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Sunday, December 2, 2012

Using Seminars to Convert Prospects For Intellectual Property Legal Professionals Into Clients

A couple of weeks ago, I got a letter from a law firm inviting me to a seminar covering employment law. Now, I am sure the content for the seminar was pretty good, but the letter came out of the blue but this topic is not a key issue for me right now.

I want to use this experience to discuss how Intellectual Property Lawyers can use seminars more effectively to get high-quality clients.

The three major questions you have to think about when planning seminars are:

1. What information will you provide that will really improve your prospects' lives or show them how to take away any fears and frustrations? 2. How do you attract prospects who really want to listen to what you have to say? 3. How do you attract prospects with the money to pay for the services you offer now?

Intellectual Property lawyers first have to build a list of opt-in prospects within their target niche(s), and then provide relevant information to this list that shows them how to eliminate any Intellectual Property-related problems they face..

Before sending out any invites to seminars, IP legal professionals have a bit of work to do. First of all, think about YOUR desired outcome from the seminar. Basically, you want the seminar to convince prospects that have not bought your services yet to do so. For many IP legal professionals, seminar invites are the first point of contact in their lead generation campaigns so they want prospects to buy services AFTER attending the seminars.

Given this, you want to avoid a key mistake many IP legal professionals make when trying to use seminars to attract new clients...selling the seminars before getting into their prospective buyers' minds and building relationships with them.

Now, you may ask why this is necessary. You could simply get names from a list broker and do a marketing campaign to advertise the seminar. True, but the whole purpose of this article is to show how you can improve your success rate in terms of lead generation and client attraction.

So I will highlight some key messages related to this:

1. Find out the conversations going on in your prospects minds. 2. Make sure you develop effective multi-step campaigns to prospects within a specific niche to advertise the information you have that they are looking for, or point them to where they can find it. 3. Build your position of authority within your target niche by giving your prospects free information that shows them how to solve their IP problems or at least explains difficult concepts into easy to understand formats (at this stage, you don't discuss the services you offer). This can be done via blogs, free reports, articles, etc. 4. Build your opt-in list by capturing customer details and then make sure you provide much-needed information to your list on a regular basis (e.g. via newsletters, email bootcamps, free reports, etc).

If you are an Intellectual Property lawyer that has failed miserably in the past to get enough clients from seminars you previously run, then go through the four steps above first before inviting people to seminars. This will improve your response rates, and fortunes.

And this is why...by going through the steps above, you market your seminars to potential attendees that have already made the decision to give you their details so that you can interact with them and give them valuable information. If you have already shared valuable content with prospects by the time you make them aware of the seminars (e.g. via blogs, reports or emails), you will have demonstrated the fact that you know your stuff, are willing to focus on building relationships with people and know what your prospects' needs are.

And here is another fact - you don't have to run FREE seminars. If what you are going to provide during the seminar is extremely valuable, then the prospects on your opt-in list will recognize that, and will pay to attend. If you run free seminars, you will always have people that attend even if they have no intention whatsoever of ever buying from you. You want to get those that want to do so, and are willing to make a financial commitment (which does not have to be huge) to learn how to take away any pain they are under.

Some Intellectual Property legal professionals will claim to have done well running free seminars to cold lists. That is great! Remember, I am not saying this strategy would never work. I am just pointing out that you can get a significantly better response to seminar invites if you build relationships with your prospects first as I have outlined above.

Think about this as well...If you are having two-way conversations with prospects, you can tailor your seminars more effectively to give attendees information they really want, and are willing to pay for, because you know what is important to them (not you). It also gives you the opportunity to prime them so that they attend the seminars with a certain level of knowledge regarding Intellectual Property law that they want to have to solve their problems.

This means a change in business model for many businesses, in which you use seminars to 'close the deal' with prospects you have already built relationships with, rather than using them as an initial lead generation tool.

If you automate the communications to your opt-in list, you will find this is a much easier strategy to get high-quality leads as opposed to simply trying to target prospects who have never heard of you. That is hard - cold calling is just not comfortable and most of the people you target don't want to be sold to. They want the option to learn from you, interact with you and to then decide to ask you for your services rather than the other way round.

