Deep Dive

Top IP webinars for startups & scale-ups looking to increase their knowledge:

Deep dive: IP and Investments	IP considerations and due diligence when investing in start-ups. (60 minutes). Duncan Clark, Head of Product Marketing at PatSnap & Jon Calvert, Managing Director at ClearViewIP
Deep dive: Trade Secrets	Trade Secrets: the expert guide to managing them effectively (60 minutes) Donal O’Connell at Chawton Innovation Services & Ruta Sudmantaite at Patsnap
Deep Dive: IP Strategy	How to use blue ocean strategy to build a strategic patent portfolio (60 minutes) Peter Cowan, Northworks IP & Kirsty Bell at Patsnap
Deep dive: Brand Protection	Developing a successful brand protection strategy (60 minutes) Joel Stobart, CTO of Brand Custodian, and Jeff Moore, Operations Director at AAL
Deep dive: Value Creation	How to engage senior management in patent strategy and corporate value creation (60 minutes) Anthony Trippe, Managing Director at Patinformatics & Ruta Sudmantaite at Patsnap

Top 50 IP related recommended books

Below is the top 50 books I’ve read over the years, but if I could offer a shortlist to start based on the amount of marks & notes I have on them, it would be as follows:

1)  Edison in the Boardroom: How Leading Companies Realize Value from Their Intellectual Assets (Davis and Harrison).  This has been my ‘go-to’ book for over 10 years, mostly because it gives a good business primer on IP and follows with tangible steps and goals for a business to focus on. For training new business/IP team members or running an IP centric workshop it gives some common ground for terminology and quickly aligns the participants to a similar reference point. More importantly it gives the reader some references and structure to talk about the need for IP Management in the boardroom.

2)  The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business (Christensen).
How do you know what disruptive innovation is and the potential it has, if you have never seen it before? How will you change your processes to recognize these as core patentable topics for your portfolio? More importantly, are you building your patent portfolio around a disruptive (or unique) technology early enough? Understanding how disruptive innovation works is a benefit to those that need to mine and identify IP trends in their business and competitors.

3)  Invisible Edge: Taking Your Strategy to the Next Level Using Intellectual Property (Blaxill & Eckardt).  The authors lay out a substantive case for the importance of IP, as well as lay out that businesses in the post-industrial and knowledge based economy must look to IP as a sustainable advantage for longevity.  This book, combined with some of the tools in Edison, give the reasoning to talk IP in the boardroom with executives as well as initial toolkit to jumpstart a patent program.

4) The Intellectual Property Guide: IP Literacy and Strategy Basics for Supporting Innovation (Tawfik & Bawa).  Great basics on IP fundamentals, but rounded out with practical business experiences from the authors that link the fundamentals to business issues such as licensing, enforcement, and IP strategies.

The reading list below is broken down into 5 main sections. I wouldn’t say every book is essential or even more useful than not, however the totality of the knowledge in them is what brings the understanding to the reader.

1) On approaching IP from a business view, and being able to talk about IP in the boardroom:

