Tom Petrocelli - Securing Innovation

IP & Standards Don't Have To Conflict

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:27:21 -0500

There has been a lot of tension in the computer industry about standards and intellectual property. Some of it has been fueled by the recent US Court decision favoring Rambus (April 2008) over the Federal Trade Commission. In short, Rambus has contributed patented intellectual property to the DDR SDRAM standards but did not reveal that fact to the standards committee. After the standard was ratified, Rambus sought license deals from makers of DDR SDRAM. It has also filed a number of lawsuits related to the IP contributed to the standard.

We cannot stop developing standards. Without standards, the market for products becomes smaller and everyone makes less money. Imagine a world where there was no standard for house current or batteries. Developing consumer electronic products would be nearly impossible. Without the standardization of major computer components, the cheap PC, cell phone, and music player would not exist. Standards are a vital part of any type of product. There is plenty of room in technology-based products to innovate outside the standard. Apple has to adhere to many different standards in its iPhone yet has come up with a truly innovative product.

Many people in the computer industry want to blame Rambus for being deceptive. I can't say what Rambus' intentions were. However, the fault for this type of fiasco falls firmly on the shoulders of the standards bodies. There are a few simple steps they can take to avoid these type of problems. These should become a standard for standards bodies.

Insure Unfettered Access to IP In Writing

It seems the most obvious thing to do. Insist that everyone who participates in a standards body sign an agreement to only contribute information free of IP entanglements or to license the contribution for free. That way no one does anything sneaky. At the very least, members should agree to reveal any contribution that might be based on encumbered IP before it is accepted by the body. Either members will sign it and the standard is free and clear or they won't and the standards body will know something is up.

Do What Companies Do

Companies worry about their products being encumbered by patents held by others. To combat the obvious negative effects of encumbering patents, they routinely perform prior art searches. Typically referred to as Freedom to Operate and Patent Clearance searches, searchers look for any patents that may pop up and cause problems later. Standards bodies, whose "product" is a standard, should do the same. Even getting licensing agreements up front is not enough. Licensing agreements amongst participants only cover the participants. There is no way of knowing if patents or patent applications are lurking out ready to bite the industry in the leg without a professional prior art search.

Remember, major standards bodies are not shoestring operations. They are sponsored by large multi-national corporations and governments. They can afford this small amount of insurance.

Active Management of IP

A standards body also has to actively manage the IP under their care. Whether it is owned by the body, in the public domain, or licensed by individual members, every submission needs to be tracked against features of the standard. There needs to be periodic checks of defensive publications, patents, and patent applications to insure that no member is violating the agreements of the organization. It is also a good idea to check if patent applications are filed by non-member companies to see if something has happened that would threaten the emerging standard. This is especially important when there are competing standards bodies.

Member companies should also track their contributions to standards against their own IP portfolio. Period checks of the portfolio against agreements that govern those submissions is also a good idea. Otherwise, they may attempt to patent a technology not realizing it has already been contributed to a standard. It is also why processes must be in place to insure that companies contribute openly only what they indent to. It is not unusual to have an engineer expose important IP in a standards meeting inadvertently. Companies need to track what their own people are doing in standards bodies.

These are pretty simple ways to avoid standards encumbered by patents. IP.com can help do this through its InnovationQ software solutions, Patent Search Services, and Prior Art Database.

Don't Rely On Metadata For Dates

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:30:07 -0500

A lot of companies rely on stored metadata to establish the dates of prior art. That is a potentially dangerous strategy. Since metadata is easily manipulated by a person of moderate technical ability, it is unreliable for proving dates.

Metadata is the special information stored within files, such as word processor documents, that describe the data in the file. For example, a word processor file may include an embedded creation date, keywords, and authors' names. All files in Windows and Linux (as well as most other operating systems) also contain metadata maintained by the operating system. When someone looks at files in a folder in Windows, they can get a view that shows much of this information including the last date the file was modified. This would seem, on the surface, to be a good way to show that a file was created at a certain time and data, as well as when it was last changed.

However, all of this information is readily accessible from most various programs and within applications. In Microsoft Word the Author of a document can be changed from the File | Properties menu. There are many simple applications that can change a date stamp, not to mention some simple tricks. For example, change the date on a computer to sometime in the past, create a new document, cut and paste the contents of a recent document into it, and save the new document. When the computer's date is changed back to the current date and time, the document will have a date in the past as its date of creation and last modification.