Benefits of Understanding the Value of Your IP Starting Your Career As An Intellectual Property Lawyer Do You Need a Lawyer to Respond to a UDRP? What Is the Protection of Business Names Under Intellectual Property Law? Hire Patent and Trademark Attorney to Accelerate the IPR Procedure Every Innovative Irish Idea Deserves to Be Protected Correctly in Law

Is Your Lawyer or Law Firm Bragging That They Have You or Your Company As a Client - Loose Lips

Social networks can be dangerous if you are someone who owns a small business. It's far too easy to give important information away, details about your company that your competition can use against you. I am always amazed at how many small business owners list their clients, and have their customers come and post information about themselves on their profile page. As soon as they do that, they just alerted the competition that they are a buyer of those types of goods or services, therefore the competition might try to "friend them" and steal them away.

Of course, this is not the only thing that business owners and entrepreneurs do that can hurt them in the competitive world of business. Often business owners talk too much about their future plans, and what they are doing to their vendors, customers, employees, government inspectors that come in, and even their law firm. Oh, now I have your attention. You probably thought that lawyers have a strict code due to the "client privilege rules" well, I would suggest to you that you shouldn't kid yourself.

Lawyers and law firms often brag about their client lists and even if your lawyer personally never mentions that you are a client, someone else at the law firm might mention it. They know things about your business that you don't want your competition to know, and they are liable to spill the beans in casual conversation at the bar, the local watering hole that is, if not the actual bar. And they do it all the time. In fact, I noted that one of the law firms I used when I was in business, often bragged about its client in its brochures, even listed a few on the website.

They were actually using the brand names of larger corporations which they represent as proof that their law firm was worthy of taking on new clients. Perhaps even worthy of charging you increased legal fees for services. This can be a real problem in a competitive world, and I would submit to you that loose lips sink ships, and it is often people you don't suspect that are giving away your company's most important information and intellectual property.

A lawyer at the law firm you use could discuss a negotiation with a new vendor, and upcoming merger, or any of a number of things that can hurt you competitively in the marketplace. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

Benefits of Understanding the Value of Your IP Starting Your Career As An Intellectual Property Lawyer Do You Need a Lawyer to Respond to a UDRP? What Is the Protection of Business Names Under Intellectual Property Law? Every Innovative Irish Idea Deserves to Be Protected Correctly in Law

How Do You Protect Your Information Products? Part 1

We infopreneurs (information entrepreneurs) are a breed apart in the publication industry. We specialize in making money with information products and at the same time we give away a lot of our information products. We know that free stuff sells stuff. We have learned that lesson well.

All profitable infopreneurs usually give away products to build an "opt-in" mailing list. They then use this mailing list and the permission granted by the opt-in system to sell, up-sell, and to build a marketing funnel that lets them sell increasingly higher priced products to the same clients.

We qualify our freebies by insisting that redistribution of these information products be distributed with all our identifying information and links back to us. We want to freely give but always expect ultimately to profit while helping others.

After all, infopreneurs are information entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs expect to make money. So, how do we balance creating widespread availability of our products with some degree of protection?

With printed books (as opposed to digital books), two methods are used to identify and protect the author's rights.

Copyright is the first method. It protects the rights of the author and restricts the product's use and dissemination by others. It protects the specific expression of ideas but cannot protect the actual facts and ideas. Copyrights are used for protection of both written and electronic information products. Placing a copyright symbol, the date of the copyright, and the owner of the copyright on hard copies or digital works provides the first line of defense against someone using your work as their own. I suggest that you place a copyright notice with the date of production even on your drafts. It provides one more piece of evidence of your authorship if a question of authorship arises later. Registration of an information product by the author through nationally and internationally recognized "serial" (identification) numbers provides a second line of defense. These include ISBN numbers (for books); ISSN numbers for periodicals (both printed and electronic); and ESN's (for electronic media). These three are not the only "serial" numbers in use, but are the most common ones. Each provides some degree of protection for the author by registering the information product under the publisher or author's name.

