IP Licensing Best Practices
As I mentioned here, I recently gave a presentation for the National Constitution Center on settlement agreement best practices. I focused on the important principles of: knowing your client's and opponent's needs; generating trust between the parties during the negotiation and through any ongoing responsibilities pursuant to the agreement; bringing in experts on various topics; and making sure that your agreement and its terms had buy in from all relevant client stakeholders (not just legal, but accounting, media relations, tax and the appropriate C-level or business executives. You can see a copy of the slides here.
Mike Graham, the Seattle Trademark Lawyer, is presenting soon on a related topic, except he is looking at planning ahead for potential litigation in trademark licensing. It promises to be a very interesting presentation based on Graham's initial notes -- click here to read them. Just as litigators do well to bring in licensing experts to finalize settlement agreements, licensing attorneys do well to have a litigator's perspective on their agreements.
[UPDATE:] I just learned that Seattle Trademark Lawyer (the blog, not Graham) turned two yesterday -- click here to read Graham's birthday post. Congratulations Mike. Two years of top quality content, and going strong. I started this blog a few months before Graham started STL. It is nice to see my contemporaries succeeding.
