Why you should Project not Protect the Value of your Innovation – Build Bridges not Fences!

Dec. 2, 2011 - PRLog -- Dual Interview by Helen Winsor, Legal IQ

Tom Briscoe, Sr. Principal IP Strategist for Research & Development at Dako Europe, joins Legal IQ to discuss how to approach IP for the best business gains.


Legal IQ: Thank you very much for joining us. Now Tom, after considerable research with the market we have found that one of the most important issues for patent earning departments at the moment is the strategic alignment of the business goals and functions with the legal requirements on the legal team. Firstly, would you agree?

T Briscoe:  Some of your listeners might be surprised by this answer but I would say that I absolutely disagree and the reason is this; I’m trying to make a point that aligning business goals with legal requirements isn’t the most important issue. The most important issue for any business is growth; if you’re not growing you’re dying and so the order in which you align things is very important. There are business aspects, technology aspects and legal aspects that all have to be aligned.

However, the focus and the centre goal of all of those functions has to be for the people that are executing the technology strategy to really understand how that’s going to help the business grow, and for the people in the legal function to understand how the technologies which they’re seeking to build a patent portfolio around will help the business grow. Then the question that people should be asking... normally when you talk with people the first thing that they think about is: I need IP to protect the value of my invention. My message is going to be that protection is an important aspect but a much more important aspect is: I need IP to help project the value of my invention.



Part II: What and What not to Patent – and Dealing with Emerging Markets

Adrian Spillman, Global Head of Intellectual Property at Intercell, joins Helen Winsor at Legal IQ to discuss how to decide when to patent and how to tackle patenting in unknown markets.

Legal IQ: I am sure you would agree that the cost benefit analysis of your patent portfolio is essential in deciding what to patent and what not to patent. Is this the only piece of information that you take into account when making this type of decision? If not, what else would you consider?

A Spillman: Thank you, Helen, for this question. This question is actually a very good question. It was a bit irritating in the beginning but I think what it means for me is that the cost benefit analysis is a very powerful way of looking at your patent portfolio. Not in a bookkeeping way, I think that's the important thing to understand, but if you really look at cost and benefit in a very broad sense of the meaning of the words, of course, you look at the agent's price and what the hourly rate is. I think it would also certainly include looking at the processes you are doing; can you take certain things in-house and does it make more sense to do certain things in-house? Or, vice versa, does it make more sense to outsource certain things because maybe the agent has more know-how in this area.I think also a very important thing is to show the organisation, normally the senior management, in a transparent way, the cost so that they can make a good decision based on that. The other side, the benefit side, I think that's really where the interesting part starts.

Looking at patents from a point of view of that could be an option for the future and particularly in my industry, the pharmaceutical industry or biotech industry where we have projects which maybe only generate monetary value in ten years' time. I think the patent function can really play an active role in that and create value in terms of collecting information from an organisation and trying to integrate that into a patent strategy.

Tom Briscoe and Adrian Spillman will be speaking at the Global High-Tech IP Conference, due to take place 24th – 26th January 2012 in Sweden. For information, please visit www.hi-techip.com, email enquire@iqpc.co.uk or call 0800 652 2363.


IQPC
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