You are not required to have a copyright or any other type of identification number on your publications, but not having one is an open invitation to unscrupulous readers to steal your works.

Commercialisation Of Technology: Key Issues To Remember

1) Universities or other private and public institutions regularly undertake research on various areas. Very often the research has as its ultimate goal commercialization, profit-making and winning competition. Research may be commercialised in two ways: (i) New companies are created which are provided with access to the intellectual property rights (IPR), facilities or assets of one party; (ii) Technology may be made available to existing companies. Typically, this would involve the commercial licensing of research work directly to industry, for example, to large pharmaceutical or medical companies.

2) For a collaboration to take place there needs to be an agreement between the parties in place clearly setting out the contributions of each party and of course the rewards should the technology be proved successful. This is achieved by entering into a Technology Transfer Agreement, which addresses the following:

1. Nature of the IPR involved/transferred Define exactly what rights are to be transferred.

2. Method of the transfer The next most fundamental issue to be resolved is the method by which the IPR will be transferred from one or more parties, that is, by assignment or licence.

a. Assignment An outright assignment gives the assignee greater freedom in relation to the technology, since in a typical assignment, there are few, if any, controls placed on the assignee by the assignor. In the event of insolvency, the assignee has an asset that can be sold to create value for the shareholders. Of course, if the assignee has become insolvent it may be because there is no market for the product. However, if the product has failed for other reasons, such as lack of marketing support, lack of follow-on funding, or issues affecting customers a willing buyer may exist for the technology. The practical benefit is that it should be easier (or cheaper) to raise funds if the assignee has some form of assets. Investors usually prefer to invest in a company which owns and has freedom to use all of its assets. If an outright assignment is not possible, this can also be achieved with an exclusive licence.

b. Licences A licence gives the parties a greater feeling of control and also an ability to participate in any successful commercialisation of the technology through royalty streams, as well as being able to participate in any growth of the spin-out business as a shareholder. A licence also ensures greater flexibility for the party; it may be possible to provide that the licence terminates if certain conditions are fulfilled (for example, if the licensee fails to exploit or to exploit successfully the transferred technology). The licensor then has the option to take back the licence and perhaps proceed with a new licensee.

A compromise worth considering is a licence with an assignment trigger built in. The trigger can be linked to the value of the licensee, the return to the licensor(s), or to some other factor. In this way the licensor(s) are protected at a time when the spin-out is most vulnerable and, from the licensee's point of view, should it succeed, it is very likely that it will end up owning the technology outright.

In other scenarios, the licensee can be expected to agree to certain performance criteria. These will often be linked to the number of sales or revenue generated from sales or other commercial exploitation of the licensed technology. Failure to meet the criteria will see the licence come to an end or for the licence to become non-exclusive instead.

3. Consideration The consideration for the transfer of technology can be made up of equity, up-front payments, royalties, or a mixture of all three. This tends to be an area which is most heavily influenced by policies adopted from time to time by the various parties to the agreement. Other factors may affect the value, for example, where one or more of the contributors to the technology was not an employee, but for example, a post-graduate student or consultant. In fact, a post-graduate student will generally fall outside the definition of "employee" under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and so the IPR may not belong to the university.

4. Other rights and obligations Whatever the nature of the IPR transfer, the parties need to agree what continuing rights (if any) the parties will have to use the IPR. If a party is a university it is generally agreed that the university can continue to carry out non-commercial research and teaching using the transferred technology. However, it is worth investigating whether there are existing research projects, such as PhD theses, which need to be completed. If so, specific rights should be carved out of the transfer agreement as necessary to ensure that these projects can be completed. Also it is important to have a clear agreement as to which party will bear and be responsible for: (i) any prosecution and other protection of the transferred rights costs (for example prosecution of patent applications so that they become patents granted!) and (ii) any regulatory licences and approvals.

5. IPR Infringements The key question to be addressed is which party will have primary responsibility for dealing with any IPR infringement of the transferred technology. It is important for the spin-out company/licensee to ensure that it has the appropriate rights to take action against a third party which is infringing the transferred technology in some way.

