Month: March 2023

Software Protection Strategies: Alternatives to Patents

Over the past few decades, intellectual property (IP) has become an increasingly larger portion of the capital investment and assets of U.S. companies.  For software companies, in particular, IP legal protection is crucial to secure their assets from theft or copycats. 

 

Pros and Cons of Software Patents.  For many software companies, patents serve as a key tool in protecting their rights in and to their software products.   U.S. patent owners can prevent others from making, using or selling any products or services that incorporate their patented inventions or methods throughout the U.S.  As such, patents can be powerful deterrents to copycats, and can provide patent owners with significant market advantages.

 

However, software patents are expensive and difficult to maintain, and can be even more expensive and difficult to enforce.   The lifetime cost of obtaining and maintaining a patent in the U.S. can easily top $30,000.  Of course, patents expire after a maximum of 20 years, so at some point the patented inventions become open to the pubic.  

 

Also, U.S. patent protection does not protect the invention from users in other countries.  Of course, since the U.S. patent process involves a publication of the claims that, thanks to the Internet, are globally available, failure to secure international patents leaves a U.S. patent owner unable to prevent use of their technology by foreigners.  As such, U.S. patent owners often seek patent protection in foreign countries, as well, at costs of $30,000 or more for each additional country where patent protection is desired.

 

In addition, once a patent is obtained, the burden of enforcing patent rights falls upon the patent owners, themselves.  Thus, patent owners must bear the cost of investigating potential infringement and, if necessary, filing infringement lawsuits.  A recent study by the American Intellectual Property Law Association to find median litigation costs for patent infringement suits can be significant: For claims of less than a $1 million, median legal costs are $650,000. When $1 million to $25 million is considered at risk, total litigation costs can hit $2.5 million. For claims over $25 million, median legal costs are $5 million.

 

Alternatives to Software Patents.  In light of the costs and limitations of software patents, some of which are outlined above, software owners often employ alternative legal tools to protect their IP rights.  Some of these alternative software IP protection strategies include the following tools:

 

  • Effective use of licenses can grant software owners significant legal powers to use control the use of the software by partners, affiliates, developers, distributors, and users of their software.  The main benefit of this tool is that the license language can grant broad powers to the software owner and moves legal considerations from the more nuanced and complex realm of “IP law” (confusing to many courts), and renders them more simple “breach of contract” issues that courts handle on a regular basis.  However, a significant limitation to this mechanism is that the licenses can only be enforced against those who agree to it, and not against others.

 

  • Trade Secrets. Trade secret laws protect a company’s secret items that have commercial value.  Items protected by trade secret laws are typically the same subject matter as patents.  However, trade secrets do not require any filings or public disclosure, as is required with patents.  Moreover, trade secrets do not expire, so a secret can remain protected indefinitely (e.g., the Coca-Cola formula).  The mechanics of qualifying for trade secret protection are fairly nominal, but software owners should implement comprehensive protocols to ensure their software is fully protected.

 

  • Copyright Registration. While not required to create rights in a copyrighted work, registering software with the U.S. Copyright Office grants software owners significant legal protections and enforcement tools, such as:  the ability to sue in federal court for infringement, the ability to receive an award of attorneys fees from infringers, and the ability to receive statutory damages (meaning that the injured copyright owner doesn’t have to prove lost revenue or profit to receive a money award).   S. Copyright Office registrations are relatively inexpensive to acquire, do not require renewal, and protections can last 100 years or more.

 

  • Trademark Registration. While trademark registration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) won’t protect the underlying code associated with a software program, a USPTO trademark registration can help ensure that no one in the U.S. can market similar products under a name or logo that is “confusingly similar” to the registered mark. The USPTO trademark registration process is much simpler and less expensive than patents, typically costing less than 10% of the cost of patent protection.  In addition, USPTO registrations can be renewed indefinitely, as long as the mark remains in use.

Finally, for copyrighted works registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and for trademarks registered with the USPTO, the registration owners can also record their registrations with U.S. Custom and Border Protection (CBP).  Once these are recorded, CBP will ensure that no infringing items are imported into the U.S., effectively locking out the entire U.S. market from foreign imports of infringing goods.

