of a commodities business looking to introduce a new specialty product and how best to engage R&D and business managers in developing the IP strategy to support this development. Discussion topics included securing engagement of R&D by getting their ideas for how their research planning can contribute to and align with the IP strategy for the new product; and the thought that having an IP strategy in place is meaningless unless you have the right people and the right skill sets in place to deliver on that strategy. As important as the IP audit is a personnel and skills audit to ensure these are aligned.
The final presentation of the day by Jean-Yves Legendre, Licensing & Business Development Manager at L’Oreal, addressed a further key theme – the question of patent quality. This means different things to different people. To a company, the quality should be sufficient to deter competitors; to the patent office, applications should be of sufficient quality to allow delivery of granted patents; and to the investor the quality should be sufficient to allow comparison and relative valuation against other companies’ holdings. He then went on to review existing measures for evaluating both individual patents and patent portfolios.
All in all, this was a stimulating and rewarding day for all who participated. The last two in this series of Global IP Leader Exchanges is scheduled to take place in London (focused on trademark issues) and Tokyo this Fall, so get ready to book your place at this event soon. Further information is available at ip.thomsonreuters.com/ipleader/.