When business people plan a save harbor of intellectual property (IP) they consider a wide spectrum of legal tools to maximize the protection of IP assets. The main point is that IP protection strategy should be kept from the beginning of creation, during its development until a design is complete. The strategy of securing design ownership starts with recognizing a design as a potential asset, and continues to carefully plan its protection throughout the lifetime of a design optimizing IP protection and reducing infringement risks. It may include these specific goals.

Goal 1: “Generate design research. It should be done prior to the design challenge early in the long- term planning phase and in the concept generation stage of new product development. This general research includes a state of-the-art search of patent literature (patents and published patent applications), which is analyzed by the IP counsel and shared with the development team to spark design innovation. Just as the iPod design team would have looked to Sony’s 1979 Walkman and related patents for inspiration, design development teams benefit from studying past design efforts.” The good example of such research could be list of the following questions:

What’s the core intellectual idea or invention?
How easily can it be duplicated?
How did the idea/invention come about? Was the inventor working at another company? Was she a university researcher?
How might you protect against duplication via a patent, trademark, copyright, or some other vehicle?
How visible will the invention be within your product or service?

Goal 2: “Avoid designs owned by others. Identify IP risks associated with the proposed design concepts-ideally, in the feasibility stage of new product development-so that risky design concepts can be screened out early. Once a design concept is selected for further development, a targeted search looks for patents relevant to that design concept. As needed, the IP counsel facilitates a “design around” to place the final design outside the scope of IP rights of others.”

Goal 3: “Secure IP rights. IP counsel leads the development team’s efforts to protect selected design concepts in the feasibility stage of new product development. IP protection is sought not only for the preferred design concept but also for alternative concepts that may later be preferred by the company or the company’s competitors. Before product launch, the IP counsel ensures that IP protections are in place, including foreign protection when a product will be sold or licensed overseas. And upon product launch, the IP counsel establishes procedures for monitoring the activities of competitors to police IP rights.”

Goal 4: “Enforce and expand design assets. Even after design protection has been secured, steps should be taken in the active lifecycle phase to enforce IP rights. New competitive advantages can also be sought during the active lifecycle phase in connection with design improvements.”

Goal 5: “Harvest design assets. In the decline or exit phase in which a design reaches its sunset, the IP counsel can help extract value from IP assets. Instead of allowing them to go unused, IP assets can be harvested at this final phase by licensing or selling IP assets to other companies or by using those assets as leverage to settle disputes with other companies.”

The best way to protect IP assets is to follow the simple rule of “Be aware!” In other words, it is the responsibility of business people dealing with their intellectual property to manage IP assets protection by the implementation of the effective corporate intellectual property strategy. Undoubtedly, afore mentioned 5 steps of this strategy will help to save a lot of money.

When business people start a new business they do so called long-term thinking literally focusing on the kind of trends research consisted of a collection of reports and research on the sources and impacts of social and business change. The research can help to generate new business ideas. But I personally didn’t know that the research itself is a nice business. Here is my story of how I found a researching to be a great business nowadays.

Generally, business people need basic information to start and operate a business. Who are the decision-makers? What are their titles, back-grounds and responsibilities? What is an organization chart of the key people in the portion of the company their client is working with or targeting? So, the choice is to start digging up the information usually without any knowledge and skills and consequently spending a lot of time. Or, another option, a professional staff of researchers can do that quickly, precisely and without cutting off the budget.

According a Strategic Research Network, national strategic research company, researches provide Internet research services to their clients in exchange to a fee which depends on the project complexity. Researchers do something that their clients would rather not spend time doing at all. They dig up the current and accurate information that their clients absolutely must have to conduct their business. It could be the names, numbers and addresses of their potential clients. It might involve the pre-qualification of job candidates or preparation and management of e-mail tracking campaigns for employers.

Who can be a researcher and what they do? Marketing and management oriented people because they can appreciate how valuable sales and business research can be. People who enjoy being a “detective” and engaging in problem solving activities, those who are analytical and have project management skills.

Researchers use advanced Internet research services to generate custom leads that are unavailable anywhere else. They gather competitive business intelligence. They know everything about their clients or competitors so the clients can sell more products. The same approach is to the new business: there is a need of contact information for decision-makers that new companies can’t find anywhere else.

