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.