By Francis Moran
The eyes of the Canadian commercialization ecosystem will be focused sharply on Toronto and Ottawa this week as the Ontario and federal governments bring down new budgets that are expected to considerably reshape broad programs of industrial, research and business incentives in each jurisdiction.
At the federal level, where the budget arrives Thursday, the main concern will be around the future of the Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credit, a widely used program that accounts for well more than half of Ottawa’s annual $7-billion support for research and development. More than 24,000 companies every year underwrite at least part of their operations through this refundable tax credit that gets paid out whether the company is profitable or not. The fear is that the federal government will follow the advice of the Expert Panel Review of the Federal Support to Research and Development, a task force that suggested SR&ED be scaled back and the savings redirected into more direct funding of research.
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By David French
While recently on a trip to the United States, I was invited by an inventor with new technology relating to Cold Fusion to sign a Confidentiality Document, also known as a Nondisclosure Agreement, or NDA. I reviewed the document and I was reminded of the important points to consider before ever signing such a paper.
Inventors rely on non-disclosure agreements to preserve their rights to file for patent protection when disclosing their ideas to others during the development or funding stage of their inventions. Most countries in the world will not grant a patent, or uphold its validity in litigation, if it comes out that the inventor broke secrecy before filing a first patent application. This is the famous novelty requirement of patent law. Until further jurisprudence develops, it is likely that a single disclosure to a person who is not obligated to keep the information confidential will have the effect of invalidating the right to obtain a patent. Accordingly, it’s legitimate for inventors to want to discuss their ideas only on a confidential basis.
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We kicked off the second year of our new blog with a strong month of posts that covered a wide range of topics including leadership, content marketing, SEO, Pinterest for B2B businesses, trademarks, free tools for social media and PR, and succession planning.
On that final point, we said a sad farewell to a valued colleague last month. For our Linda Forrest, it was time for a new challenge in a new city. After a successful seven years with us, Linda has taken on the role of Digital Media Communities Manager at the Canadian Digital Media Network based in Kitchener/Waterloo. We welcome you to reach out to her on LinkedIn or Twitter to stay in touch.
Without further ado, here are our posts, in case you missed them, from February.
February 8: Giving your team ownership by Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
February 15: Burning the candle at both ends as the clock ticks down by Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
February 21: What an IP Coordinator should know: Something about trademarks by David French
And on a related note…
In addition to our series, our associates and guest bloggers were also busy writing on a great range of topics. Here are our other posts from February, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
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Associate Peter Hanschke is an Ottawa-based product management specialist. His post is part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market. We welcome your comments.
By Peter Hanschke
The ability to demo your product to a prospect is a key activity in the sales process. Prospects struggle to make the connection between what is shown in a slide deck and the issues that they need to address or the problems they need to solve. Furthermore, they also need to be assured that the product you are describing is simply not slide ware. A properly constructed demo that shows how the prospect can address their issues takes time and effort to create. But many companies leave the design and creation of the demo to the last possible moment. The result is the standby method– open the product, show individual features and hope that one or more of the features resonates with the prospect.
The problem is that the prospect is looking for a solution to a problem that they currently have – not a set of features.
Prospects are interested in buying your product or service only if it addresses a need or problem that they have. In today’s tight economy, products that address issues will be considered more favorably than those that are simply a collection of features. The intent of a demo is to show the capabilities of your product in such a way that resonates with the prospect. The prospect needs to truly understand how your product addresses their core issues. Upon completion of the demo, the prospect should have a clear vision of exactly how your product helps them.
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As part of our ongoing series examining the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market, David French, a senior Canadian patent attorney with 35 years of experience, now provides a further of his commentaries on the importance to a company of protecting its Intellectual Property.
By David French
In previous posts in this series we addressed mainly issues relating to patents. In this post we take a break from patents to discuss another very important type of Intellectual Property.
Intellectual Property has acquired this name because it is a type of property that is created by government-passed laws. Without legislation, the fundamental rule of the marketplace is that everyone is entitled to copy. But when someone copies trademark, there is an almost universal recognition that this is unjust. Besides being unjust, there are powerful economic justifications for suppressing the copying of trademarks by competitors.
Everyone has an impression as to what a “trademark” is. They think of Coca-Cola, or Heinz, or Heinz 57, or Kentucky Fried Chicken. The common thread of all trademarks is that when you see a mark you have a certain expectation about what you’re going to get. Although there are no rules forcing a trademark owner to market a consistent product under a trademark, there are powerful economic incentives for doing so.
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By Francis Moran
