Do SMEs really understand IP?
How many SMEs can tell you: – What IP they actually own? – How their competitive edge is underpinned by IP and hence protected? – What IP Rights make their advantage defendable? Most SMEs will answer “yes, of course”, but then quietly behave as if the answer were “not really”. Instinctively SMEs will point to […]
Poor Product Design Cost Digg $144m
From $160m to $16m for the social news aggregator. Valued at $160m in 2008 when Digg had 30m users a month, the value plummeted to $16m when its users dropped to 7m a month in 2012. 45 million in funding from A list investors like Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners and others. This was […]
US Patents are Going up in Value
Higher Values for US Patents under John Squires The new USPTO director John Squires is introducing greater certainty into the US patent system. This is good news for small and medium sized businesses. Since the advent of the America Invents Act in 2011 it has been too easy to challenge and invalidate granted US patents. […]
French crown jewels vanish in a few minutes
A ladder, an angle grinder and a scooter and the French crown jewels vanished in a few minutes from the Louvre yesterday. It wasn’t Tom Cruise abseiling down a wire, but it was a stark reminder that even the most iconic institutions, with centuries of prestige and millions in security infrastructure, are vulnerable. For businesses […]
“How Can You Be A Technology Company If You Only Have One Patent?”
The question that caused the share price to fall! What can we learn about how Ocado applied IP strategy to protect its competitive edge and develop licensing revenues? From one patent to 1,900 all because of a cheeky investment analyst?
