Edison in the Boardroom Revisited: How Leading Companies Realize Value from Their Intellectual Property, Second Edition

Summary

Many companies are concerned that they don’t appear to “qualify” as IP-savvy management participants in the Edison Value Hierarchy, even at its lowest level. Companies with this concern may ask themselves a series of questions to learn whether intellectual property is or should be sufficiently important to their business to warrant investing in IP management. For companies that are aware of the importance of IP to their business, but that question whether their IP activities meet the standard of “IP management,” there is a further set of questions that may be asked. Companies not paying adequate attention to their proprietary and legally protected inventions may be destroying value that they have invested in creating. Examples are given of commonly found circumstances of value destruction by IP-indifferent companies. Finally, there is a set of recommendations that companies may follow to move themselves from a condition of inadequate IP management to a position where they may qualify for inclusion in Level One of the Edison Hierarchy of Value.