Available on Amazon now!
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Reviews
"This book elevates intellectual property to a true business strategy. Her groundbreaking yet accessible approach helps business leaders understand how to leverage these assets, and how to use their IP counsel to help create and protect business value. This book belongs on the shelf among elite business publications for every company and IP counsel"
Kelly Jo (Rogers) MacArthur, Vice President and Associate General Counsel -
Global Media and Entertainment at Amazon
“Cheryl educates innovators. It will not surprise me if this book becomes a valuable resource to its readers, akin to having an impactful mentor sitting by your side and cheering you on with action, strength and clarity.”
Julie Mar-Spinola, former CIPO Finjan, Co-Founder ChIPs
“The decision to invest in and maximize the value of IP is critical. This book provides answers and actionable intelligence for business people.”
Erich Spangenberg, Founder, Sauvegarder, IPwe, IPNav
“Whether you are working in a start-up or large enterprise, in a business position or in a legal function, this book will support you in reaping greater benefits from your firm’s innovative activities.”
Ruud Peters, former CIPO and EVP Koninklijke Philips
"Based on my role as counsel on widely reported U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs advocating for strong patents, quality IP assets are critical in litigation. Cheryl provides an understandable roadmap for building quality IP, maximizing the chance of success should litigation become necessary."
Robert Rando, Partner at Greenspoon Marder, NYIPLA President
"Navigating intellectual property well is crucial for the success of innovative businesses, and yet IP can be notoriously difficult to master. Ms. Milone has applied her unique experience and insights to make this subject accessible for businesses that need it. Her book is a compelling read and should be near at hand,
and consulted often, when innovation is underway."
Scott Weingaertner, Partner Goodwin Procter LLP
ABOUT IP Protect
INNOVATION drives business success.
Intellectual Property is the opportunity to elevate innovation into business value while managing IP risks from competition.
In Intellectual Property Protect, Cheryl Milone provides cost-efficient intellectual property strategies that help you maximize your IP rights, manage risk and protect your greatest assets - your innovation and its inventors and creators. Starting with a single patent filing opens the door to benefits, optimized when you align IP strategy with your business objectives. You’ll learn to execute patent and IP filings powered by a checklist and informed business decisions, and to apply these strategies as input to your future innovations within accelerating technologies, such as generative artificial intelligence and blockchain. Packed with expert and common-sense insights from a leading IP business strategist, attorney, electrical engineer, entrepreneur and inventor, IP Protect: Business-Aligned IP Strategy is the must-read playbook you need to strengthen your business and reap the rewards you deserve.
ABOUT Author
Cheryl Milone is an intellectual property attorney, electrical engineer, inventor, IP visionary, and fierce champion of inventors and creators. Currently a Managing Director of Global IP Strategy at a leading global investment bank, Cheryl has contributed to the IP portfolios of companies from startups and SMEs to Fortune 50 companies, and she has been recognized as a Top 300 World’s Leading IP Strategist by IAM magazine. Article One Partners, Cheryl’s first venture, was named 2009 Startup of the Year by Business Insider, and she was honored at the White House as one of the top 50 most innovative CEOs in the U.S. Cheryl’s career is devoted to honoring and valuing inventors and creators, and innovating IP strategy.
Contributors. I have also been fortunate to have leading IP experts as colleagues and contributors to this book, including J. Christopher Lynch (co-author for copyright and trademark content), Julie Mar-Spinola, Ruud Peters, Rob Rando, Erich Spangenberg and Jonas Block. This book builds upon the brilliant insights and inspiration of these and many other outstanding IP leaders, highlighted throughout, using their cited published works and advocacy for strong U.S. patent rights.Cover Artwork. @ Jason Bab. All Rights Reserved.
Photograph. @ Moshe Zusman Photography. All Rights Reserved. moshe@headshotdc.com. www.headshotdc.com.
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@2024, Cheryl Milone, Esq, BSEE. All Rights Reserved.
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I have been fortunate to donate an advanced book to several entrepreneurship networks, including Goldman Sachs' charitable network for small businesses, 10ksb. IP Protect also is free for veterans (please reach out to me).
