Tag: artists

What A Business Plan Competition Judge Looks For

Successful entrepreneurs write good business plans. Good business plans win competitions.

I routinely conduct business plan competitions in my entrepreneurship class. As part of the job, I have to recruit savvy and successful entrepreneurs to serve as judges for each competition. Someone who I have often asked to judge is Dan Brown, President of Loggerhead Tools and inventor of award-winning and blockbuster products like the Bionic Wrench. Dan is a true entrepreneur and master of industrial design, patenting, marketing and merchandising.

This year, I want to give my students a leg-up and show them what expert judges look for in a business plan competition. So, naturally, I asked Dan. Here is what he replied.

Dan’s Top 10 Business Plan Presentation Topics:

1. Is there a market opportunity? Does your product or service address an unmet or underserved need and add value to customers?

2. Identify and claim your white space. Have you identified a market segment best suited to establish a strategic foothold for launch?

3. Claim an opportunity gap. Have you realistically identified your competition,  and is there an opportunity for sales based on a value-added strategy?

4. Carefully define the wow-factors. What are the customer-getting differences that add value and compete for the customer’s attention and dollars?

5. Are there opportunities for intellectual property protection? Look at patents, trade names, trade dress and other brand-reinforcing strategies. Do a thorough intellectual property search to be sure there will be no unpleasant surprises after launch.

6. Research several competitive benchmarks and quantify the cost and sales drivers necessary for success in the market.

7.  Have a thorough and realistic development, investment and sales budget, with a realistic cost analysis for development, tooling, and commercialization. Know your costs.

8. Develop a roadmap. Develop an actionable plan that identifies the resources, costs and time required to complete product development and commercialization.  Failure to plan is planning to fail.

9. Generate a simple pro-forma (forward-looking) 3-year sales forecast of investment, cost, and projected revenue with a cash flow analysis. Do you show a return on investment?  Do the numbers support your plan?

10. Assemble a winning management team and advisory board that can succesfully complete the development, commercialization and management of your business.

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Kauffman Foundation Lecture

I just finished leading an intellectual property workshop for entrepreneurs here in Houghton, MI. The event was sponsored by the SmartZone, a local high-tech business incubator.

The FastTrac TechVenture Program is a learning program administered by the Kauffman Foundation. Here are some of the topics covered in this program:

  • Determine market opportunities and business strategies and pursue them successfully.
  • Define your target customers.
  • Develop a solid marketing plan.
  • Learn to assess and build a top management team.
  • Calculate the funding needed at each stage of your business and discover the best ways to access it.
  • Learn the importance of protecting your intellectual property through licenses, patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
  • Hone your elevator pitch and investor presentation.

One question was asked, and I think it would be useful to highlight. A participant asked,  “If a small technology entrepreneur has a valuable idea, what can they do to save money and protect their idea from a large company that just takes it without permission?”

Here’s a brief checklist:

1. Make sure you are an expert in your technology space. The more you know what the state of the art is, the less time and money you will spend defining your invention during the patenting process.

2. Understand the nature of your intellectual property rights. If you have a broad and solid patent, you can obtain, or threaten to obtain, a speedy injunction to stop competitors from copying your technology.

3. Patent litigation can be very expensive, with a full patent trial costing millions of dollars. A technology entrepreneur can share the expense of a patent trial with a contingency fee patent litigator. Several law firms specialize in taking these cases if: the inventor has a strong patent, there is a clear case of infringement, and the accused infringer has deep pockets. Here is one law firm that specializes in these cases.

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Art for Free?

Robert Smith, lead singer of The Cure, has recently gained a lot of attention by publicly criticizing the growing  “art for free” movement.

Here is what Smith says on his site, speaking about Radiohead’s decision to release their In Rainbows album under a donation pricing model:

“ANY FAMOUS ARTIST WITH A HUGE AND DEVOTED FAN BASE(OFTEN ARRIVED AT WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM A WEALTHY AND POWERFUL ‘PATRON’ ORTWO?) CAN AFFORD TO DO WHAT HE, SHE OR IT WANTS… INCLUDING GIVING THEIR ART AWAY AS SOME KIND OF ‘LOSSLEADER’ TO HELP ‘BUILD THE BRAND”

The follks over at TechDirt, however, argue that Smith misses the point. Smith is criticizing the general rule that all art should be free, claiming such a rule or social norm is not beneficial to artists, and is more damaging to those who are not famous. The folks at TechDirt, on the other hand, claim that the point of the “art for free” movement is about business, and that giving some art for free allows artists to share some of the value of art and charge money for related complimentary products or services.

