Fortune, Sept. 27, 2010 at 76, states that 3M owns 40,000 patents and patent applications, with only about a quarter of them in the US. A number that massive and scattered helps you appreciate the crucial role of inside patent lawyers. In that vein, their role may be changing. A…
To value a corporation’s patent portfolio is one of the inter-disciplinary contributions of in-house patent counsel. Inter-disciplinary because technology professionals, commercial managers, and finance specialists have to combine their talents. Partnering Perspectives, Summer 2010, at 5, by Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, states that “Many businesses use an ‘opportunity matrix’ to…
Cassandra’s dominated the past year in terms of predicting layoffs by legal departments, doing more with less, marginalization by cost cutting. But a contrary view peeked through the clouds in an interview from Legal Strat. Rev., Summer 2010 at 20. Sony Ericsson’s general counsel, Jonathan Pearl, feels that economic decline…
Should a legal department that supports or runs patent licensing count revenue from it and talk about being a profit center? Consider Microsoft, as described in Corp. Counsel, June 2010 at 76. The company’s intellectual property and licensing group manages nearly 23,000 issued and 38,000 pending patents around the world…
Koans are verbal paradoxes contemplated by Buddhists on the path to enlightenment. My homemade koans have more modest goals: to convey some thoughts about the risks grappled with by legal departments. In a few days I will post my explanation of each koan. Risk flirts with dollars but marries reputation.…
A viewpoint that leaves me doubtful about its validity came from a panelist at the SuperConference. He said the just know and describing your data about spending “shows your client your value.” I suppose that compared to a black box legal department that simply says, “We spend $5.2 million last…
The initiative of Hewlett-Packard to hire four first-year associates to start in September has deservedly gotten much play. One aspect of the article in the Recorder, June 21, 2010 at 5, however, may have been overlooked and deserves comment. The Deputy General Counsel who led the recruitment effort remarked in…
An article in the Acad. Mgt. Exec., Feb. 2005 at 9, concerns incivility in the work place. It gives two statistics that are at least five years old that can help a law department justify its cost and value its contribution to the client. “Among the Fortune 500, the annual…
The most recent statistics from the Law Society of Britain are as of 31 July 2008. The Society tallied 139,666 solicitors on its rolls. The number of those with practicing certificates was less, at 112,433. The number of solicitors employed outside of private practice grew considerably, to 29,104. That does…
One of the many powerful ideas clearly expressed in Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Harvard Univ. 2009) at 15, is the “plurality of competing principles” put forth to explain different notions of justice. Sen believes that no single value will ever be recognized widely as the ultimate for purposes…