Joff Wild on Founding IAM for Chief IP Officers & EU Commission’s anti-SEP Crusade

“It became obvious to me that IP was a lot more than laws and court decisions and regulations.  IP was becoming a fundamental business asset, one that people could use to generate profits, build partnerships, go out into the markets, and raise cash.  But no one was writing about that there was no coverage of that. So that said to me, there was an opportunity to create something new.”

IAM’s founding editor Joff Wild joins Eli from ‘across the pond’ to talk about starting a media company to cover the business of intellectual property (IP), the barrage of recent news about the European Commission’s misguided standard essential patents (SEPs) proposals, and much more:

• Joff’s journey from tabloids to IP
• Editing Managing Intellectual Property (MIP)
• How legacy IP media failed to appreciate/cover IP as a fundamental business asset
• Founding IAM in 2003
• Willing Chief IP Officers into existence with Rob Sterne (of Sterne Kessler) and Ron Laurie
• “If you create, they will come” – creating the idea of Chief of IP Officers
• What Chief IP Officers care about: danger & opportunity
• Strength & weakness of Chief IP Officers
• Why forward-thinking companies were willing to tell IAM their IP secrets
• Importance of sharing information for growing IP ecosystem
• How partnering with Ocean Tomo to host Europe’s first patent auction led to IAM’s event business
• Concerns about conflicts with IAM’s event business
• How patents are a clear force for good
• Why so many new patent-related ventures, business models have failed
• Difficulty of leveraging IP value
• Lessons from Nokia & Ericsson about importance of investing in patents over a long period of time
• EU Commission’s power & failure to take patent policy seriously
• How EU Commission’s evidence-free SEP proposals risk destroying EU’s global leadership on SEP/FRAND issues
• Extensive lobbying that led to the SEP proposals
• Will the EU Commission’s SEP proposals become law?
• Unified Patent Court’s potential to become the de facto global patent court
• Opportunity for Brexit UK to become a pro-patent jurisdiction
• Is it time for IAM to close down its China office in Hong Kong?
• Japan’s slow patent revolution
• India’s huge potential
• Why Brazil & Colombia have become hotbeds for protecting patent rights & why Sub-Saharan Africa might be next
• Advice for Chief IP Officers

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