• Intellectual Capital (Stewart)
• Edison in the Boardroom: How Leading Companies Realize Value from Their Intellectual Assets (Davis and Harrison)
• Invisible Edge: Taking Your Strategy to the Next Level Using Intellectual Property (Blaxill & Eckardt)
• Intellectual Property, Finance and Corporate Governance (Denoncourt)
• Making Innovation Pay: People Who Turn IP Into Shareholder Value  (Berman)
• Patent Strategy for Researchers and Research Managers (Knight)
• Technology Licensing: Corporate Strategies for Maximizing Value (Parr & Sullivan)
• Harvesting Intangible Assets: Uncover Hidden Revenue in Your Company’s Intellectual Property (Sherman)
• Driving Innovation: Intellectual Property Strategies for a Dynamic World (Gollin)
• Essentials of Intellectual Property: Law, Economics, and Strategy (Poltorak and Lerner)
• Intellectual Property Strategy (Palfrey)
• Strategic Management of Intellectual Capital (Klein)
• Patents for Business. The Managers Guide to Scope, Strategy and Due Diligence (Heines)
• Einstein in the Boardroom: Moving Beyond Intellectual Capital to I-Stuff (Harrison and Sullivan)
• The Business of Intellectual Property (Area and Carreras)
• Valuation and Dealmaking of Technology-Based Intellectual Property: Principles, Methods and Tools (Razgitas).
• True Patent Value: Defining Quality in Patents and Patent Portfolios (Goldstein).
• Not So Obvious: An Introduction to Patent Law and Strategy (Schox).  Jeffrey Schox is one of the few IP lawyers that I see teaching startups how to approach building their portfolio strategically.
• Inside the Patent Factory (O’Connell).
• The Intellectual Property Guide: IP Literacy and Strategy Basics for Supporting Innovation (Tawfik & Bawa).
• Secured Lending in Intellectual Property (Hatzikiriakos) (also see the authors website)

 2)  On the Mechanics of Patents & Licensing:

• Patent Valuation – Improving Decision Making through Analytics (Murtphy, Orcutt, Remus).
• Intellectual Property: Valuation, Exploitation, and Infringement Damages (Smith and Parr)
• A Handbook of Intellectual Property Management (Jolly)
• Developing a Patent Strategy: Infringement, Litigation, and Protection for Businesses (Aspatore Books)
• Patent Valuation: Improving Decision Making through Analysis (Murphy, et al)
• Patent Searching: Tools & Techniques (Hunt, Nguyen, Rodgers)
• Intellectual Property. Licensing and Joint Venture Profit Strategies (Smith and Parr)
• Technology Management. Developing and Implementing Effective Licensing Programs (Megantz)
• Value Driven Intellectual Capital. How to Convert Intangible Corporate Assets into Market Value (Sullivan)
• Patent Strategy. The Manager’s Guide to Profiting from Patent Portfolios (Miele)
• What’s the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing on the Best Management Thinking (Davenport, Prusak, and Wilson)
• From Ideas to Assets: Investing Wisely in Intellectual Property (Berman)
• Virtual Monopoly (Pike)

3) On Innovation, and ensuring your patented technology flows from a solid foundation:

• Change by Design (Brown)
• Open Business Models (Chesbrough)
• The New Age of Innovation (Prahalad and Krishnan)
• Stoking your Innovation Bonfire (Kelley)
• Innovation and Incentives (Scotchmer)
• Innovation and Its Discontents (Jaffe and Lerner)
• Payback, Reaping the Rewards of Innovation (Andrew and Sirkin)
• Where Good Ideas Come From. The Natural History of Innovation (Johnson)
• The Other Side of Innovation, Solving the Execution Challenge (Govindarajan and Trimble)
• How Breakthroughs Happen. The surprising Truth about how companies Innovate.  (Hargadon)
• Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value (Lockwood)
• Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating And Profiting from Technology (Chesbrough)
• The 10 Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization (Kelly)

4) On Thought Leadership & Business:

• The Long Tail (Anderson) Ask – do I need IP on the technology in front of me, or scoped to include the long tail?
• The Opposable Mind. How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking (Martin)
• The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage (Martin)
• The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business (Christensen)
• Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim). Ask – are you patenting in a red or blue ocean?

5) On Patents in Academia:

• Economic & Management Perspectives on Intellectual Property Rights (Peeters, de la Potterie, ed)
• Economics, Law and Intellectual Property. Seeking Strategies for Research and Teaching in a Developing Field (Grandstrand, ed.)
• The Economics and Management of Intellectual Property. Towards Intellectual Capitalism (Grandstrand, ed.)
• The Strategic Management of Intellectual Capital and Organizational Knowledge (Choo and Bontis, ed.)
• I also have a weekly Google Scholar search on a few topics, such as Patent Strategy, which bring up the occasional paper that is interesting.