Making Innovation Pay
People Who Turn IP Into Shareholder Value
Chapter One
Roadblocks or
Building Blocks?
by Bruce Berman
Most companies are reluctant to get the best return on their
most valuable assets. Shareholder value be damned. Fear of provoking
costly lawsuits plays a part. So does confusion about what intellectual
property is and how best to deploy it. Being publicly branded a patent
"troll" adds to the turmoil.
Patent trolls are controversial not because of the destruction attributed
to them, but because they strike at the heart of the complex relationship
between innovation and commerce. The term has become
synonymous with the unfair assertion of IP rights and extortion of
damage payments. An Intel Corp. lawyer came up with the name in
2001 in response to a rash of attacks on the company's inventions,
apparently from financial speculators who acquired random patents
from failed companies and independent inventors that related to Intel
products.
These asserters were not in the business of manufacturing micro-processors
or semi-conductors, b ... read full excerpt from Making Innovation Pay: People Who Turn IP Into Shareholder Value ebook
