Developing an IP strategy – Mark Harper PhD, JD

What’s happening at our v6.0 meetup:

One of the fundamental drivers in the valuation of Innovation Startup Companies is their Intellectual Property strategy. This strategy is typically a mix of trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets and patents.

To the uninitiated, it is very easy to view a patent as simply a commodity. In reality a big driver of a patent’s value is derived from the quality of its claim. A poorly drafted claim may go unissued or may protect something of little or no value. A well drafted claim will serve as the foundation or extension of an integrated and valuable IP Strategy. The value of a patent can range from zero to billions.

Patents should revolve around:

1) An inventor with a patentable concept

2) Counsel with expertise to understand the concept

3) Counsel with domain experience to reduce the concept into a claim which will issue and create maximum value in the domain.

Patents are an enumerated Federal power under the US Constitution. Unlike most areas of law, the Patent Bar is a Federal rather than State Bar. This means that inventors are able to select patent counsel based on expertise and domain experience without regard to their location in the US.

Evansville Tech on Tap member Mark Harper, PhD, JD will present to our Tech on Tap 6.0 meetup. While no stranger to Evansville, Mark will be traveling from his home in Troy, Michigan for our event.

Mark earned his B.S. and M.S. in Metallurgical Engineering and his Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering in 1992 from Ohio State University. While a student at Ohio State, he was selected as a B.F. Goodrich Young Inventor and issued a patent for his graduate research. Following graduation Mark was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Before returning to school in 2001 to pursue his law degree, Mark worked as a research engineer in the metals industry where his research interests included high temperature corrosion and alloy development. In addition, he served as principal investigator on two government funded alloy development programs, one involving a large collaboration between two universities and a national laboratory. Mark has over thirty scholarly publications in the material science field.

Mark is a partner at the intellectual property law firm of Gifford, Krass, Sprinkle, Anderson and Citkowski, a firm remarkable for the number of practitioners holding Ph.D.’s and the diversity of their domain expertise.

Mark will bring world class expertise to our Tech on Tap 6.0.

 

 

Startup Weekend Evansville 2.0  (SWE) is coming February 22-24, 2013.

Tech on Tap 6.0 is the perfect warm up for a great Startup Weekend experience. Click below for information and to register

 

 

 

 

In order to attend:

You must join the Evansville Tech on Tap meetup group.

Being a member of Evansville Tech on Tap allows you to register to attend this meetup and bring up to 2 guests. There is no cost or commitment to stay a member, but registration will allow us to be more efficient at keeping you informed of future events. You can un-register at any time and will no longer receive notifications about Evansville Tech on Tap.

Evansville Tech on Tap’s mission:

In simplest terms,  creating an Innovation Startup company requires only a Founder with an idea and a Funder with Capital. In reality Innovation Startups succeed with a Founder, a Funder and a multitude of Facilitators playing supporting roles. Our mission is to support connections between the niches of the Innovation Ecosystem in Evansville. Everyone with an interest in seeing innovation based companies start and flourish in Evansville is welcome to join and attend.

Each FREE meetup will focus on three things:

Sharing time at a comfortable venue – at 5:30 p.m. Creating an opportunity for niches of Evansville’s Innovation Ecosystem to connect and learn about one another. You decide who you want to talk with, what you want to talk about and how long you want to talk about it. (Please no business solicitations, if you are a service provider this is not the time to sell.) Begins at 5:30 p.m. and resumes after presentation. Learning about the Innovation Ecosystem through a 15 minute presentation on a topic relevant to starting and supporting Innovation based companies. – Begins at 6:15 p.m. Did we mention FREE?

Thanks again to our GREAT friends at the Growth Alliance for Greater Evansville each person will receive tickets for two half pints of great Tin Man beer on the house!