BookWire Review November 10, 2005
Advantage "IP": Profit from Your Great Ideas
Jean D. Sifleet, Infinity Publishing, West Conshohocken, PA, $13.95 US, paperback, (158p)
ISBN: 0-7414-2708-7
Understanding, protecting, and effectively leveraging your business' intellectual property (IP) can mean the difference between great financial rewards and failure. Advantage IP: Profit from Your Great Ideas is an excellent guide to managing intellectual property, clearly written in laymen's terms for managers, inventors, and entrepreneurs.
Author Jean D. Sifflet, an attorney and CPA, explains the entire range of intellectual property rights, including trade secrets, patents, trademarks, service marks, copyright, and trade dress. She helps readers identify the IP rights that apply to their situation and then offers practical, step-by-step advice for gaining legal protection. Sifflet discusses the procedural steps necessary to apply for IP rights, but more importantly she provides best practices for the day-to-day business management. Her recommendations for working with employees and contractors are particularly useful and include non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), non-compete agreements, and assignment of rights agreements. She also offers valuable strategies for protecting a company's rights while using incentives to encourage employee innovations.
Throughout the book, Sifflet provides many true stories about companies and individuals who have used (or failed to use) intellectual property rights to protect their ideas. Learn how the formulas for Coca-Cola and Play Doh are protected, ensuring their secrecy and profitability; why Sabeer Bhatia, inventor of Hotmail, attributes his success to the use of NDAs; and how Johnson & Johnson profited from an employees' after-hours invention of the Band-Aid. These stories not only make for fascinating reading, but they help readers recognize how their own ideas and businesses might benefit from legal protection.
Inventors and entrepreneurs, in particular, will benefit from the final section of the book which provides a strategic framework for turning ideas into competitive advantage and profitable businesses.
Advantage IP is a gem of a book that bridges the gap between creative people and intellectual property attorneys. It enables readers to recognize IP situations, understand practical business and legal steps to protect their IP, and successfully leverage those rights to create a successful business.
Jean D. Sifleet is a business attorney and CPA whose career spans many years in large multinational corporations and includes three successful entrepreneurial ventures. She is also the author of Beyond 401(k)s for Small Business Owners published by John Wiley & Sons.
