Business and legal experts reside today in functional silos that effectively prevent communication and education. Unless these silos are broken down, it is inevitable that business professionals will continue to destroy corporate value by not sufficiently including IP ownership in their collaboration agreements. Patent experts can continue to create value for ourselves by expending efforts to preserve our client’s IP rights when the collaboration fails.
The definition of insanity was said by Albert Einstein to be “doing the same thing again and expecting a different result”. To this end, it is insane for business professionals who deal in the collaboration space to continue to struggle with IP ownership issues over and over again because there is no doubt that complications and disappointment will inevitably arise. While not all of these issues can prevented by up-front analysis, I can virtually guarantee that the cost and effort of resolving IP ownership after a collaboration failure will be considerably less when a business-focused patent professional such as myself is brought in at the collaboration planning and agreement preparation stage.
Jackie, your observations bring to mind advice given me early in my career as a research collaborator. I have had this advice surface to my consciousness every time I have reviewed terms of a collaboration agreement. “PLAN FOR SUCCESS BUT CONTRACT FOR FAILURE!” As a commercial animal rather than a legal beaver this advice has served me well through the years. The reality is that the contract stays on the shelf when everything is running along swimmingly, but when the going gets rocky is when you need the surety of a well-drafted contract. And just like insurance, when it is needed it’s too late to change it!