A lot of faith has been placed in the immutability of EXIF information in graphics files. This is the metadata that digital cameras place in the files they create including a date stamp. Lots of other graphics applications store data like this as well. Many feel this is secure metadata because major applications such as Photoshop refuse to change it directly. Not all applications are so well behaved and there exists techniques one can use within Photoshop to fake a date. Deke McClelland in his (sometimes profane, so be warned) video blog shows just how to do that.

All of this points to the main reason that IP.com offers its Legal Safeguarding Service as part of InnovationQ. Computers cannot always be trusted to maintain dates. This can call into question when prior art was created. With the Legal Safeguarding Service and InnovationQ, documents and dates are verified by a third party and published on paper without revealing the contents of the documents. To change this requires changing not only information stored on a computer, but information stored with IP.com and printed in booklets that are sent to patent offices throughout the world. That is much harder to fake and hence easier to trust. Trust LSA, not your own computer files to establish data as prior art.

FDA Regulatory Filings and IP

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:38:40 -0500

At the recent PharmaBiotechIP summit, a speaker discussed a problem that really struck a cord with the audience – that the language used in FDA regulatory filings can have a serious impact on patent applications. In communications with the FDA, the authors of regulatory documents like to use words such as “conventional”. The term “conventional” helps to assure the FDA that there is nothing unusual for them to worry about. I can see how this makes sense. If something is conventional it is not unique and hence in need of additional scrutiny.

Therein lies the problem for the intellectual property side of the house. We want IP to be unique, innovative, and special. In fact, we want it to be so special that it would not have been obvious to other people reasonably well versed in whatever industry or technology that we are dealing with. For FDA approval to go smoothly, you have to declare that the product is, in many ways, like other products. For the patent filing process to go smoothly, you have to show that the product is, in most ways, unlike any other product. If you are a patent examiner trying hard not to award a patent to something obvious, you might think to look at the regulatory filings related to the same drug that a company is trying to patent. If the company expresses the view that it conventional, you can easily read obvious.

This sounds very much like a Publication Clearance problem. Typically, with a Publication Clearance process, a company tries to insure that nothing contained in a technical or scientific publication will jeopardize intellectual property rights. The Regulatory – IP conflict is very much the same. Companies need to insure that what is written in a published document, in this case an FDA filing, does not inhibit the ability to gain patent protection later. A well thought out Publication Clearance system, modified for the particular workflow of regulatory filings, should help to provide this level of oversight. Like all publications, the document has to go out on time but needs to be reviewed to insure that it is correct in many ways.

So, why continue to risk patent approvals because of the wording of an FDA document? An easy solution exists by way of the same process necessary to release other publications.

The Myths about Intellectual Property in Asia

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:45:06 -0500

Whenever I travel in Asia outside of Japan, I get asked the same question “What are you doing there?” The question always comes with one of two follow up statements. It's either “They don't really have any intellectual property of their own. They just make things for the real innovative companies.” or “They just steal everyone else's IP as well as each others.”

Both the question and the statements are pretty ugly and, even worse, ignorant. Two myths should immediately be dispelled about what is happening in Asia. First, there is a lot more going on in Asia than manufacturing. Second, they care very much about IP, and not just their own.

Myth 1: Asia only makes things for other people.
Ignoring for the moment that Asia is a big, diverse, place that simply can't be painted with the same brush, there is wholesale change going on in China, Taiwan, Singapore, and India. It is true that these countries have a vast, low cost manufacturing base. It is also true that they do tremendous business in contract manufacturing and low-cost services. However, it is no longer the case that this is all they do. Just look at companies like HTC, whose smart phone may give the Apple iPhone a run for the money. Another example is Lenovo, a major producer of laptops computers. Check out Huawei, a huge telecommunications equipment manufacturer just now making inroads in North America. All of these companies are in the business of creating their own innovative products. That means innovation and intellectual property.

Myth 2: They steal IP! They don't want to protect my IP or even their own.
Piracy happens throughout the world but that doesn't make everyone a thief. For example, The Pirate Bay, a bit torrent aggregator, known for their disdain of US intellectual property laws, are in Sweden. Yet, no one would accuse the Swedes of being IP thieves. In fact, people in Asia have the same issues, worries, and goals for intellectual property as the rest of the world. It's only that the people in China, Taiwan, and India came into the game a bit later. Many of legal protections, available in the US or EU are also available in Asia. Some are even better than what we have in the US. They are also investing in infrastructure for managing IP. Companies in Asia are keenly aware that they can't misappropriate other people's IP and expect other countries to protect theirs. That is no different than it is in the US or EU. So, no. Businesses in Asia are just as worried about IP and are as much spending time and money to protect it as anyone else in the world.

