BizMorph

Leads vs Education

Jim  Payne of S-Market Strategies posted this article  to the website of a group I belong to.  I'm reprinting it with his permission-- You can reach Jim at: www.smarketstrategies.com

In lieu of just acquiring "leads", I would recommend concentrating on opportunities to educate perspective clients.  To reinforce this approach, the Harvard Business review says that marketing yields a return on your investment of 2X, but education yields a 40X return.  In lieu of          spending your time following up on weak "leads", find ways to gain exposure by  educating key targets and making them believers in your value.

As an example, I just did a presentation at a symposium to my target audience in San Diego.  Since the event, I have been busy following up with perspective clients who are contacting me. They now believe in my value and skills based on the educational sessions that I presented.  The session      also resulted in being commissioned to write feature articles for an international industry trade journal in two consecutive months.

Is your business the type that clients hire consultants based on TipClub type of sales techniques?   You can spend your limited time following up on a large number of weak leads or developing educational opportunities that can yield clients who come to you and already believe in you.

Client -Attorney Relations

The link below is to a very interesting article by Rus Krajec describing the complaints  that customers have about   interactions  with their patent attorney.  Many of the complaints  are driven by the practice of  hourly billing.

The article  was particularly interesting to me because our firm bills by the job, not the hour and in fact we are about to introduce a new sub brand called Ala Carte Patent Services that showcases this fact.  Our new website  www.alacartepatents.com should be live in the near future.

If anyone wants to see the new website  in its incomplete state just send an e-mail to sales@businessmetamorphosis.com and request access to the AlaCarte web site.

Link: Anything Under the Sun Made By Man: Observations from a Tradeshow.

Should Microsoft Patent?

This article is only my opinion an should not be taken as legal advice.  For advice on whether you should patent your idea or keep it secret, consult a qualified patent attorney or patent agent.

My Sales Manager sent me this article   Should Microsoft Patent .  I think its a good example of  what can happen   to the patent portfolio of a large software company. Most  small software companies  are not in the situation the article describes for Microsoft . ( having deep enough pockets to  attract an  army of  patent lawyers).

  The article suggests that Microsoft would be better off if it kept its software secret (Trade Secreting) .  This  is probably a good strategy  for companies that  have a "hard to duplicate" chemical process like Coca Cola, but I doubt that this is the case for most  software  inventions because they are based on common protocols and procedures. Microsoft may be an exception to the rule  because hiding  access to the source code for a monster program like Windows might also make  sense.  However, most software isn't in that category.

Microsoft's situation is probably unique,and should not be taken as a model for small companies.  In fact a small company's  patents might put them in a position to sue the software giant, who might prefer settlement  to another attack on their "deep pockets".

How Strong is Your Patent Portfolio

SWOT Analysis using The Strategic Opportunity Cube

I. The Strength of a Patent Portfolio

Determining the strength of a patent portfolio can be an extremely complex endeavor as it involves elements of Science, The Law and Economics. A patent attorney can be engaged to study the patents, an econometrician to value them and yet the results may still be unclear to the inventor who wishes to sell or license their Intellectual property or even to use it as collateral. Even so there are some basic rules of thumb that can be applied. 

Like any asset the worth of a patent is determined by what people are willing to pay for it, and what they are willing to pay for it depends on the value of the rights that it confers to the holder. 

Those rights amount to a limited monopoly to manufacture the product or provide the business service covered by the patent for a fixed period of time in the country where the patent is granted. Parties found to be “infringing” the patent can be compelled to stop in a court of law.  

II. Location, Location , Location 

In Real Estate there is an old saying, that is more true than false, that the value of a property depends on Location, Location and Location. A similar point may be made about a patent portfolio. The value of the portfolio can be related directly to the size and value of the “Patent Real Estate” that it encloses like a fence. Defining that Real Estate is the domain of Patent Mapping. 

There are many tools available for Patent Mapping. For a good review one might not do better than  to read the paper by Anthony Trippe[1] which discusses many different patent mapping tools and their uses. The tool that I am going to discuss in this monograph is one that we at BML have developed called the “Strategic Opportunity Cube”. You can read about the cube , how it works and what it does on our website [http://www.businessmetamorphosis.com/usingcube.html]. But for the purposes of this article I am going to simply use the results of applying the cube to a series of hypothetical patent portfolios to demonstrate the understanding that can come by using the cube to locate a patent portfolio in Land of patents.

A. SWOT Analysis 

The method I am going to use should be familiar to many business people. It is called SWOT analysis for Strength’s Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The method is often used when a business wants to evaluate an opportunity or situation. I will use the cube to describe the situation in which the Green company finds itself. In Figure 1, the Green area represents the patent or patents owned by Green and the Red blocks those owned by competitors.  Unoccupied areas are White. The area shown is a 2 dimensional cross section of the Strategic Opportunity Cube, which means it shows as a plane containing two of the 3 “Perspectives” displayed by a cube. For example the axes might be “Technology and Application” taken from the Perspective set: Technology, Application, Market. (Click on the image to see it full size)

 

Strength (Upper Left Quadrant)

In the upper left quadrant “Strength” we Green has a very strong position with multiple patents which cover a large area of space. The competitors positions are dispersed and weak. A real life example of this quadrant is the case of Edison who owned patents not only on the electric light bulb, but on generating equipment and power distribution systems. Unlike his competitors, he had all the elements of a complete electrical system and was thus in a much stronger position than his competitors (although it is not usually known, there were many people working on electric lighting at the time).

Weakness (Upper Right Quadrant)

Unlike Edison, the company represented by Green in the upper right quadrant has a weak position. It has few patents and the patents are narrow in scope. What’s more Green’s patents are surrounded by the patents of others companies. This quadrant represents the situation in a very mature  area of technology where most of the good ideas have  already been patented by others and all that is left is very narrow niches. In this quadrant the inventor has to be very careful or he may end up infringing the patents of other powerful players who can put him out of business with a court order.

Opportunity (Lower Left  Quadrant)

In this quadrant both Green and Red have an opportunity to occupy unclaimed territory. The question is, who will take it. The white square between the two companies portfolios could represent a product , or technology. For example Green might be able to make Red’s product using a different and perhaps superior technology to Red. 

Threat (Lower  Right  Quadrant)

In the situation depicted here, Green is completely surrounded by Red’s patents, except for a white square on one side. Red is in the strong position of, for example , having multiple technologies available to make his product where as Green has only one method. Currently red may not make Green’s product but if he takes over the white square he will be able to. This Green will be cornered and the only product he now makes will face competition from a powerful adversary. Of course if Green becomes aware of the situation before Red, he may be able to claim the white square and prevent himself from falling into an untenable position.  In a real  world example,  a client of ours discovered  that  its competitor's  most recent filings  were moving  close to  its territory.  Using the filing dates of patents with the Cube in this way is another method of discovering the strategy of competitors.

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[1] Trippe, Anthony, “ Measuring Haystacks from Space.”