Speakers Share How Their Firms Use yet2.com

Speakers Share How Their Firms Use yet2.com

The speakers at Amsterdam represented companies at various stages of executing technology licensing strategies. Whether just getting going or further along the road, the speakers showed that yet2.com fits into every phase of licensing strategy.

"[We use yet2.com´s listing form] as a specification for licensing," shared Dave Christensen of GE Industrial Systems. As Manager of GE Industrial Systems´ Intellectual Property Process team, Dave is in charge of initiating technology licensing activities. In his speech at Amsterdam, Dave described how, once he and his management realized they could support their new growth technologies by earning income by licensing other technologies, they were ready to get under way.

Dave needed a way to get through the stage that Tom Stewart called the "linguini method of knowledge management." Stewart was referring to the myriad people and places within any organization where knowledge and intellectual assets reside. Dave used yet2.com´s technology listing form as a guideline to organize his intellectual property portfolio. "The listing form [became] the project spec." By articulating what technologies the organization had, how much they are worth, whether they were licensable, and whether competitors were infringing, the yet2.com form helped establish valuable data points for his staff to gather on the technologies in their IP control.

After gathering basic information as called for on the yet2.com listing form, Dave took advantage of yet2.com´s help by running his list of patents against a usage model of yet2.com´s search terms. This gave each of his patents a "score" -- a quantified estimate of how many "hits" each technology would have received on the site had it been listed. He used this score to indicate potential payback from listing. Once he had prioritized his patents, he knew the order in which to write them up for the site. He distributed the workload among his engineers, asking each to draft the listing first, before yet2.com had even sent in a trainer to show them how to write better listings.

Dave Christensen also pointed out that, while GE does not list technologies for which patents have not been filed, they do list technologies for which patents are pending. He considers this a "good start" way to get these properties under intellectual property management, and as a way to test the market early.

Similarly, P&G has decided to let the market speak regarding how to prioritize or decide which technologies to list on the yet2.com web site. "P&G has decided to list everything on yet2.com," said Jeff Weedman, P&G´s Vice President and Licensing Manager, during a panel discussion. "The decision to list is not the same as a decision to license." P&G puts as many technologies on the site as they can, deciding to handle licensing decisions on a case-by-case basis as interest arises.

P&G has also taken advantage of another of yet2.com´s services -- batch registration of users. P&G has provided a list of user names and email addresses for their R&D personnel to yet2.com, who register each staff member, sending initial passwords to each one. "This is a quick way to get yet2.com services to your staff," Weedman said.

Philips Electronics has also made a conscious decision to move into technology licensing. Jelto Smits, from Philips´ Corporate Strategy department, described how his firm has progressed from the "Not Invented Here" syndrome to the "Proudly Found Elsewhere" approach to business. Philips has no particular "radar" group looking for technologies to spin out; they are working hard to instill the licensing mentality in everyone.