They also collect relevant industry content for marketing. It is not effective to just e-mail obvious promotional materials to the clients and prospects every time company communicates with them. Business purchasing decision-makers are too sophisticated. The researchers gather articles that are relevant to the target’s industry, sector and situation. They prioritize sales contact with e-mail tracking. What if your sales person could send an e-mail to 200 purchasing decision-makers and see in real time which ones were opening e-mails and which ones were clicking on links? What if you have their name and phone number right there too? Instead of calling 200 people who even didn’t read the message yet they can call 15 potential customers that are in their office and just have read the e-mail.

Researchers operate their own businesses, usually as home-office full or part-time, being perfect inexpensive outsource for their clients. While researchers are focusing on various types of lead generation projects their clients are concentrating on sales and recruiting activity.

According to SRN the future looks good. Demand for researchers among B2B Sales, Human Resources, Recruiters and Job Seekers remains high. That’s mostly because of the gap between what the average person can do and what trained researcher using excellent software and systems can accomplish. Whatever project company is planning this is a bad idea to let salespeople to do research themselves. Sales divisions of companies will continue to be expected to do more with less and will be looking for new ways to stimulate sales. Human Resources departments will be pressured to fill positions while reducing their recruiting costs. Job seekers- no matter how experienced they are- will always need the expertise of professionals who can put them in a position to speak with actual hiring authorities. So, isn’t it a nice business concept?

E-commerce industry observers and business people were speculating last week on whether a US Internal Revenue Service “John Doe” summons on e-processing company PayPal might be connected with US citizens hiding their income in offshore accounts. This week on April 29 PayPal provided the information requested by the IRS. The company has said that whilst it values the privacy of its clients, it feels obliged by US law to obey the subpoena.

The news broke last week that PayPal, which still services e-commerce accounts outside North America, has been subpoenaed by the US Internal Revenue Service in the District Court for Northern California to produce financial records concerning the use of offshore credit cards. Different lobbying groups tried to check out the issue discovering that “this is to be part of a larger IRS investigation that commenced several years ago concerning tax issues involving Americans holding credit cards issued by banks located in places the Treasury Department considers to be potential “tax havens”. 

However, IRS action raises two questions. First, why IRS didn’t issue a third party summons for a named individual or group of individuals but acted under the ‘John Doe’ summons? And a second, what is the right of privacy of taxpayer in this case?

Obviously, in the first case under IRS 7609(a), it needs to notify the person within three days so that the individual could contest the summons by seeking to have it quashed. But with “John Doe” summons, the targets’ opportunities to fight the summons are very limited. In this case however, a greater burden is placed on the IRS to show in a court that it is not engaged in a “fishing expedition.”
 
Next, what is a right of privacy of e-commerce or our “digital civil rights”, so to say? Law experts say that the U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. Distinct from the right of publicity protected by state common or statutory law, a broader right of privacy has been inferred in the Constitution. This right has developed into a liberty of personal autonomy protected by the 14th amendment. The 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments also provide some protection of privacy, although in all cases the right is narrowly defined. The Constitutional right of privacy has developed alongside a statutory right of privacy which limits access to personal information. The Federal Trade Commission overwhelmingly enforces this statutory right of privacy, and the rise of privacy policies and privacy statements are evidence of its work. In all of its forms, however, the right of privacy must be balanced against the state’s compelling interests. Such compelling interests may include the IRS need to obtain such personal information of American tax evaders.

Well, here is the funny thing. Some of my Russian friends trading on e-bay and using PayPal informed me that PayPal is going to produce IRS their various account records, including data related to their PayPal account. Russians protested. They don’t get how they are related to the American tax obligations and why their personal information should be provided to IRS. Nevertheless, “PayPal understands the summons relates to the IRS’ offshore compliance program in which the IRS has sought information about offshore credit card accounts from a number of companies”. This understanding doesn’t help, I think. It so amazing how easy for IRS to get so sensitive information using “John Doe” summons. Since what time the IRS form W8-BEN Certificate of Foreign Status doesn’t satisfy the requirements for the foreign accounts owners?

I am sorry, but I see only sad future. If there is an American address but a foreign credit card on PayPal account, this is a red light for the US IRS. Even if there is no particular taxpayer details of the account owner IRS has easy access to the information to determine the taxpayer status. I think many Americans use their foreign credit cards to save some money in e-commerce. Most likely it is still expensive for IRS to dig too much to get a detailed information of every taxpayer. But once technology gets advanced and cheaper all of the people who used this kind of tax heaven will owe something to IRS.