Classen article continues support for the chief intellectual property officer title

H. Ward Classen, Deputy General Counsel of Computer Sciences Corporation, offered some great insight into the ongoing push for the chief intellectual property officer recently with his article in the Daily Record.  Classen believes the CIPO function should come under the auspices of the general counsel’s office.

…implementing and funding a robust IP program will likely increase a company’s revenue and margin while differentiating its products in the marketplace. By helping employers identify, develop and exploit intellectual property, corporate counsel can often create unrealized value and, possibly, turn the legal department into a profit center. As intellectual property continues to grow in importance, corporate counsel’s value to a corporation will increasingly be measured by his or her ability to exploit the value of this key asset.

Two Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) put the CIPO issue in context:

• Toward a CIPO consensus (IAM September/October, 2009)
• So, you want to be chief IP counsel, eh? (IAM November/December 2010)

The first article was the noteworthy result of the initial meeting of IAM’s CIPO Manifesto Working Group at the 2009 Intellectual Property Business Conference. 

The CIPO Working Group said their initiative represents:

a shift towards viewing IP as something that is a lot more than a few narrowly defined legal rights.  Instead, as IP value creation and management become more mainstream concepts, a growing number of senior IP professionals find themselves not only looking after everything their predecessors did, but also taking on many more responsibilities that include:

• staying abreast of regulatory and political IP issues nationally and internationally
• keeping current with the latest IP management thinking and financing techniques
• talking to shareholders and analysts about their companies’ IP strategies
• ensuing IP strategy is aligned with overall corporate strategy
• focusing not only on IP, but intellectual assets and intellectual capital as well.

And, one of the standard overviews of this critical “emerging role of the CIPO” issue comes from Ron Laurie and Rob Stern’s excellent webinar.