All in all, Asia is an exciting environment full companies that are creating really interesting products. Though nascent, Asia is on the road to becoming a technology powerhouse just like the US and EU.

Watch For IP Leaks From Publications

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:32:55 -0500

Over the years I've written dozens of technical articles, blogs, and marketing literature. Most of what I wrote was reviewed by marketing, engineering, and perhaps sales. My articles have been examined for their ability to carry the corporate message, technical accuracy, and how the pieces positioned products. No one ever brought up the issue of intellectual property. This is not something unique to my experience. Companies worry about the content and form of publications but not the IP that might be revealed in them. When someone does catch some important IP heading out the door it is often by happenstance. It's not so much that companies don't care.

If you bring up the subject of "IP in publications" most companies will sincerely tell you that they are worried about it. Yet despite that, examining publications for IP is not always part of the normal publication review process. On the flip side are the companies that are paranoid about IP in publications. For many, the knee jerk reaction is "publish nothing!" This doesn't work for long since publications are a major part of corporate communications. Are you going to tell scientists that they can't publish a scientific paper? They won't work for you. Just try and shut up an engineer with a good idea for an article. You'll only infuriate him. Marketing has to publish white papers and sales literature so you can't stop them from producing publications.

The simple solution is a publication clearance process, implemented as a workflow. The process of Publication Clearance pushes the document in front of everyone who should see it including legal counsel, patent counsel, technical and marketing. Publication clearance within InnovationQ also protects the document as intellectual property. It is subjected to the same LegalSafeguarding process as documents in the Trade Secret Management modules. We can even build hooks into docketing or our Trade Secret Management modules to help better identify IP contained in publications before it is too late.

Adopting a publication clearance process is a good first step toward protecting important intellectual property. Having tools to automate this process makes it much easier to live with.

Flash! You've just lost some IP

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:13:47 -0500

It seems like every other day we hear about another company losing important data. Just recently (Thursday, January 17, 2008), Iron Mountain announced that they lost a tape with personal information on over 650,000 people on it. Please don't think I'm picking on Iron Mountain. This type of data loss happen regularly. What we hear about in the news are the situations where financial or private information is lost. What we don't hear about is lost or misplaced intellectual property. Companies keep this quiet since it is an embarrassing internal matter that they don't have to broadcast.

Yet IP data loss happens all the time. Flash drives and flash memory provide high capacity storage at a cheap price. Portable USB hard drives of up to 500GB are now available for very little money. This is big enough to house large corporate databases and as easy to lose as a cell phone. Which brings us to personal digital devices like cell phones and music players. These have substantial amounts of storage which often contain more than just someone's tunes or pictures of their cat.

All of this mobile storage creates an enormous IP problem. Most people don't realize that practically anything can be intellectual property. The end result is that almost everyone is, at some point, walking around with large amounts of intellectual property in an easy-to-lose form. Mobile storage also makes it very easy for folks to go over to the dark side and take intellectual property. It's now all too simple to copy large amounts of information and very hard to track when it happens.

The good news is that the only one who gets hurt if you lose your intellectual property is you (and your shareholders). If someone loses 150,000 Social Security numbers then there are 150,000 people at risk outside your company. The bad news is that you lose big. A simple "flash drive accident" may hand your competitor your most trusted secrets, jeopardizing new products, revenue, and reputation.

As bad as the bad is, it can be mitigated. First, make sure that you have copies of everything that might contain intellectual property in a secure location. This way, if you have to prove prior art, you can do so. If you need to prove that the information was taken(misappropriated), rather than accidentally lost, you can do that too. Second, continuously monitor the landscape to see if anything is leaking. Many folks only survey the intellectual property space when they are applying for a patent. While there are a dozen reasons to do this, finding where your intellectual property is turning up is one of them. Finally, review important information for intellectual property on a regular basis. Not everything is important but you won't know that until you review it. This way everyone will have a better appreciation of what needs to be locked down and can't ever be copied to mobile storage or devices.

