IP Resources

Deep Dive

Top IP webinars for startups & scale-ups looking to increase their knowledge:

Deep dive: IP and Investments IP considerations and due diligence when investing in start-ups. (60 minutes).
Duncan Clark, Head of Product Marketing at PatSnap & Jon Calvert, Managing Director at ClearViewIP
Deep dive: Trade Secrets Trade Secrets: the expert guide to managing them effectively (60 minutes)
Donal O’Connell at Chawton Innovation Services & Ruta Sudmantaite at Patsnap
Deep Dive: IP Strategy How to use blue ocean strategy to build a strategic patent portfolio (60 minutes)
Peter Cowan, Northworks IP & Kirsty Bell at Patsnap
Deep dive: Brand Protection Developing a successful brand protection strategy (60 minutes)
Joel Stobart, CTO of Brand Custodian, and Jeff Moore, Operations Director at AAL
Deep dive: Value Creation How to engage senior management in patent strategy and corporate value creation (60 minutes)
Anthony Trippe, Managing Director at Patinformatics & Ruta Sudmantaite at Patsnap

Top 50 IP related recommended books

Below is the top 50 books I’ve read over the years, but if I could offer a shortlist to start based on the amount of marks & notes I have on them, it would be as follows:

1)  Edison in the Boardroom: How Leading Companies Realize Value from Their Intellectual Assets (Davis and Harrison).  This has been my ‘go-to’ book for over 10 years, mostly because it gives a good business primer on IP and follows with tangible steps and goals for a business to focus on. For training new business/IP team members or running an IP centric workshop it gives some common ground for terminology and quickly aligns the participants to a similar reference point. More importantly it gives the reader some references and structure to talk about the need for IP Management in the boardroom.

2)  The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business (Christensen).
How do you know what disruptive innovation is and the potential it has, if you have never seen it before? How will you change your processes to recognize these as core patentable topics for your portfolio? More importantly, are you building your patent portfolio around a disruptive (or unique) technology early enough? Understanding how disruptive innovation works is a benefit to those that need to mine and identify IP trends in their business and competitors.

3)  Invisible Edge: Taking Your Strategy to the Next Level Using Intellectual Property (Blaxill & Eckardt).  The authors lay out a substantive case for the importance of IP, as well as lay out that businesses in the post-industrial and knowledge based economy must look to IP as a sustainable advantage for longevity.  This book, combined with some of the tools in Edison, give the reasoning to talk IP in the boardroom with executives as well as initial toolkit to jumpstart a patent program.

4) The Intellectual Property Guide: IP Literacy and Strategy Basics for Supporting Innovation (Tawfik & Bawa).  Great basics on IP fundamentals, but rounded out with practical business experiences from the authors that link the fundamentals to business issues such as licensing, enforcement, and IP strategies.

The reading list below is broken down into 5 main sections. I wouldn’t say every book is essential or even more useful than not, however the totality of the knowledge in them is what brings the understanding to the reader.

1) On approaching IP from a business view, and being able to talk about IP in the boardroom:

 2)  On the Mechanics of Patents & Licensing:

3) On Innovation, and ensuring your patented technology flows from a solid foundation:

4) On Thought Leadership & Business:

5) On Patents in Academia: