The evolution of IPM has materialized like building layers: every ascending floor is built upon the foundation of lower floors. In its initial iteration, the use of IPM systems and technologies centralized on the entry of data, most of which was docketing information and information regarding the prosecution and enforcement of specific intellectual assets—most especially patents. After widespread adoption, a new phase emerged in which we sought to expose the information to and involve a wider and more diverse audience. The hallmark of this phase was the increased use of reporting and business intelligence, which gave supervisors, legal management, business leaders and other key stakeholders access to important – and timely – data on the status of assets and the performance of the portfolio. This phase of IPM’s growth also emphasized tools for collaboration among corporate teams, law firms, and other parties involved in the IPM lifecycle, for automating routine processes (a measure of both the drive to efficiency and increasing legal cost and rate pressures), and for the capture and management of innovation and assets. To illustrate this new maturity plane in IP Management, we introduce a new term of art to capture this paradigm shift: Intellectual Property Business Management (IPBM). It is no longer sufficient to manage – nee understand – IP from a purely legal perspective, or on an asset-to-asset basis. Organizations today are now keenly interested in the impact of their IP portfolio have on their business, and vice versa. Notably, IPBM is characterized by an increased demand for greater bottom-line visibility, for insight into operations and performance, and for demonstrable improvements in practice management. In essence, the broadening scope of integrated stakeholders and alignment of interdepartmental interests demonstrates a shift in IPM from a prosecution-based lifecycle to a business-integrated lifecycle. Through the lens of IPBM, the role and effect of people, process, organization and technology within the IP operation are all essential, and data entry and access are frequently commoditized. The overarching driver and objective of IPBM is the support of core business operations, revenue generation and corporate value with a robust data-driven decision-making program.
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THE TRADE SECRET GOVERNANCE MODEL Information Security is hardly a new topic, but as technology continues to develop and business-related content morphs into ever-new and ever-expanding formats, the responsibility to control and secure Trade Secret data moves beyond IT’s traditional role of securing corporate infrastructure.
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THE TRADE SECRET GOVERNANCE MODEL Given how thoroughly trade secret and business know-how is woven through every area of an enterprise it is only to be expected that the governance of this information will require a multifaceted policy approach and a number of layered procedures to be successful.
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The Trade Secret Governance Model While most organizations are diligent in carefully registering, cataloging and monitoring their tangible intellectual property of patent, trademarks and copyrights, the most valuable asset of them all often remains elusive: Trade Secrets. A study by Forrester Consulting found that fully two-thirds of an organization’s information portfolio can be attributed to trade secrets and in knowledge-intensive fields, this number rises to 70 and even 80%.
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Hyperion Research’s proprietary VPI InfographicTM plots current market sentiments regarding trending IPM disciplines and competencies for relative Value, Priority, and Investment to organizations. The VPI Infographic’s competency matrix demonstrates the comparative value and priority ascribed to the core IPM capabilities; each capability is plotted on value and priority axes, while the size of each bubble represents relative levels of investment for each.
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The decision to outsource, or to perhaps insource, discrete parts to the IPM lifecycle is one of reassessing the balance of resources within an IP organization, which is a core IPBM challenge. In particular, decisions on the use of IP services regard a company’s human-capital supply chain. This is not so much about reducing head count as it is about making better and more thoughtful use of available resources. The use of third-party IP services, whether via an LPO model or through more traditional fee-for-service models, is historically most closely associated with annuity payment services.
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Performance analysis, insight, stakeholder visibility and operational efficiency are the fundamental components that drive IPBM excellence. Performance management analytics comprise the tools, capture methods, data models and visualization technologies that help legal and IP organizations focus on the operational performance metrics they need, to help them understand both the business effect of their activities – causality, impacting processes and behavior – and the corrective steps, nee actionable intelligence, they need to optimize performance and outcomes.
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As part of achieving the harmonizing effect sought within an IPBM framework, we’ve observed the market express a strong desire to move beyond mere data entry into something much more dynamic. In fact, there are few trends more deliberate, focused and clearly defined than pursuit of shedding the cumbersome business of data entry toward better leverage of the electronic data and metadata that swirl about the average business day-to-day. Paperless processing is a crucial goal of IPBM, and IP Management in general has long lagged behind many of the other legal disciplines in the maturity of processes from manual, data entry to automated process and workflow management. Workflow, or in a larger sense Business Process Management (“BPM”) is the core enterprise discipline that serves as the crucial bridge between outdated ways of working and progressive business management.
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One key driver in the shift toward IPBM involves addressing the challenge of failing to protect the valuable ideas borne from the work of innovation. The management of innovation, and nurturing the participation of inventors and IP asset developers, is paramount in this movement. Increasingly, the leading IPM vendors have sought to harness this nexus and develop new tools to better engage and empower all stakeholders in the innovation lifecycle. Many of the advanced solutions covered in this report are either introducing new tools to drive invention disclosure, IDS and prior-art searching processes, or have significantly improved upon and matured existing capabilities.
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The legal business landscape has shifted significantly over the past decade. Since the financial crash of 2008, corporate law and IP departments and law firms were forced to do more with less, making the allocation of resources more critical than ever. As the bottom line continues to recover in the years since, the crux of IP Management has evolved from an emphasis on legal matters to one of spend management visibility and the revenue-generating potential of individual assets. This has, in effect, formed a well-defined focus to align the management of intellectual property assets and the achievement of overall business objectives—and ultimately, to demonstrate real return on investment.
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