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From IP::JUR

Intellectual Property

In law, intellectual property (IP) is is usually understood as an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to inventions, written and recorded media, and brands. The holders of these legal entitlements may exercise various exclusive rights in relation to the subject-matter of the IP.

In a broader sense, at least the following areas of law can be considered as belonging to the field of intellectual property:

• Copyright
• Patents and Utility Models
• Trademarks
• Geographical indications
• Industrial design rights
• Trade secrets
• Database rights
• Plant breeders' rights
• Supplementary protection certificate
• Traditional knowledge

However, some caution should be exercised when utilising this concept. The term intellectual property may be used within the framework of the European Union in a narrower sense where it denotes copyright law as well as a few related matters. In this EU terminology, patents and utility models are considered to represent industrial property.

Whereas the role of intellectual property law has not been very much in the focus of any public debate during the 20th century, this has changed now:

• Since around 1999, certain NGOs have put into question the adequateness of today's system of intellectual property lw, e.g. in the context of the political disputes over the patentability of computer-implemented inventions sometimes denoted as or discussed in relationship to software patents.
• In recent years, parts of the industry have expressed their discontent with certain aspects of the present system of intellectual property law.

This wiki attemps to collect various materials relevant with regard to the current challenges of intellectual property law and politics.

Business Models

According to Wikipedia, the term business model describes a broad range of informal and formal models that are used by enterprises to represent various aspects of business, such as operational processes, organizational structures, and financial forecasts. Although the term can be traced to the 1950s, it achieved mainstream usage only in the 1990s. Many informal definitions of the term can be found in popular business literature, such as the following:

"A business model is a conceptual tool that contains a big set of elements and their relationships and allows expressing the business logic of a specific firm. It is a description of the value a company offers to one or several segments of customers and of the architecture of the firm and its network of partners for creating, marketing, and delivering this value and relationship capital, to generate profitable and sustainable revenue streams." Ostenwalder, Pigneur and Tucci (2005)

In other words as used by Vadim Kotelnikov, the business model spells-out how a company makes money by specifying where it is positioned in the value chain.

Chesbrough and Rosenbloom specify six functions of a business model:

1. to articulate the value proposition
2. to identify a market segment
3. to define the structure of the firm’s value chain
4. to specific the revenue generation mechanisms
5. to describe the position of the firm within the value network
6. to formulate the competitive strategy.

It makes sense to assume that intellectual property law should ever be discussed in its relationship to certain business models.

The Relationship of Business Models and IP

The functions of a business model usually show a different susceptibility to IP:

Value proposition is what the customer gets for what the customer pays. In B2C markets, the value proposition appears in many cases not normally to be strongly linked to IP. Exceptions can appear in case of products which depend on interoperability with other products. With regard to B2B markets there might be cases where the asertion of a supplier of goods and/or services given to its customers to control dissemination of a certain technology by means of the own IP portfolio might be relevant. For example, a component supplier in the automotive industry might assert to a soecific customer that no one of the competitors thereof will be given access to a certain technolgy.

A market segment is a subgroup of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product needs. It appears not normally to be specifically related to IP.

The value chain categorizes the generic value-adding activities of an organization. Technology is employed to some degree in every value creating activity, changes in access to technology due to IP can impact competitive advantage by incrementally changing the activities themselves or by making possible new configurations of the value chain. Value chains are linked by supply chains. A supply chain, logistics network, or supply network is a coordinated system of organizations, people, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service in physical or virtual manner from supplier to customer. Supply chain activities (aka value chains or life cycle processes) transform raw materials and components into a finished product that is delivered to the end customer.

Revenue is a business term for the amount of money that a company receives from its activities in a given period, mostly from sales of products and/or services to customers. It is evident that this function of a business model usually is strongly linked to IP.

Value networks are complex sets of social and technical resources. They work together via relationships to create economic value. Value networks might be seen as organisations that create value for customers by linking them together or mediating exchanges between them. It is evident that this function of a business model usually is strongly linked to IP.

Competitive strategy refers to how a company competes in a particular business (note: overall strategy for diversified firms is referred to as corporate strategy). Competitive strategy is concerned with how a company can gain a competitive advantage through a distinctive way of competing. It is evident that this function of a business model usually is strongly linked to IP.

References

Henry Chesbrough: Open Innovation: the New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Harvard Business School Press, 2003.