Intellectual property

People aren’t getting dumber, but they’re often treated that way. Politicians, educators, and the media assume the public is uncomfortable with nuance and grateful for prescribed solutions. Business, too, is being progressively dumbed down, not only by book authors who teach management by parable but also by managers themselves. Ironically, the infantilization of work is […]

Most executives think they’re security conscious—they change their passwords and shred important documents and so forth. But what rarely crosses their minds, says espionage expert H. Keith Melton, is that cloak-and-dagger types really are after their valuables. Just because you’re not paranoid, he observes, doesn’t mean they’re not following you. Melton, the author of Ultimate […]

They restrict employee mobility.

Should companies control all the ways people experience art?

The hope that an entrepreneurial industry can help reverse global warming misses one critical point: Innovation takes time. Lots of time.

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An industry dedicated to financing inventors and monetizing their creations could transform the world.

U.S. patent law is desperate for reform.

Squeezing today’s innovations into yesterday’s system simply won’t work.

Reprint: R0309E Despite companies' almost fanatical worship of innovation, most new products don't generate money. That's because executives don't realize...

Contract manufacturers cut OEMs’ costs and free up capital. But the hungry ones are starting to bite the hand that feeds them. Smart OEMs know how to keep such hazards under control.

In 1976, Genentech, the first biotechnology company, was founded by a young venture capitalist and a university professor to exploit recombinant DNA technology....

Fears of forced technology transfer are overblown.

The real work in most companies is done informally, through personal contacts. How can executives manage such amorphous networks? Start by focusing on those employees who play four critical linking roles.

Twelve ways to make yourself a harder target.

The finding: Innovations developed by individuals who give them away increasingly compete with patent-protected, for-profit innovations in many parts of the economy. The research: Recent studies of representative samples of adults in the U.S., Japan, and the UK have found that many consumer products are developed by consumers themselves instead of by companies intending to […]

The story of Disney and Pixar.

Paying for stolen data - even when it's your own - comes with substantial legal and reputational risks.

As brands become more complex, the legal boundaries between them get fuzzier.

The recent Supreme Court ruling wasn't a cure-all.

Senior managers at the LEGO Group are faced with a quandary: Should they patent inventions coming out of their manufacturing process development work,...

Alnylam is an early stage biomedical technology focused on commercial development of a novel technology platform, siRNA. This technology offered promise...

The case focuses on the antibiotics crisis / antimicrobial resistance, a global health challenge as described by the World Health Organization. It refers...

John Esler, founder and CEO of Patio Rooms of America, founded this new venture a few months after graduating from Babson's one-year MBA program. Before...

iBasis examines the development of a long-term relationship between equipment manufacturer Cisco and start-up iBasis, a voice-over-internet wholesaler....

Carsten Schmidt, CEO of Sky Deutschland, needs to prepare for the auction of German soccer rights. Much was at stake. Not only was soccer the most widely...

This background reading looks at reverse engineering in the context of piracy and knock-offs in emerging markets like China. It first considers legal...

Nucleon is a small biotechnology company whose first potential product is about to enter clinical testing. Before Nucleon can begin clinical trials, however,...

After a remarkable success in Japan, the producer of the Japanese female singing group AKB48 evaluates market opportunities overseas for his artistic...

The case describes the actions taken by Dennis Hightower as president of Disney Consumer Products in Europe and the Middle East from 1988 to 1994. It...

Burroughs Wellcome Co., developer of AZT, the first drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Acquired Immune Deficiency...

In November 2013, GoldieBlox was accused of copyright infringement. It used the Beastie Boys song "Girls" in one of its advertisements promoting new toys...

Several top surgeons at NewYork-Presbyterian hospital (NYP) are receiving financial and administrative support to advance their surgical device inventions...

Abbott Labs has reached an impasse with the Brazilian government in negotiations over the pricing of a new anti-AIDS drug, Kaletra. The Brazilian government...

After more than a decade of development, US-based Synergy Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Synergy) received marketing approval from the US Federal Drug Administration...

During the past five to 10 years, several different intermediation business models have emerged for the intellectual property (IP) market. This note describes...

As Hasbro Inc.'s Wizards of the Coast LLC (Wizards) worked to design the next iteration of its popular tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons...

Cybersecurity threats are on the rise. As a leader, you need to be prepared to keep your organization safe. Companies are investing an unprecedented amount...

Advances in information technology, together with increasing economic globalization, are creating dilemmas regarding the levels of definition of property...

People aren’t getting dumber, but they’re often treated that way. Politicians, educators, and the media assume the public is uncomfortable with nuance and grateful for prescribed solutions. Business, too, is being progressively dumbed down, not only by book authors who teach management by parable but also by managers themselves. Ironically, the infantilization of work is […]

Senior managers at the LEGO Group are faced with a quandary: Should they patent inventions coming out of their manufacturing process development work,...

Most executives think they’re security conscious—they change their passwords and shred important documents and so forth. But what rarely crosses their minds, says espionage expert H. Keith Melton, is that cloak-and-dagger types really are after their valuables. Just because you’re not paranoid, he observes, doesn’t mean they’re not following you. Melton, the author of Ultimate […]

They restrict employee mobility.

Teaching note for case 817020.

Alnylam is an early stage biomedical technology focused on commercial development of a novel technology platform, siRNA. This technology offered promise...

The case focuses on the antibiotics crisis / antimicrobial resistance, a global health challenge as described by the World Health Organization. It refers...

Teaching note for case NA0516.

Teaching note for case SMU526.