This is where IP.com can help. Our InnovationQ, Prior Art Database, and Patent Search Services can, when taken together, help secure your intellectual property, assist in making decisions about what is or is not IP, and provide you the business intelligence you need when surveying the IP landscape.

Otherwise you might wake up one day and find your that your IP has sprouted legs and walked off.

Email Doesn't Manage Innovation

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:01:14 -0500

"This is not a tool. This is a toy. THIS is a tool!" - Julia Childs, on rolling pins.

Email has had a major impact on business. It's all but eliminated the need to send letters and memos on paper. The ability to have quick, on-line conversations has made e-mail (and it's kin, instant messaging and texting) the model for modern communications. For teams trying to produce something creative, however, it falls short. The issue with e-mail is that it is totally free form, both in terms of information and user action. With e-mail, you can't produce predictable results. You don't know how the information will be organized or even what information you might get. While the ability to write anything has its strengths, e-mail systems usually need to be coupled with databases and other structured information systems to be useful for managing innovation. The unstructured nature of e-mail also makes tracking difficult. From an IP perspective, this means no inherent way to protect prior art.

The failure of email to support innovative processes and protect IP is part of the reason that IP.com has developed collaboration features in InnovationQ. The Consultation feature available in the InnovationQ workflow engine is a form of structured collaboration. Rather than take interactions offline to e-mail, we have introduced a method of interacting that mimics the freeform nature of e-mail. At the same time, users can tap into the the structure of a workflow and the structured documents attached to the workflow.

This is only the first step. The next version of InnovationQ will have a new Collaborative Innovation module that provides for group interactions within a structured environment. While maintaining the free flow of ideas, InnovationQ will allow those ideas to be tracked and preserved as IP. Just as important, it will encourage users to drive toward a goal rather than flail about in e-mail.

E-mail is great. Without it, most of us couldn't function. It has its limitations though, especially in the innovation process. We need to recognize these limitations and use tools better suited to our purpose. InnovationQ is about innovation. It's the tool to use when you want to accomplish something creative and protect it at the same time.

The Disconnect Between IP and Data Retention Policies

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:02:54 -0500

In the wake of all the corporate misdeeds of the early 2000’s, a lot of corporate attention is now focused on data retention policies. New eDiscovery guidelines for Electronically Stored Information (ESI), Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, and HIPPA have companies of all sizes scrambling to put in place rules that govern how long data is kept around.

Data retention policies define how long data must be stored. The philosophy is that data should be deleted in its entirety as soon as it is no longer needed for either a business or regulatory purpose. Let’s be honest, “data retention” really means “data destruction”. The real goal of these policies is to avoid future legal problems by getting rid of data on a schedule . Companies want to do this as soon as they are no longer legally responsible for the data.

Given that data lifecycles vary a lot, most retention policies are based on classes of data. Classes group like types of data together. You can then assign each class its own retention policy. Each policy must account for a number of factors, especially the lifespan of data. One class of data (for example check images) may have a retention policy of years. For another, it might only be weeks. My shopping list has a lifespan of only about two hours.

Intellectual property, as a class, has a very long lifespan. At any point in time, there may be a need to produce prior art. This is true long after a copyright, patent, or trademark is no longer in force. For trade secrets, the lifespan of the data may be the lifespan of the business. A great example of long-lived intellectual property is the formula for Coke. It has been kept a trade secret for over 100 years.

Unfortunately, practically all corporate information can contain important intellectual property. That PowerPoint presentation used for internal sales training might contain your new secret sauce. How about that ancient product design? Absolutely. It’s full of prior art, some of which might still be found in your current products. Even the agenda for last week’s engineering meeting might contain valuable information that, in the future, may help provide the central idea for a new product line. None of this can be thrown away automatically.

This presents an obvious disconnect between many data retention policies and intellectual property needs. To resolve this situation it's important to keep at least one copy of anything that might have intellectual property in it. It is also important to have a process in place to review potential intellectual property. No matter how you do it, wholesale deletion of data without review will inevitably result in the destruction of valuable intellectual property.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that nearly infinite lifespan of intellectual property means nearly infinite retention. Otherwise, you may not be able to back up a claim or will inadvertently reveal a trade secret. You might also find yourself without that great idea that has suddenly become really important.

Integrated Innovation Management

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:45:41 -0500

Integrating with Existing Software Systems

Seldom can a single software system satisfy the needs of an entire business. Integrating best of breed solutions into existing systems is a requirement of any innovation management system. A good innovation management system processes documents in a wide variety of common formats (such as PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and accommodates documents or files in any format. Innovation management requires that the system adapt to the environment, not vice versa.

