Managing legal spend.
Overview:
A Company’s spend on IP is significant, and eliminating these costs is time consuming, challenging and oftentimes painful. How do you come to terms with abandoning IP that took years of effort and challenges to obtain? What justification is there for dropping a recently allowed or granted IP asset? Why not pay that maintenance or renewal fee that has been paid for a decade? Will our technology manager or inventor(s) understand? Does my business manager understand the consequences?
Experience:
Developed global IP strategies for businesses with revenues ranging from less than $1M to $25B, existing or start-up, specialty or commodity, differing competitive environments, manufacturing or consumer, and for diverse technologies.
Implemented controls for IP budgets ($100K to $40M) with real-time metrics, predictable budgeting and forecasting, and with full transparency. Adopted best-in-class pricing structures for lowering IP unit cost, and created dashboards providing metrics illustrating results, spend and value.
Created global filing strategies for maximizing protections and business value with a justifiable spend. More than 70% of IP spend (ex-litigation) is directed to international IP filing, acquisition, defense, and maintenance. Implemented favorable pricing structures with U.S. and International law firms and lowered average IP foreign language translation spend by greater than 50%.
Working through this quickly is not easy. It takes time and resources. Sorting through the legal options, and software and translation service offerings is also overwhelming. If done well, the going forward position is set. Having done this many times and experiencing the results and consequences has given me a unique perspective.