How Can We Blog and Protect Our IP?
As recently as two days ago, at the ad:tech Sydney conference, I was asked once again a question I get asked a lot by people considering business blogging.
How can our company have a blog and not risk having all our good ideas taken by others?
Well, at a mechanical level, you could get your IP-specialising legal counsel to check everything you write before you post it. And wouldn’t that make for a rivetingly interesting, must-read blog? Unlikely.
How I usually respond to the question, bearing in mind I am not a lawyer and do not purport to provide legal advice, is to ask the person whether they ever sit and chat with someone in the same industry or line of business and talk about matters of common interest, whether about products, or the government regulatory environment, or where they think the market is heading, or general industry gossip. And in doing that, do they worry about giving away “trade secrets”?
Generally, people seem to get it. And this is one of the contexts in which I like to quote what I understand is the Microsoft blogging mantra - “blog smart” -which I learnt from Frank Arrigo, who glossed that by saying, as I recall, that he would tell people not to post in a blog what they would not say in the presence of people from outside their company at a bar on a Friday night. Or words to that effect.
There’s also the consideration that, in my personal view, some of us get far too precious about our ideas and what we see as their uniqueness. Brian Oberkirch has some good comments to make on this in his nicely ironic post about non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) - NDA= Not Doing Anything?
And think about this: if we share some of our great and “unique” ideas on our blogs, maybe, just maybe, some reader or readers will respond and help us turn them into something truly great. Who knows that joint venturers or angel investors might not suddenly emerge if one of us posted about a stunning idea we knew we could implement with the right capital backing but might otherwise become just one more “couldabeen”?
An alternative is to write about other people’s ideas, other products in the market and show by your commentary that you might just have the smarts to come up with a better solution, without necessarily revealing that you already have, or what that solution is.
There is risk, sure. My belief is that there could be a risk of opportunity cost in choosing not to blog.
Not so much an argument for not having a risk management policy, but rather for having a smart risk management policy.
Tags: b5biz, ideas, IP, protect-ideas, Risk ManagementRelated Stories
POSTED IN: General, Knowledge Management, Policy, Risk Management
1 opinion for How Can We Blog and Protect Our IP?
lirwaydaylowl
Feb 24, 2008 at 8:27 am
To me it is necessary to find
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