This article is for general purposes and guidance only and does not constitute legal or professional advice.

Protecting Your Rights When Selling Your Ideas

Lots of people have great and profitable ideas but lack the capability or the resources to get them to the market. These inventors often look for companies to help them manufacture or sell their invention. If you have a very profitable and very unique idea or invention but does not have the money to have it patented before selling it to a company, you may want to secure an intellectual property protection by asking that company to sign a "nondisclosure agreement" to make sure they'll not steal your ideas or your invention.

You may also want to hire an experienced lawyer to help you draft it. Generally, these agreements provide monetary penalties if the parties failed to comply with the conditions or are proved to have breached the contract. You may want to avoid imposing very high penalties that no companies will be willing to sign it.

Without proper intellectual property protection, winning a claim in a district court is very difficult. If someone copied your ideas or invention you may want to hire an IP lawyer to assess the merits of the case. If a company copied your product including the packing to a certain point that it creates confusion to the buying public, you might have a great chance of winning the case. This is the reason why you need to have the necessary intellectual property protection for your invention.

However, some companies are clever enough to modify your design, enough to avoid any possible legal issues. And you must keep in mind that a full lawsuit in any court can be very taxing and very expensive. In most cases, your lawyer first, through a demand letter (cease-and-desist letter) asking the offending company to stop any further manufacturing and sale of the contested product and possibly pay for damages. If the parties fail to arrive in a consensus, a lawsuit usually follows.

The lawsuit can cost you thousands of dollars though out the litigation process and can take so much time from your business. There is also no guarantee that you'll win the case. You also have to prove in court that your business severely suffered from the alleged product infringement

In the long run, the best way to protect your ideas or invention is by being very cautious on whom you disclose your ideas and getting the right intellectual property protection for your invention. You may also want to get some referrals before finally sharing your ideas to anyone.

Managing Intellectual Property Rights and Contract Law

Intellectual property rights are by their nature restrictive rights. Rights owners are granted the power to prevent third parties using their intellectual property without their consent. When it comes time for materials in which IP rights subsist to be exploited, it is the law of contract that is called upon to do permit to use the materials, subject to the conditions of contract.

Contract Law

A contract is simply a legally binding agreement. Parties to contract are at liberty to agree to what may take their fancy and the terms that may please them. The law imposes limitations on what may be contracted for when the courts find that an agreement is contrary to public policy or otherwise restricted by statute. With this background, owners of intellectual property are free to agree to deal with intellectual property in any way that they see fit.

Contractual Dealings with Intellectual Property

Dealings with intellectual property take two basic forms. Firstly, intellectual property rights are personal property, which means that they may be assigned to another person, subject to very limited exceptions. An assignment of intellectual this property rights conveys the title to the rights to another person. Far more frequently however these personal rights are licensed to other businesses for a limited purpose or a limited period, in accordance with the particular terms of contract. Amongst many others, movies, music, software, architectural plans, trade marks, designs, patents may be licensed to businesses or the public at large to use them subject to specified conditions and limitations. These licenses, which are in essence permissions, allow the licensee to perform some act in respect to the intellectual property that would otherwise amount to in infringement of the owner's intellectual property rights.

In the commercial environment contracts allow such dealings to happen.

Copyright is the palladium of product of the arts, such as manuals, computer programs, commercial documents, leaflets, articles, song lyrics, sound recordings, photographs, film, sound recordings and many others. Businesses that trade using copyright works such as these are entirely reliant granting licenses to their customers on specified terms to trade using their stock in trade.

Contract law allows these companies to restrict and limit use of these copyright works to a fine degree. For instance a photograph might be licensed for use in print media for a set price and electronic media for an entirely different price, or indeed prohibit these uses in their entirety.

Patent Rights

Of all the different types of intellectual property rights, it is patent rights that provide the most extensive and complete monopoly over inventions. Products and processes which are inventive may be patented. As the monopoly rights granted are so extensive, so the bar to surpass for registration is higher than any other form of IP protection. Use of patent rights may be managed in the same way as other intellectual property rights.

