Quotes n Notes – Intellectual Property

By on January 29, 2007 in Quotes n Notes with 7 Comments

Quotenote_3 "Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats." – Howard Aiken

Doc Searls gives us 10 Ideas About Ideas in an article last year (quick tip to Creative Generalist). As I’m writing this, I started to point out No. 4, then Nos. 2-4…but ya know what? They’re all solid, (but pay attention to Nos. 1-5).

Too many times, especially here in the Midwest, we want to "own" the idea. I’ve seen companies try to maintain secrecy, take ownership-control, invent their own wheel…and end up choking the life out their idea (and it probably wasn’t original anyway).

I’ve talked about the changing landscape of the WII-FM signal before (as have others  elsewhere). To hoard your idea is to suffocate it. Would you insulate a child from the outside world? Let your ideas breathe on others.

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  • http://www.sbishere.com/ Greg Balanko-Dickson

    I love that quote, ideas are nothing until someone does something with it. A new business environment is taking shape based on the values of cooperation, collaboration, and connection.
    Air out your ideas and you might just breathe some new life into them.

  • http://successfromthenest.com Tony D. Clark

    As I often say to clients (and recently noted in a post about ideas) if your idea is that easy to steal, it’s not an original idea, it’s a commodity waiting to happen.
    An idea is just the tinder. Implementation is the spark.

  • http://www.storiesbyrel.com Mark True

    Mike:
    Great points about legal ownership…but you and I know there is another kind of ownership; ownership in the mind of the consumer.
    Legal ownership costs some money and doesn’t take much ongoing effort…just let the attorney deal with it. Owning a position in the mind takes more money and a great deal of effort, making sure that your own the position in the consumer’s mind.
    A patented product or a trademark can be owned, and protected by the attorney sending a nastygram when necessary. A brand is owned because you are different, inviting, relevent and truthuful!
    (I couldn’t help myself…it just begged a brand response!) :)
    -Mark

  • http://www.conversationagent.com Valeria Maltoni

    … just like in conversations. The Cluetrain Manifesto talked about market conversation; Fast Company’s Alan Webber took the business conversation to the next level; William Isaacs at Dialogos consults on conversation is thinking together; Theodore Zeldin wrote about conversation…
    In its purest form, conversation is the new (old) marketplace, it’s a space, a situation when we see alignment of people, beliefs, needs/desires with values, products/services, projects *in time*. All of this then can evolve to what’s next.

  • http://www.converstations.com Mike Sansone

    > Greg good point. Use all your strength to build ideas – and sometimes that strength comes from others.
    > Tony. Thanks for striking a match to this thought:-)
    > Mark – You’re always thing D.I.R.T.Y.
    > Valeria – Is a conversation akin to an audible white board? And you are such a Conversationologist!

  • Brett Trout

    I agree. Ideas are worthless compared to implementation. It is the implementation that needs protection. As an intellectual property attorney I am obviously biased, but what major business in any industry does not have some type of intellectual property protection?

  • http://freepatentsonline.com james

    I saw your information at http://www.converstations.com/2007/01/quotes_n_notes__3.html. Have you seen http://www.FreePatentsOnline.com ? The site might be a good resource to add. This site allows free patent searching, free PDF downloading, free alerts, and more. It is a good resource for intellectual property attorneys, patent searchers, scientists, and students.

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