There’s a long list of things to do, decisions to make and challenges to meet before a company’s IPO (initial public offering). You will have to resolve any accounting issues, prepare audited financial statements, decide on corporate governance, assemble a team of...
As regular readers of our blog will likely remember, we recently published a post describing factors you should consider before signing an intellectual property licensing agreement. The first three factors to consider: Research: Find out whether the IP you might...
Someone else has something you want and now you have to figure out how to get it. We’ve all faced this dilemma since childhood when a sibling or playmate held a desirable toy. We’ve (hopefully) learned a lot since those days. When your company would like to make use...
Nearly 150 years ago, inventors around the world were working on a bright idea: the incandescent light bulb. The faint light of incandescent bulbs lit the world for decades but has in recent years been outshone by the compact fluorescent light (CFL) and the...
A new idea can come from anywhere. You may discover that a difficult task at home could be simpler, or you may find a new way to manage your projects at work. After the initial excitement of the idea, it is time to start tinkering with ways to make it part of your...
The language and logic of patent law often require taking one step forward and two steps back in order to accurately explain some terms and ideas. So it is with the simple and direct question in this blog post’s title: “What is a patent search?” The first step forward...
Before we can answer the question in the title, we must first answer another: What is a trade secret? The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) says “trade secrets are intellectual property (IP) rights on confidential information which may be sold or...
Let’s say that you’re an inventor who has applied for a utility patent for your widget. While you’re waiting for patent approval, out of nowhere you are struck with an insight: your widget would be exponentially improved by adding a set of wheels to it. Brilliant! But...
It’s easy to think of inventors who changed the world with their revolutionary inventions. Steve Jobs, right? Except that he didn’t invent any of Apple’s breakthrough products (Macintosh, iPod, iPhone). He was instead Apple’s driving force, pushing Steve Wozniak and...
Let’s say two businesses launch at exactly noon this coming Monday. Though they might sell dramatically different products or services, the two startups are likely to have a few things in common, such as a limited budget and a need to protect intellectual property –...
