Intellectual Property Strategy

Most managers leave intellectual property issues to the legal department, unawarethat an organization's intellectual property can help accomplish a range of management goals, fromaccessing new markets to improving existing products to generating new revenue streams. In thisbook, intellectual property expert and Harvard Law School professor John Palfrey offers a shortbriefing on intellectual property strategy for corporate managers and nonprofit administrators.Palfrey argues for strategies that go beyond the traditional highly restrictive "sword andshield" approach, suggesting that flexibility and creativity are essential to a profitablelong-term intellectual property strategy--especially in an era of changing attitudes about media.Intellectual property, writes Palfrey, should be considered a key strategic asset class. Almostevery organization has an intellectual property portfolio of some value and therefore the need foran intellectual property strategy. A brand, for example, is an important form of intellectualproperty, as is any information managed and produced by an organization. Palfrey identifies theessential areas of intellectual property--patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret--anddescribes strategic approaches to each in a variety of organizational contexts, based on four basicsteps. The most innovative organizations employ multiple intellectual property approaches, dependingon the situation, asking hard, context-specific questions. By doing so, they achieve both short- andlong-term benefits while positioning themselves for success in the global informationeconomy.

John Palfrey is Henry N. Ess Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School and Faculty Codirector of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He is the coauthor of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives and the coeditor of Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace, and Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace (the last three published by the MIT Press). He is a Venture Executive at Highland Capital Partners and practiced intellectual property and corporate law at the firm Ropes & Gray.