Assignment #12 Efrat's lecture on Intellectual Property

Hey Guys,

In this blog post I will be discussing Efrat Kasznik’s lecture on the role of intellectual property as a strategic business asset. First of all I want to thank and introduce our guest lecturer. Kasznik is the founder and president of the Foresight evaluation Group and a lecturer at Stanford. She received her MBA from Berkeley’s Haas school of business. 

First I will give an overview of the IP Marketplace. In her lecture Efrat showed us a graph that showed intangible assets make up 80% of the S&p 500’S market value. We also learned about the difference in consumer products vs. digital products. Consumer products are easy to patent as long as it is non-obvious and the patent office deems your innovation patentable. However, in the case of digital products the supreme court has ruled that you cannot patent software or digital products this is mainly because there is nothing proprietary about software.

There are four types of IP

1. copyrights - which is original work of the author, and this entails automatic protection for the duration of the authors life + 70 years
2. trademarks - refer to word, name, symbol, or device used in trade to distinguish goods. These are indefinite as long as they are used commercially 
3. trade secrets - refer to business items/info and they have some form of economic value and are usually kept confidential. Trade secrets have indefinite life.
4. Patents- Give the owner the right to exclude others from making, using or selling products covered by invention in defined territory. They have to be novel and non-obvious. Patents are granted for 20 years after filling.

In my next installment I will go into more depth on how to effectively use Intellectual Property as a strategic business asset.