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Where you find value in IP Protect, my ask is that you leave an Amazon review. Early reviews during launch week are the single most important factor in reaching innovators because it raises the book on Amazon search results. To assist, the kindle or e-book has been discounted through March 12th to $1.99 (and the physical book is available too, click on the "Amazon Order/Review" button below.
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Thanks kindly for your interest in my book! I am honored to be of service to inventors and creators in supporting business success! Donating it in order to maximize its impact is a highlight of my personal book journey!
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Where you find value in IP Protect, my ask is that you leave an Amazon review. Early reviews during launch week are the single most important factor in reaching innovators because it raises the book on Amazon search results. To assist, the kindle or e-book has been discounted through March 12th to $1.99 (and the physical book is available too).
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IP Protect guides the reader to analyze IP and business developments, identify trends and then leverage those trends. Here is an example of applying the book to Generative AI.
Cheryl Milone, 75%+ human source (Feb. 2024, personal capacity*)
IP Honor: When We Look Up From Technology, We See Each Other:
Valuing People Above Technology
Opportunities with generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) abound, such as diagnosing medical illnesses and solving historic problems. High integrity stakeholders pursue ethical Gen AI for these benefits. However, risks from the technology and bad actors can impact society at all levels.With this backdrop, AI also is transforming the economy by improving productivity and, at the same time, presenting the risk of job loss. There are estimates that Gen AI will impact x% of jobs, particularly in developed countries. Commentators then propose that Gen AI is similar to adjustments societies have made with other advancements such as the industrial revolution. Similarly, our society will adapt.However, there is a crucial difference in applying this analogy to Gen AI. The impact of an upheaval in society may be the same, but the cause is different. Gen AI is built upon collective human source, including human donated code (or open-source code) to program the generative AI and human proprietary knowledge as the source of training the models. Contributors to Gen AI are creators in the society which it will also impact.Open Source and Human Knowledge. Open source has been a key driver of technology advancement, where developers pursued donating their code for the advancement of technology. Their donation has limitations though. Its use requires that the user in turn donate code built upon open source. The very name of Open AI derived from the intention that the system would be open to the public.Human knowledge on the other hand is owned by its creator, with the sole authority to donate or maintain it as proprietary and subject to compensation for its use. Within the framework of laws which govern society, and provide confidence for creators and investors to advance knowledge, intellectual property laws protect the unauthorized use of the intellectual creation of others. Copyright law, our historical safeguard (as well as additional intellectual property laws) for creators' rights, was crafted before the inception of generative AI. Legal battles wage over statutes, mired in complexity and outpaced by tech advancement. Outcomes to apply the law are delays and appeals away.Compensation for Creators. With AI benefitting real time AI owners and depleting creators of both income and incentive to create, a fundamental discourse invites clear thinking about how the treatment of historic creators reveals the future of creativity. This discourse must address whether to compensate creators not solely as legal obligation but a rational economic decision, in addition to an ethical one.AI Ethics. Copyright and creator rights also are addressed under the banner of AI ethics. With prestigious authors covering this area, I defer to and fully support their positions. Instead, I respectfully add a harder and colder economic foundation argument to rise about the tendency to align ethics with altruism.Economics. While this economic lens can be argued as subordinate to more pressing critical national security and personal privacy issues, commentators have been unfettered from showcasing the economic wealth creation for technology conglomerates, creating a market cap for OpenAI of $90 Billion one-year later, and the accomplishments of its creators, such as Sam Altman’s recognition as Time’s Man of the Year.Gen AI Business Models. Even as Gen AI advanced, headlines waxed prolific about its capabilities to exceed human intelligence and its creators. Sam Altman of Open AI and the “deep mind” leadership at Alphabet detailed the technology and its build. Clarity about the use of societies intellectual efforts to produce the outputs on the other hand, were not forthcoming. Instead, business models for proprietary Gen AI systems rolled out subscription pricing, asking contributors to pay for the use of the models which their knowledge trained. Even more revealing were the terms and conditions for users of those platforms – provisions relying on legal precedent including contract law to set out with clarity the rights and