The above discussion represents a brief overview of some of the legal tools that software owners can employ instead of, or in addition to, software patents.    The best options and strategies for protecting software will depend on a number of factors, and software owners should consult competent IP legal counsel for advice.

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Categorized as Legal

Improve CSAT With The Power of Analytics

Data analytics can be used to drive customer experience by providing insights into customer behavior and preferences. Companies can use data analytics to identify customer needs and develop strategies to meet those needs. Additionally, it can be used to track customer interactions and provide insights into customer satisfaction. This can help companies identify areas of improvement and develop strategies to improve customer experience. 

So how do we achieve this level of customer satisfaction? CSAT, a metric that directly measures customer satisfaction. Ideally, you would send CSAT surveys when you want to see how your clients feel about their experience/interaction, or certain aspects of your products/services. 

Measuring customer satisfaction using feedback surveys is the starting point. If you encounter dissatisfied stakeholders, you will need to identify a problem or a pattern. Create an analysis plan and identify critical metrics affected as part of the SLA, such as First Contact Resolution (FCR) or Turnaround time. 

In any case before making CSAT-based recommendations, you need data collection so you can use it to derive insights. 

Analytics can be complicated with massive databases to comb through and CSAT scores being, at first glance, just some numbers. Critical analysis of CSAT helps find its drivers and helps identify the strengths and the crucial customer pain points.  The Data-to-Decision method is a valuable recipe for making impactful decisions by focusing on actions based on well-structured analytics. 

“You most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” ~Bill Gates 

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Categorized as Analytics

Creative Freedom For All?

When a project involves creative aspects but is also subject to numerous business limitations, why does achieving the desired outcome become so challenging? Ever thought, “Why won’t my director let me be more creative?”, or “Why won’t my designers just follow my orders?. Most likely, there’s a communication breakdown on expectations and long-term goals when it comes to a creative project.

Striking a balance between creative freedom and meeting business requirements can be challenging. On one hand, you want to create something that’s unique and innovative, while on the other hand, you need to deliver work that meets specific objectives and deadlines. I remember the past positions I have held as a Designer or Creative Director, and can count on one hand, how many of those positions knew how to strike this balance. By following a few tips, you can optimize creative freedom while meeting business requirements in a timely manner.

A great place to start is to clearly define the project goals and requirements through a briefing or discovery session. This involves understanding the needs of your client or business, including the audience you’re targeting, the message you want to convey, the story you want to tell, and the timeline for completion. With a clear understanding of the requirements, you can work within the parameters to create a product that meets the objectives while still allowing for creativity.

Collaborate with others. Since you’ve set the objectives and limitations beforehand, you can better justify your decisions, find a clear solution while bouncing thoughts and perspective with others. Working with a team can help you generate new ideas and perspectives, which can lead to more innovative solutions. It’s important to communicate with team members to ensure everyone is on the same page and to establish clear roles and responsibilities. Communication is a necessary element in collaboration. Whenever you provide a quick status update regarding your current progress and future plans, it can enhance your director’s or client’s sense of participation and engagement in the ultimate outcome. By increasing their involvement, they will feel as though they played a role in the project, resulting in a greater appreciation of the final product. The right type of collaboration will create a culture of “joint efforts”, and the probability of achieving success will increase.

Another crucial aspect of the design process is to take time for experimentation and iteration. While it’s important to meet deadlines, allowing time for experimentation and iteration can lead to more innovative and effective solutions. Going back to communication, designers, directors, and client’s, where applicable, must manage expectations and take time to explore different ideas, techniques, and approaches, and don’t be afraid to pivot if something isn’t working. Planning up front, giving yourself and your team time to think, ideate, and plan will only help in the end.

I have yet to work on a project that took these approaches and told myself in the end, “I regret slowing down to speed up. I regret thinking this through ahead of time…” These mentioned steps can lead to more creative solutions that meet business requirements in a timely manner.

By clearly defining project goals, collaborating with others, and allowing time for experimentation and iteration, you can optimize creative freedom while meeting business requirements in a timely manner. Balancing creative freedom and business requirements is a challenging but essential part of creative work, and by following these tips, you can find the right balance to deliver effective and innovative solutions. Ultimately, boundaries are necessary to experience a sense of freedom while working on a design project, and trust and creative freedom can be established through effective communication and well-defined expectations in projects that involve creativity. That to me, sounds like teamwork.