Confidential Information and Know-how

A common form of license is that granted by non-disclosure agreements. Non-disclosure agreements are legally binding contracts designed to impose restrictions upon information released to another person, pursuant to the terms recorded by the agreement. In the absence of a non-disclosure agreement, the discloser of information would be left with their rights under the general law to protect the information released from unauthorised disclosure or use. The general law requires a claimant must show that the circumstances of the case justify the court finding that the information (1) retained the requisite quality of confidence, (2) was imparted in circumstances importing an obligation of confidence, and (3) that the information has been misused. Establishing such circumstances requires meticulous preparation of evidence. Thus in the vast majority of cases proving to the satisfaction of a court that trade secrets or confidential information have been misused is an onerous exercise.

Contract law simplifies this. If it were the case that a contract has imposed obligations of confidence between the parties, the discloser is not simply left with his rights at general law. The non-disclosure agreement imposes separate and independent rights to the general law, and indeed when properly drafted, may far exceed the rights that a claimant would otherwise be left with under the general law. As with other types of contracts, non-disclosure agreements may be framed to allow different types of uses of the information released - what those terms are rely upon what the parties intend to achieve.

Trade Mark Rights

The law of registered trade marks and unregistered trade marks protect brands, business names, logos, slogans, packaging and shapes in many instances. In industry, service marks and collective are also able to be registered, creating a device to set a standard of service and recognition that becomes associated with a particular standard of quality. Again, use of contracts allow businesses to license use of trade marks to other businesses; it may be that a licensor wishes to impose particular restrictions on the size, colour, geographical location or even the place on a website that a trade mark will be used. Provided these requirements may be reduced to writing with sufficient clarity they may form part of the contractual relations and effectively restrict use of the trade mark. For example, franchises depend on trade marks to create a common branding, as do businesses authorising others to manufacture packaging.

Commercial Environment

When it comes time to make commercial decisions as to the types of uses and licences that will be granted in respect to intellectual property, companies would be well advised to ensure that that contract accurately reflects the commercial intentions of the business. Failures to do so may have dire commercial and indeed legal consequences. Problems may arise by a variety of different courses.

For example, a company may inadvertently accept terms and conditions of the other business printed on the back of a purchase order authorising the payment. In such cases, the licensor's own terms of business may be found not to apply. The consequences of this are that the business contracts on unforeseen terms of contract that may well be contrary to its own intentions, and result in foreseen consequences. In one case that the author has advised on, the author of a University course inadvertently transferred the intellectual property rights to a company rather than license its use. This placed it in a position whereby it had divested itself of the assets in which had invested significant capital expenditure, that it intended to use and re-use for years to generate income. It had assigned the ownership of the course to the other party inadvertently.

A company may wish to license a company to "use" certain intellectual property rights on restrictive terms. Difficulties may arise in the contractual meaning of the word "use" when it is not defined in the contract, and thus introduces ambiguity and uncertainty in the contractual arrangements between the parties. Where a licensor asserts narrow and restrictive rights for "use" and the licensee asserts broad liberal rights to "use" the work, unless there are other material in the contract indicating what the parties intended by "use", it is extremely difficult to ascertain what the parties actually intended to agree to. In situations such as these where intransigence sets in, litigation is required to resolve the dispute causing distraction and expenses that is otherwise perfectly avoidable.

Conclusion

Fundamentally management of intellectual property rights takes place with contracts. Licences and assignment of owners' rights may be coupled other objectives of the parties, for instance:

research grants and consequent dealings with the fruit of such research; funding arrangements and contractual commitments for exploitation; clinical trials and use of consequent results of the trials; fixing royalties for exploitation of intellectual property rights; commercialisation of intellectual property and revenue sharing arrangements granting of options over intellectual property grants for licences for evaluation of relevant materials, and onward licenses cross-licensing different intellectual property rights for mutual research or exploitation; and software licensing.

Like any other commercial contracts, dealings with intellectual property may be complicated. Frequently this is the case because the delineation of rights and use rights granted are set out in fine, granular detail. To truly appreciate the effect of such dealings, readers need to appreciate the particular types of rights that may vest in a particular form of intellectual property.