From the category archives:

Legally Informed Strategy

Breaking Down The Silos That Separate Business People And Lawyers

by Doug Park March 3, 2010

In many companies, business and legal operate as separate silos. On the business side, there is business development, corporate development, marketing, finance, and human resources. On the legal side, there are in-house attorneys and outside counsel. Business sees legal as a cost center, not as a value driver.  Unfortunately, this separation of business and legal [...]

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Why Strategy, Law, And Organization?

by Doug Park February 18, 2010

Good business lawyers understand that legal problems are necessarily business problems. Yet, understanding the law, by itself, is insufficient to understand and solve complex business problems.
In this short post, I advance a simple argument: A combined Strategy, Law, and Organization lens provides superior solutions to difficult business and legal problems. Examples include mergers [...]

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Intellectual Property Rights, Merger And Acquisition Strategy, And Transaction Costs

by Doug Park January 21, 2010

Do the transaction costs of allocating intellectual property rights in collaborative R&D influence merger and acquisition strategy? When it is difficult to write intellectual property agreements, does it makes sense for managers to turn to a merger or acquisition as the solution? The answers have consequences for how business strategy and legal strategy interact.
What [...]

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Why Consult A Business Lawyer Early In A Business Transaction?

by Doug Park January 18, 2010

Business lawyers often argue that involving a lawyer early on in a transaction is cheaper than fixing a problem later. Clients sometimes want to negotiate a deal on their own and then have a lawyer write it up. The concern might be cost or the attorney’s grasp of the business issues. Further, an attorney who [...]

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Apple Acquires The “i-phone” Trademark In China

by Doug Park January 7, 2010

Apple has finally ended its iPhone trademark problem in China by acquiring the rights to the “i-phone” mark from Hanwang Technology. The acquisition ends a dangerous intellectual property and marketing situation for Apple.
As I wrote in an earlier post, because of an apparent oversight in coordinating its marketing strategy and trademark strategy, Apple faced the [...]

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Survey Says: Lawyers Don’t Get Business

by Doug Park December 11, 2009

My last post asked whether greater value add would accompany higher hourly rates in 2010. It appears lawyers were not listening.
Today’s TexParte Blog summarized the results of a LexisNexis survey. And the results do not instill confidence that lawyers fully grasp the problems with their business model.
The following findings suggest a problem for law firm [...]

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Law Firms And Higher Hourly Rates: Where Is The Value Add?

by Doug Park December 3, 2009

An article in today’s American Lawyer outlines a tug of war between law firms and legal departments over higher hourly rates in 2010.  While law firms want to increase their hourly rates, corporate legal departments are pushing back. They want discounts up to 15% from 2009 rates, which were discounted from 2008 rates by about [...]

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Strategic Implications of China’s Draft Regulations On Price Monopolies

by Doug Park August 24, 2009

China’s Anti-Monopoly Law, implemented in August 2008, continues to take shape. The National Development and Reform Commission recently issued draft regulations regarding price monopolies. The proposed regulations apply to monopoly price activities both within and outside China, when the activities outside China affect price competition in the domestic market.
What The Proposed Regulations Cover

The regulations cover [...]

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Understanding FTC Regulations Regarding Greenwashing

by Doug Park August 19, 2009

Greenwashing involves attempts by companies to convince consumers that their products or services are environmentally friendly. As companies increasingly want to be seen as green, the practice has become more common — and dangerous. In light of recent Federal Trade Commission actions, your business needs to understand the Commission’s guidelines for environmental marketing claims.
Recent FTC [...]

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Mistakes Small Businesses Make Regarding Intellectual Property (Part 2)

by Doug Park August 7, 2009

In this post, I continue to examine how small businesses and startups can avoid common misconceptions about intellectual property. This time, I turn to patent issues that small and emerging companies must consider to maximize the value they create and capture from their intellectual property.
As noted in the previous post, these misconceptions come from an [...]

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