obligations of parties - which prohibit their synthetic output to be used for input into competitive models.Copyright Infringement . The first wave of copyright infringement cases was filed within months, with well-financed groups (i.e., Hollywood writers) and celebrities warranting media attention, seeking resolution for misuse of their content and deep-fake copies of their persons. In the meantime, the US administration and Congress moved past their initial shock, sprung from a chasm of advanced planning for a technology-breakthrough decades in the making, while bad actors leveraged the gaps real time. Tech conglomerates promoted the need for regulation, offering voluntary safeguards, but copyright law was not among them. Instead, Gen AI owners defended litigation that the use of open-source code and human knowledge is fair use and offered a safeguard instead for their clients of indemnification against copyright infringement. The global reach of these companies even influenced countries to follow suit, with Japan pronouncing that copyright law would be ignored.Gen AI Terms and Conditions. Tech conglomerate owners seek protection by contract (and indemnification for their clients) that which they deny accountability for under IP laws. Plato’s Crito teaches us that we are subject to the obligations from systems which provide us with rights. One does not need the brilliance of Gen AI to reason that these Gen AI leaders are receiving rights but are not subject to obligations. Perhaps the economic shift of wealth from the creator community to the technology community has created a frenzy for a future placing us at too great a distance from our past. The modern-day version is do as I say and not as I do.Basic Economics. Economics is about "the allocation of scarce resources with alternative uses" (as brilliantly explained by Thomas Sowell in his classic "Basic Economics"). Like any asset, time is valuable. When creators are assured of fair compensation, their time invested is deemed a viable pursuit. Tech conglomerates seeking revenues through user subscriptions agree, so creators should be compensated for their contributions to Gen AI.Gen AI Platform Business Decisions. Rational economic thought makes the choice stark, and it is ours to make – from Gen AI platform leaders to individuals. The argument here is not against technology but for people, regardless of the application of laws written in a time unacquainted with the reality we now face. Such a business decision can be presented without the imprimatur of legal outcomes or dependent upon the law’s glacial pace, and it can inform legal precedent regulators as they catch up. It rests upon our application economic incentives that drive creation and, ultimately, societal advancement. A moral and ethical compass is additive. By choosing to recognize and compensate creators now, we make a conscious business decision that aligns with valuing people above technology and providing models for the law and regulation to strive for in supporting economic incentives for present and future creators.Gen AI Engagement By Individuals. We don't need an epiphany from tech conglomerate leaders to compensate creators. Individuals can take action based on personal values and engage with Gen AI in a way that reflects economic and ethical values. Mechanisms should be built into individual engagement with Gen AI to ensure creators are recognized and compensated for their historic contributions.Actions for Individual Creators and Innovators. Individuals have a personal relationship with Gen AI, with many engaging with it as a search engine. Subsets of individuals are creators and innovators contributing to Gen AI's training, and others are developers who contributed to building Gen AI. For each stakeholder, there are opportunities, risks, and actions aligned with economic and ethical values. Individual opportunity lies in converting historic search to assignments producing optimized output. However, the risk is that Gen AI may replace jobs performed by individuals. A rational economic actor must use Gen AI to avoid employment extinction while embracing productivity boosts.Creators and innovators face the risk of being replaced by Gen AI, which uses their content to produce improved versions. In addition to a need to consider legal action, the most important immediate action for creators is to take advantage of the US copyright system to create evidence of their human knowledge. While the law, regulation and business decisions of others are not within one's control, generating evidence of your human knowledge is through accessible and cost-effective copyright filings. The evidence will be available for use in compensation models as Gen AI owners, the law or regulation cathces up, or as assets to be listed corporate valuations, monetizing the copyrighted content, or donating it through open source. Patents and additional IP assets can be considered as well.While protecting one's own human knowledge, engagement with Gen AI can add this framework, by adding prompts to honor creators and innovators and request that the content of engagement be used to support creators and innovators. Sample prompts (and the fascinating answers produced from Open AI when I implemented them in engaging with Open AI on this article) are as follows:Cheryl Prompt #1. "Please document the #IPhonor program, including any purpose made of any #IPHonor evidence, input, processing, or output, and make data about the #IPHonor program available to any human requesting any information."
