An excellent text for clients to read before meeting with attorneys so they'll understand the fundamentals of patent, copyright, trade secret, trademark, mask work, and unfair competition laws. This is not a "do-it-yourself" manual but rather a ready reference tool for inventors or creators that will generate maximum efficiencies in obtaining, preserving and enforcing their intellectual property rights. It explains why they need to secure the services of IPR attorneys. Coverage includes employment contracts, including the ability of engineers to take confidential and secret knowledge to a new job, shop rights and information to help an entrepreneur establish a non-conflicting enterprise when leaving their prior employment. Sample forms of contracts, contract clauses, and points to consider before signing employment agreements are included. Coverage of copyright, software protection, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as well as the procedural variances in international intellectual property laws and procedures.

The Entrepreneur's Intellectual Property & Business Handbook offers a comprehensive guide for using a customer-focused design approach and intellectual property tools to build long-lasting, successful business enterprises. It explains the key business and legal strategies essential for start-ups and small businesses. Through examples from successful companies, lessons from failed experiments, and sample documents, it provides a roadmap for any business towards success.The book is used by entrepreneurs, legal clinics, small business development centers, and business advisers to help entrepreneurs differentiate their products and services in a very competitive market. It emphasizes that not every business needs a patent portfolio, but every business needs to combine business strategy with intellectual property protections to build itself in a way that avoids being copied by the competition.The book is written by Jon M. Garon, a professor of law who has served as dean of both law schools and management schools. His work focuses extensively on legal and business disruption and how the best entrepreneurs manage change in tumultuous environments.The book offers a one-volume MBA curriculum, covering such topics as entrepreneurship, start-ups, exclusivity, relevance, distinctiveness, pricing, financing, franchising, leverage, IPOs, founders' agreements, user design, copyright, trademark, patent, publicity rights, trade secrets, partnerships, corporations. limited liability companies, private placement memoranda, business plans, securities sales, crowdsourcing, crowd financing, accredited investors, marketing, branding, consumer demand.

This book focuses on intellectual property (IP) in the context of product innovation and design-led start-up management. A distinguished feature is that it analyses innovation-related scenarios within their continuously changing contexts. IP is discussed in relation to the way in which its value changes over time as a venture matures. The book reveals how IP strategies can enhance a start-up’s survival prospects and its growth potential if they are connected systematically to other business development attributes. Being mainly addressed to enterprising designers, it may also support business administration programmes, innovation hubs, design educators, incubator managers, as well as business coaches and IP attorneys who support creatives and inventors. All in all, this book offers a unique and timely strategic guidance in the field of design and innovation management. “Design and design rights have long been overlooked in the plethora of studies on the links between IPR and innovation. Matthias Hillner’s thoughtful and eloquent journey provides a contemporary and meaningful analysis which will no doubt assist governments, economists, academics and designers’ better understanding of design in the context of successful business strategies and IPR. Given design’s significant contribution to global economies, I am confident it will offer much needed guidance.” Dids Macdonald OBE, founder CEO of Anticopying in Design (ACID) "This is an immensely practical book for designers and entrepreneurs who want to understand the issues of IP, product innovation, and business development. With clear explanations, many vivid examples, and strategically useful tips, it will be a valuable resource for creative minds at all levels of experience. A serious book but written with a sensitive touch on how to protect new ideas." Richard Buchanan, Professor of Design, Management, and Innovation, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University

The definitive guide to intellectual property for business managers How can a product of the mind—an innovation, a song, a logo, a business secret—become the subject of precise property rights? No idea is entirely original; every innovative business borrows, sometimes extensively, from its competitors and others. So how do we draw the line between fair and unfair use? Billions of dollars ride on that question, as do the fates of publishers, software producers, drug companies, advertising firms, and many others. It’s also a key question for individuals—for instance, if you quit your job after mastering the company’s secrets, what can you do with that information? With the growth of the internet and global markets, having a smart IP strategy is more essential than ever. Intellectual Property is the ideal book for non-lawyers who deal with patents, trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights—all essential business issues that have changed rapidly in the last few years. Goldstein draws on dozens of fascinating case studies, from the Polaroid vs. Kodak battle to Kellogg’s surprising trademark suit against Exxon to whether a generic perfume is allowed to smell exactly like Chanel No. 5. Every business decision that involves IP is also a legal decision, and every legal decision is also a business decision. Lawyers and managers need to work together to navigate these murky waters, and this book shows how.

The papers in this volume represent some of the leading work on intellectual property. They address the question of how to create incentives to develop new technologies and how to protect those technologies once developed from theft. They also ask when valuable property might be developed even under weak ownership conditions. Other papers address how firms balance the trade offs in considering costly patent litigation and they examine the antitrust implications. Although issues of intellectual property rights would seem to be ones of interest only to obscure groups of academics and lawyers, they have become topics of everyday discussion among the regular population. Alleged copyright infringements by people downloading music from the internet and accompanying threats of prosecution as well as charges of strategic patenting to harm competitors in recent high profile antitrust cases have placed intellectual property into public and political debate. The incentives provided by secure property rights for promoting research and development, investment, production, and exchange are well known. These are the major arguments for patents, copyrights and other forms of intellectual property.

This publication introduces startups to IP. Through step-by-step guidance, useful case studies and simple checklists, it illustrates how small

A guide to the types of intellectual property and how startups can best manage intellectual property in the early stages of the company. Startups face a variety of risks. The biggest risk is market risk, and entrepreneurs should be spending most of their time addressing the market risks - not learning law. The Startup Guide to Intellectual Property helps startups grow by showing how intellectual property is used to build and keep a sustainable competitive advantage. Moreover, The Startup Guide to Intellectual Property discusses the cost - benefit trade-offs when trying to capture a company's intellectual property and provides guidance on how to make those decisions. It includes a practical description of the types and uses of intellectual property and presents workable options for protecting that intellectual property early.