Breakout: The Board’s Role in Patent and IP Strategy

Intellectual property, whether in the form of patents, copyrights, trademarks or trade secrets, accounts for an increasingly large portion of total company value.  Mishandled IP matters, whether litigation or otherwise, can be extremely costly to the company. Anticipating and addressing IP issues, particularly around patents, can present crucial strategic challenges to a publicly traded company. But companies who handle these issues correctly can gain a competitive advantage. An increasing number of these IP challenges rise to the board level because they implicate the future viability of the firm. This session helps directors get ahead of the curve by showing how to develop an affirmative intellectual property strategy. In the process, the panelists will discuss the board’s role in managing IP strategy, review the impact of certain “game-changing” cases and trends in the past year, and provide recommendations to the board for superior methods to take immediate action around these issues.