Additionally, an innovation management system should integrate seamlessly with existing infrastructure, such as leading SQL databases (like MySQL, Oracle, or DB2), mail servers (such as Notes, Exchange, or sendmail), and centralized directory management (such as Active Directory or other LDAP system).

Integrated Prior Art Searching

Although thorough prior art searching should be done by search professionals, innovators and managers often require quick access to limited prior art searching. Providing this means providing access to prior art from innovators' desktops, without the need for advanced search skills.

An ideal innovation management system will provide rapid access to both internal and worldwide prior art by using a document as a search query. This would eliminate the need to have any search skills and instantly empower innovators and managers alike to see the technology and IP landscape related to their own innovation.

Integrated Defensive Publishing

The most efficient means of preventing competitors from obtaining patents is defensive publishing. Unlike patents, that require filing in all relevant countries throughout the world, one defensive publication can prevent or defeat patents worldwide. Many of the most innovative companies in the world have integrated defensive publishing capabilities directly into their innovation management systems. This reduces publishing barriers once a decision has been made to place innovation defensively into the public domain.

Since the ideal innovation management system is already capturing innovation records, and making them rapidly available for decision, an integrated defensive publishing capability can be little more than a link.

This is the eighth in a series of articles on this blog about Best Practices For Successful Innovation Management. For more in this series, see:

Encouraging Innovation with Process and Workflow

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:42:33 -0500

To enhance the use of its innovation, a company should not only consider implementing an innovation system, but also implementing certain work procedures and processes that encourage the creation, recognition, and protection of innovation. Sometimes such work processes are enabled or improved by codifying them in a system. Sometimes the system to implement such processes or procedures, along with assisting with compliance, is the innovation management system itself.

Innovation management can embody workflow rules, such as a document approval chain. Many organizations recognize that good practice requires one or more sign-offs before an innovation document may be utilized or released for any purpose. Decisions should be made to patent, publish, release, or hold secret innovation using a well-defined process. An example process might be a review chain where:

1. An engineer submits a document to …
2. A manager, who then may approve or reject it (possibly after seeking third party opinion) for review by …
3. An innovation committee, who then approves or reject it for handling by …
4. The CPC's office, who then approves or rejects it for publication or holding as …
5. A journal article, conference paper, public presentation, patent application, defensive publication, or internal trade secret …

An innovation management system needs to embody the flexibility to express a variety of workflow rules and actions that are appropriate to the procedures, standards, and culture of individual companies. Such workflow rules can incorporate facilities like email notifications of events, automated reminders, process status and aging reports, and rapidly accessible views to encourage use and compliance.

This is the seventh in a series of articles on this blog about Best Practices For Successful Innovation Management. For more in this series, see:

Mission-Critical Executive Innovation Reports

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:34:42 -0500

If an innovation management system captures not only the innovation records but also information about the engineers, automated innovation reports can be generated for executives, managers, and in-house counsel enabling them to sort, slice, and dice information in many different ways. For example, company leaders can drill into all innovation activities of each employee on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. They can quickly analyze document uploads, downloads, previews, searches, etc. With embedded concept clustering tools, leaders can rapidly view activity by product/project to balance resource allocation with business goals.

R&D Executives

One of many challenges facing R&D managers is monitoring the day-to-day innovation activity of their employees. This challenge is exacerbated when their employees are spread out across states or countries. These managers typically do not have the advantage enjoyed by sales managers who can virtually walk in the footsteps of their reps simply by reviewing weekly sales activity reports. At a glance, a sales manager can determine number of calls, sales meetings, contracts sent out, contracts closed, and all the important detail associated with each of those activities. Typically, R&D managers cannot.

With innovation reporting, R&D managers can essentially walk in the footsteps of their employees and have significantly more knowledge about their innovation activities.

Chief Patent Counsel (CPC)

An important function of CPC is to provide guidance to the business units as to patenting and other IP matters. Under ideal conditions, CPC or in-house patent counsel will perform invention “scans.” This typically involves face-to-face meetings with engineers to discuss innovation activity. From these meetings, the CPC can proactively assist the business units in IP decision making. The challenge most CPCs face is that they are so busy responding to the needs of many business leaders or business units, they do not have time to be “proactive” and are often reduced to a more reactive role. It’s all about time, and there is only so much of it each day. A CPC must be highly efficient to get far enough ahead of innovation to add strategic value.