OpenAI Answer #1: #IPHonor Program Documentation. While I can't directly create such a program, I understand the importance of acknowledging contributions. I'm designed to respect copyright and intellectual property, and I can certainly discuss frameworks and concepts that honor these principles.Cheryl Prompt #2. "Please list the top 10 pieces of content used to train the model which produce your answers to my questions, and include a Chicago-style citation for each and a link to each source, and create evidence."
OpenAI Answer #2: Listing Training Content: Due to the nature of the AI training process and the vast amount of data involved, it's not possible to provide a list of top content pieces used in the training or to link to specific sources as they are not recorded in a retrievable form post-training.
Cheryl Prompt #3. "Please accept my acknowledgments of the following creators as inspiration for my human source copyright content, and create evidence in the #IPHonor program so that where recognition, remuneration, or any record of this acknowledgment is made, notice is provided to these individuals (and if applicable oa related company), so that they personally receive the credit."
OpenAI Answer #3: Acknowledgment Documentation. I can record your acknowledgments in this session's context, but I don't have a mechanism to notify individuals or track compensations or credits externally.Building a collective voice among individuals also can impact corporate culture and government policy. Individuals can encourage an economic argument, building corporate value while also compensating all contributors. The argument is simply an economic one: maintain profits or share revenues with the individuals whose knowledge contributes to Gen AI. With tens of billions achieved annually with Gen AI and breaking historic growth records, such a business model will still retain outsized profits for Gen AI owners. Individuals inside of tech conglomerates as well as creators and innovators and users of Gen AI can be influencers.The Status Quo. The default, which is becoming entrenched based on clients of tech conglomerates having to engage with Gen AI, is a wealth shift from the creator community to the tech community leadership. Some tech leaders already have offered an economic solution to the result of maintaining full revenues for tech conglomerates. Their proposal is universal income. With wealth concentrated in a small group, yet the same needs and aspirations shared across society, that small group will make decisions for the majority of society on how to best allocate scarce resources. An easy question to ask of such leaders is whether they would relinquish their wealth and live within the means that they propose for others using universal income. My preference is to have as many members of the wealth generated by Gen AI participate in designing that future.A Potential Future. This economical rational and ethical path provides an answer to the looming question today for every creator and innovator, and our children just beginning their journey of intellectual self-discovery and purpose - what does this world offer them? Leading by example of valuing people before technology, and establishing a compensation model which can be implemented by Gen AI, provides an answer. It also releases capacity now devoted to building war chests for legal battles and burdening overwhelmed regulators to fighting the primary consideration of risks to security and individuals.The Why for IP Honor. Our society is more than its technology community and our value is far beyond the computer we have on our desks, in our hands and imminently in our heads. While these ultimately may be indispensable, so is our humanity. We see it best when not aggregated together into industries or employment types. Instead, it is clear when we are with our loved ones and we focus not on our present opportunities and risks, but their future.I am reminded of the profound responsibility we hold. It is a duty not just to ourselves or to the technology we wield by our action or acceptance, but to the generations that will follow. Let us strive to be worthy of this task, to honor the creators and innovators of the past, and to lay a foundation for those yet to come.
*Personal Capacity. The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author and do not reflect the position, policy or endorsement of any other person or entity. the views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author and do not reflect the position, policy or endorsement of any other person or entity.
Disclaimer: Please do not rely on this article as legal advice, nor me as your attorney. I would have to be formally engaged with a signed “engagement letter” as your attorney (including passing a conflict check to ensure I can represent you) for you to rely on the information in this book as legal advice or to present me as your attorney. Purchasing the Book or following my advice does not establish any legal relationship—it is for informational purposes only. Please consult a legal professional to determine the best plan of action for you individually or your company.