Legal

This is Part 1 of a 2-part series. Click here for part 2. When the first iPhone launched in 2007, many prominent tech CEOs and...

Many companies fail to capture the trade secrets in their own organizations, but by deliberately identifying and protecting them, companies can increase profits and shareholder value.

Executives at some of America's biggest tech companies and retailers are breathing a sigh of relief, while many in the pharmaceutical sector aren't happy. The...

Patent pools allow licensors to reach more customers with less intellectual property risk, and allow licensees to speed new products to market by giving them access to more patents without a lot of time-consuming, one-off negotiations.

While 3D printing technology can bring tremendous benefits to manufacturers, it also comes with a myriad of legal risks. From the sharing of CAD files to potential liabilities for products manufactured by third party printers, there are many legal issues that have yet to be resolved in the courts.

The patent system has gotten a pretty poor reputation of late, especially among businesses that have been targeted by patent trolls hoping to extort a quick settlement from them. But CEOs and other senior executives should remember that even if the occasional troll can game the system to extort an innocent business, patents themselves—and a strategy for how to employ them to achieve critical business objectives—are often essential to a company’s success.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda at least have agreed on one way to achieve their widely varying visions of the future of the automobile: open up their patents on the technologies they’re promoting in the hopes of encouraging other automakers to contribute their own efforts in that area and create a critical mass of technology adoption and development that will push the company’s choice of future power trains across the finish line first.

If you are contemplating a GC hire—whether for the first time, your current GC is leaving, or you are a new CEO building out your team—considering the following points during the hiring process will help provide the best outcome.

There are 2.2 million U.S. patents in force and less than 10 percent of them are generating any licensing revenue. Jay Walker thinks his latest venture will awaken our economy’s “Sleeping Beauty” patents, which can be leveraged as springboards to innovation, business expansion and greater economic competitiveness.

CEOs often opt to settle suits brought by environmentalists and other third parties against companies all around the world. Chevron CEO John Watson just demonstrated the potential rewards of sticking things out and fighting for ultimate justice rather than kowtowing to the rabid complaints of extreme progressives wanting to stick it to “big oil.”