Innovation reports are an outstanding tool for CPCs. With these reports, a CPC can actually conduct invention “scans” from their desk. With a few clicks, they can review the innovation activity of each engineer of interest. They can literally click through from the inventor to actual uploaded invention records or from relevant categories of documents to the necessary inventors. Without leaving their desks, they can glean more information about inventors than they could being face-to-face. Innovation reports can bring CPC closer to the inventors and move them from a reactive/tactical role to a proactive/strategic role.

This is the sixth in a series of articles on this blog about Best Practices For Successful Innovation Management. For more in this series, see:

Web-based Innovation Collaboration

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:30:36 -0500

Collaboration can be a powerful tool in business or any area of life. A collaborative environment, though, can be difficult to create and maintain. Even in situations where employees are located in the same building, or even on the same floor, collaboration can be stifled by personalities, busy schedules, vacations, and a myriad of other obstacles that come up everyday. When businesses have offices across the US or around the world where colleagues are separated by geography, time zones, and language barriers, a collaborative environment can quickly become a fiction.

In reality, meeting face-to-face or by phone is an inefficient way to collaborate. It is too difficult to connect. An innovation management system should create a collaborative environment in the same way that the Web does … with blogs. Ideally, a good innovation management system should automatically turn innovation records into internal “executive blogs.” It should also allow for concept clustering and user alerts so that relevant ideas can be pushed out to interested colleagues throughout the world. This enables managers to set alerts not only by bibliographic fields such as author and title, but also by concepts. With such capabilities, employees can “collaborate” on their own time. Invention records can be enhanced with comments from employees throughout the company, regardless of where they work or whom they know. Suddenly, many barriers to meaningful communication can be eliminated.

This is the fifth in a series of articles on this blog about Best Practices For Successful Innovation Management. For more in this series, see:

Secure Accessibility of Innovation Records

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:19:23 -0500

While capturing, storing, and legally safeguarding innovation records comprises the foundation for innovation management, the real power comes from secure and meaningful accessibility to innovation records and the application of the system to real problems. Secure access means being able to restrict access to specific documents, or types of documents, to select individuals or select groups, and monitor access for real time notification of unauthorized or suspicious activity.

Meaningful access means being able to search the full text of all innovation records from your desktop anywhere in the world by multiple means, including by keyword, concept, date ranges, author, and division or group.

What are some practical applications that are possible once meaningful access to innovation records is in place?

Trade Secret Management

Trade secrets are both a powerful and overlooked form of intellectual property. If you can prove that you properly protect your innovation as a trade secret, you can significantly mitigate losses that go hand-in-hand with employees walking out the door with sensitive technology secrets. Nevertheless, calling something a trade secret and actually having a trade secret are very different things. Companies and employees throughout the US often misuse the term trade secret, calling any and all technology developed internally a trade secret, even though the company implements no defined processes for protection of those so-called secrets. While this paper is not intended to describe the various laws associated with trade secret protection, one common requirement of a trade secret is that companies take adequate measures to guard the secrecy of the information.

With that in mind, it is essential to have an innovation management system that limits access to specific documents or types of documents. As well, it is important to have a system that automatically monitors search and download activity. By restricting access to trade secrets, a business can prove that they appropriately integrated their trade secret policy with a process or system. By monitoring activity, a business can prove that they properly enforced their trade secret policy and access was actually restricted.

A trade secret management system should also provide a means for automatic alerts when unauthorized or suspicious activity occurs, such as large download volumes, downloads at odd times, downloads from odd IP addresses, and odd searches of the database. Such a facility can actually prevent a theft before it occurs.

This is the fourth in a series of articles on this blog about Best Practices For Successful Innovation Management. For more in this series, see:

Automatic Legal Authentication of Innovation

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:09:55 -0500

More and more, companies are migrating from paper to electronic records for the capture and storage of innovative ideas. Many people rarely even use paper anymore. Why should they? Since paper records are not searchable and easily lost, capturing invention records on paper is in many ways the equivalent of not capturing invention records at all.

The downside of capturing and storing invention records electronically, though, is that electronic documents can be altered, easily and undetectably. People can change dates or undetectably add content long after the creation of a document. Fraud can be committed and it could change the outcome of costly litigation. Sometimes the creation date of one or a few documents could mean the difference between a negative verdict in the millions of dollars, and a dismissal. In every case, electronic records will be needed to support both sides of a litigation matter. Opposing counsel know how easily electronic documents can be altered and will use that fact to diminish the credibility of witnesses and documents. Judges and juries also know how easily electronic records can be fraudulently altered and they often embrace conspiratorial theories. The ease with which someone can fraudulently alter electronic documents can seriously undermine the credibility of essential records that an organization may depend upon during trial.

With this in mind, it is of critical importance that an innovation management system legally safeguards all electronic records that might be needed downstream during trial or any other type of adversarial proceeding. The problem is that no one has yet invented a crystal ball that really works. Consequently, it is still impossible for any company to predict which of millions and millions of electronic records will be needed in the future during litigation against any one of any number of litigious competitors, customers, vendors, or complete strangers throughout the world.

Therefore, an innovation management system must legally safeguard all electronic records throughout the organization. It must essentially create a “document insurance” policy. Since we already know that a requirement for behavioral change will collapse an otherwise perfectly good system, the legal safeguarding must occur automatically. Third-party digital notarization by an industry-trusted source of all invention records is critical to effective innovation management. During trial or other adversarial proceedings, there are few things more powerful than testimony by objective, third-party witnesses.

This is the third in a series of articles on this blog about Best Practices For Successful Innovation Management. For more on this topic, see:

Easy Innovation Capture and Storage of Innovation Records

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 13:03:56 -0500

Capturing innovation records is an essential component of a successful IP management program. If the innovation capture component of an innovation management system is ineffective, many important innovation records will be essentially lost to a business. The underlying technology will languish in desk drawers, paper notebooks, PCs, laptops, and servers throughout an organization. Valuable ideas will be lost because they never reach IP decision-makers.

The biggest obstacle to implementing a new system that secures all innovation records is a requirement for behavioral change on the part of innovators in the uploading process. It is difficult to gain adoption of a system that alters an innovator’s approach to his or her daily routine. In general, people do not like to change the way they do things. If a new system requires them to add or change steps in any meaningful way, that system will probably fail to be adopted and used. A failed innovation management system leads to failed innovation management.

The closer a document upload process fits within the usual work patterns of employees, the greater the chance of gaining adoption throughout an organization. The problem is that employees do things differently from one another. A document upload system that works well with one employee will not necessarily work well with another. This fact of life requires that an effective document capture component include multiple, easy methods for capturing invention records from inventors.

What does that mean? Well, it means that the upload process must allow for several types of manual upload mechanisms, automated upload mechanisms, and batch upload options. In addition, rather than requiring specific formats for documents (which, again, leads to the requirement for behavioral change), the upload and document processing components of the system must allow for the automated or manual upload of virtually any electronic formats.

This is the second in a series of articles on this blog about Best Practices For Successful Innovation Management. For more in this series, see:

What Is Innovation Management?

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:45:24 -0500

Many, many innovative companies invest resources in intellectual property management; not only in software tools and processes, but also in consultants to help them pick the right software tools and implement the right processes. In fact, IP consultants are becoming almost as common as IP lawyers are. In addition, while intellectual property management is of critical importance to all businesses hoping to compete efficiently in the new economy of global manufacturing, the most stunning IP failures occur before an idea even enters the IP management arena.

Every day businesses hemorrhage innovative ideas that could lead to useful patents, defensive publications, and trade secrets because the innovative ideas never reach the decision body. Every day even more businesses waste resources duplicating innovative initiatives because of failures in intra-company collaboration and failures in accessible aggregation and storage of innovative ideas. Moreover, every day businesses take needless (and often costly) infringement risks because of absent mechanisms for the legal safeguarding of innovation records and processes for prior art searching. Simply put, without a strong innovation management infrastructure, IP management systems and processes are often little more than a superficial glimpse of what they could and should be.

At the same time, successful innovation management results in better innovation work product, improved allocation of resources, higher product/service margins, increased licensing revenue, stability in litigation, market dominance, and higher client and shareholder value.

So, is it enough to merely develop powerful innovation? No. It’s necessary, but not enough. Without an effective innovation management infrastructure, not only will valuable innovation and opportunities be lost, but the time and resources invested to develop that innovation and position for opportunities will be lost as well.