In the end, job satisfaction, optimized and efficient teamwork, and successful creative project launches and outcomes are some of the many achievements every team wants associated with them. It’s time creative teams truly enjoyed their work, and had fun doing it again, across the board.

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Categorized as All

Why Companies are Shifting to Technical Product Management

Product management has become the forefront of technological innovation with companies realizing the value of being product centric organizations. Product Managers come with different skills, but one skill in particular has been silently shifting the product management paradigm. This particular skill is being a Technical Product Manager (“TPM”). So what is a TPM?

A TPM brings an element of technical understanding that historically was nested with other roles, such as a Business Systems Analyst or similar. TPM’s are able to dive deeper into the product to be able to speak on the technology stack being used, understand the technological decisions being made, being able to challenge certain technological decisions, and being able to influence those decisions.

Understanding the technical side of a given product allows the TPM to better understand implications of tech debt, maintenance of a given feature, and how to be able to scale a product technically for growth opportunities. Being able to combine this technical understanding along with user and stakeholder feedback when thinking about growing your product allows a TPM to be a true owner, and a well informed manager of their product offering.

There are multiple facets to a TPM such as being able to understand certain development practices such as being able to write/understand API’s and schemas, helping to write test cases such as Gherkin, and so much more. These skills develop over time and there is no fast approach at becoming a good TPM. Master your craft, obtain mentors along your journey, and grow in your field through practice. Don’t lose sight of your product partners in user research and technology, stay user centric, focus on product strategy and value, etc., but use the technical skill as part of your decision tree to help grow your product with a higher ROI with the features you deliver to the market!

What is Kreativs?

As the digital and technology sectors are moving towards more advanced AI & ML, Kreativs has been created in order to help bridge the knowledge of all practitioners at a global scale. The main problem that people face in any given industry or sector is that information is scattered and not available in a centralized location. If a software developer desires to obtain knowledge about a specific tech stack, that developer would have to search through multiple sites to obtain quality and useful information. An extension of the problem mentioned above is that the material can often be published in a form of question & answer instead of a publication which provides full content into the given use case. 

In order to bridge that gap, and to help consolidate the information available within the digital and technology community, the goal with Kreativs is to provide a platform where students, professionals, and recruiters can interact and help create experts!

Our student access is catered towards students who are actively studying in college and are looking to use this platform to highlight their learnings throughout their school tenure. An extension of putting together their portfolio could be their research and/or internship experience. Often times, it is only something they are able to speak to as part of their interview process but they do not have a shared platform where they can actually publish their content. This will not only allow them to showcase their thought process and critical thinking skills, but can be used as a resume enhancement. Furthermore, it can help put a spotlight on the college or university especially with groundbreaking information they find or learn.

Our professional access is curated for working professionals in any job or role within the digital and technology space. Whether you are in sales, marketing, legal, development, product, design, support, etc., you interact with technology everyday to do your job. What technology do you use? How do you use it? What value do you get out of the technology you use? What could be done to improve certain technologies to make them more user friendly or more adaptive to your needs? How have you mastered your craft with the use of technology? What experience have you gained using technology that you wish to use to influence others in your area of work? Have you created a new exciting and an innovative product or feature and want to talk about it? How have certifications helped? So on and so on – there are so many unanswered questions and experiences that one can share which can be beneficial for others to read about and share.

With the demographics of our student and professional user base, the bridge that connects them are typically recruiters. Recruiting is the forefront of job creation, vetting candidates, and being able to help enable growth at any given company/corporation. By pairing what our student, and professionals are able to share on this platform, recruiters can actively search for authors and review publications to learn about people and their contributions! This helps to add a portfolio element to a given resume where it is no longer just keywords that might get past resume softwares! 

Together, with this shared platform ecosystem, experts get to create experts! Whether you are green in your area of work or studies, or have decades of experience, all information created on here will help influence, motivate, and provide useful knowledge to others. There will not be a need to compete against economies of scale with our shared platform, with content curated towards the digital and tech space!

From our Kreativs Team – welcome to our platform and we look forward to your contributions towards enabling a humanized technology community! We value all feedback and or inquiries, so please use our contact form to submit your responses!

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Categorized as Creative