David J. Arthur, Intellectual Property Strategy

Aligning Intellectual Property and Business Strategies

Too many organizations have poor alignment between the organization's business objectives and the organization's intellectual property strategy.

Those organizations hope they are getting and maintaining the right IP. But they may be spending money, time, and energy getting intellectual property that doesn't necessarily further the organization's business. Or they fail to get the intellectual property that would benefit the organization.

Which is better for your business objectives: Lots of IP, or a few key pieces of IP? Should your IP be spread across many areas, or should it be targeted to specific technologies? Should your IP focus on particular countries or be applied to wide geographic regions? What do you intend to do with your IP? With or against whom? Answers to these questions will be different for each business or organization, and will drive different uses of the IP budget.

Even organizations that have an intellectual property strategy may contend with old or haphazard internal processes and procedures interfere with proper implementation. So the organization gets the wrong patents and other intellectual property, or spends too much (or too little) time and money getting the patents and other intellectual property that are useful for the business.

Often the realities of day-to-day business prevent organizations from taking the time and energy to develop an effective intellectual property strategy, or to set up appropriate implementing processes and procedures.

If the long term benefits of developing, documenting, and effectively implementing your patent strategy get sidetracked in the hustle and bustle of complying with everyday deadlines, I can help. I will work with your senior business, technology development, and legal teams to develop an intellectual property strategy that will further your business goals. Or if your organization has an effective intellectual property strategy, I can help articulate it in ways that ensure the intellectual property professionals responsible for implementing it understand the strategy and their role in it.

I will enable your intellectual property professionals to be more effective and more efficient. I am not a replacement for your existing intellectual property professionals. But by spending a small amount of money on strategic planning with me, you can you can use your existing budget to develop and maintain a more effective intellectual property portfolio. In some cases you may be able to reduce your intellectual property budget without losing the effectiveness of your intellectual property.

If requested, I can also use my operational background to help develop internal processes and systems to effectively and efficiently determine what intellectual property to protect consistent with your intellectual property strategy, whether that strategy is newly developed or has been in place for some time.