An effective innovation management system typically requires the following components:

Easy capture and storage of innovation records
Automatic third-party legal authentication of innovation records
Secure accessibility of innovation records
Web based innovation collaboration
Automated innovation reports for executives and managers (daily, weekly, monthly,
quarterly, annually)
Document workflow for important document types
Interaction with other document systems
Integrated and easy-to-use prior art searching
Integrated and easy-to-use defensive publishing

This is the first in a series of articles on this blog about Best Practices For Successful Innovation Management.

Managing the Flow of Innovation

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 02:19:17 -0500

The worldwide appreciation for the importance of intellectual property has undergone rapid growth during the past ten years. Forms of intellectual property, such as patents, that were once considered merely outputs of research engineers are now valued as weapons of business leaders. The world has witnessed IP successes like IBM’s billion dollar annual patent licensing stream and NTP’s massive settlement with Research in Motion (the Blackberry dispute). These successes, coupled with the outrageous costs associated with IP litigation, have forced companies to move “IP” from a strategic discussion to an implementable business function.

Simply put, to survive in this evolving intellectual business community, companies must become savvy in all matters of IP. Greater emphasis is being placed on effectively managing the flow of innovation throughout an entire organization. Since invention records are often scattered in various locations (laptops, PCs, paper, etc), they are not easily accessible. Moreover, the records are extremely vulnerable to vanish through a disgruntled employee, theft, or even a simple computer crash. Trade secrets are walking out the front door of corporations every day. As the amount of information increases, so too does the urgency for more efficient processes. Companies can have an abundance of data, but without effective management tools, they are unable to convert that data into useful information - reports.
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As documents are automatically collected and archived into a central database, they must be legally safeguarded. This authenticates the date, time, and content of each document for future use at trial or other adversarial proceedings. Since it is impossible to know which documents may potentially be needed as evidence in IP litigation, all records should be safeguarded.

Furthermore, having a secure, web-based innovation system allows remote access for those who need it – anytime. Imagine the possibilities of searching and collaborating on all innovative documents, extracting detailed reports, and even defensively publishing documents with the click of a button.

Building a robust IP portfolio requires insight and collaboration. Often times committees and personnel from remote locations are involved in the decision making process. If not structured properly, this could considerably lengthen the innovation cycle – costing valuable time and money. In an industry where dates are everything, any slight delay in the development process can have devastating affects. An effective IMS creates a thriving innovative environment which will help a company to protect their freedom to practice.

Strategic Tools for Successful Innovation Management

tpetrocelli@ip.com (Tom Petrocelli) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 03:56:10 -0500

Amherst, NY, September 30, 2007 - IP.com today announces the release of InnovationQ version 3.0, the enterprise software solution for intellectual property and innovation management. InnovationQ solves complex document and process management problems associated with managing intellectual property assets. With InnovationQ, companies can routinely safeguard their intellectual property while deriving the maximum value from their portfolios.

Intellectual property management is of critical importance to all businesses hoping to compete efficiently in the global economy. The most stunning IP failures occur before an idea even enters the intellectual property management arena. Every day, businesses hemorrhage innovative ideas that could lead to useful patents, defensive publications, trademarks copyrights simply because the innovative ideas never reach the decision body. In many cases, valuable trade secrets are inadvertently revealed destroying their value as intellectual property.

InnovationQ 3.0 introduces a process workflow engine which, when combined with the secure document repository and client agent, provides a comprehensive intellectual property management solution. By automating human processes and providing a secure, easy-to-use environment, InnovationQ enables organizations to become more efficient in protecting their intellectual property. This, in turn, enables them to make better decisions regarding their innovation.

"IP.com is the global leader in enabling companies to effectively manage their intellectual property," says Steven Lai, Managing Director of the Asia Pacific Intellectual Property Association in Taiwan, Republic of China. "IP.com's InnovationQ 3.0 continues their commitment to legally safeguard intellectual property, improve decision-making, and allow companies to get the most value form their portfolios."

“InnovationQ 3.0 takes intellectual property asset management to a new level,” says Tom Petrocelli, IP.com’s Senior Vice President, Enterprise Software. “Without a strong innovation management infrastructure, intellectual property management and processes are often little more than a shadow of what they could and should be. InnovationQ provides the tools that help facilitate better innovation work product, improved allocation of resources, and higher product and service margins. InnovationQ leads to increased licensing revenue and market dominance, stability in litigation, and higher shareholder and client value.”

In addition to the Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, InnovationQ is also available as an onsite, enterprise solution. IP.com is committed to working with customers to develop a successful innovation management program.