Which viewpoint do you think is the right one?

by Categories: Copyrights, Intellectual property controversies, Public domainTags: , , , , , 1 Comment

News Brief: Lingerie Entrepreneur gets to Bottom of I.P. Controversy

Pop culture critic and journalist C.E. Hanifin recently pointed out a fascinating intellectual property controversy at Target Addict. That blog comments on a news story run by The Virginian-Pilot, involving I.P. and lingerie.

April Spring, of Norfolk Virginia,  obtained a design patent in December, 2008 for a design of women’s briefs marketed under her Foxers brand. This is the image of the design patent, as it was issued by the U.S Patent Office.

Design Patent D581,628 for Women's Briefs
Design Patent D581,628 for Women's Briefs

Spring’s design attaches an elastic waist band to the briefs, much like those seen on men’s boxer shorts.

Spring filed a lawsuit against Target, Corp. alleging the retailer knocked-off her design. The Foxers briefs are normally priced at between $20 to $26 a pair. The Target briefs that allegedly rip-off her design are priced at around $5 a pair.

Note: design patents are a special type of patent and differ from utility patents, which cover working inventions. Design patents cover only the ornamental look of a product, as opposed to how the product works.

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Entrepreneurship in Hard Times

Dr. Kanwal Rekhi’s innovations provided the foundations for the Internet. His start-up company, Excelan, developed and sold the computer hardware that allowed distributed computing to flourish, helping to usher in the age of the network. Dr Rekhi eventually sold Excelan to Novell and then eventually became a venture capitalist, helping to fund more than 50 companies in Silicon Valley. Six of them went public.

Michigan Technological University had the honor of hosting this very distinguished alum. Dr. Rekhi received his masters in electrical engineering in 1969 from Michigan Technological University.

I had the unique pleasure of hosting Dr. Rekhi in my Entrepreneurship class. I also attended his lecture on “Entrepreneurship in Hard Times” on March 4, 2009. Dr. Rekhi gave an amazing an inspiring speech. During this speech he spoke about the virtues of bucking the trend, and starting your own business during tubulent times.

These are Dr. Rekhi’s top 10 traits for an entrepreneur. They readily apply to anyone who aspires to innovate:

Top Traits of an Entrepreneur

1.    Intellectual honesty. Brutal honesty. You can never fall in love with your business. If you do, you will fail to make the hard but necessary decisions.

2.    Humility.

3.    Accountability to yourself and your team. You ultimately have to be able to say that you accomplished something or that you did not. If not, why not? You cannot ever blame others. If you fail, it is on your shoulders — no excuses. If there is no accountability at the top, others below also will not feel accountable.

4.    Fairness. You have to be able to make sure the rewards are proportional.

5.    Economics. You have to be able to determine values and prioritize these values. The highest value-added issues get prioritized. You also have to understand the fundamentals related to costs and margins.

6.    Expertise. You have to be an expert when it comes to your customer and competition.  Although you also have to quickly become a generalist. You don’t have enough money when you start out to hire specialists.

7.    Execution intelligence. Investors pay a premium for this rare skill. For every great idea that you have, there are 10 very smart people with the same idea. What will make the difference is the ability to execute. Ideas are a dime a dozen.

8.    Leadership. When times are tough, pull everybody up. Inspire others to look beyond today. When times are good, keep everybody grounded; don’t get too exuberant.

9.    Self-reliance. Entrepreneurs do not need any approval. This comes from within. Also, there is little daily satisfaction; success comes in the long run.

10.    Confidence. Success loops are long, so you need to be confident and patient to reap your rewards.

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Matsuflex

“I have the name Matsuflex. If I can harness that Matsuflex energy, it’s gonna help change America in a positive way!”

Matsuflex
Matsuflex

These are the words of Ryan Matsunaga, a.k.a. Matsuflex, one of the participant’s on VH1’s reality t.v. show The Tool Academy. Matsuflex, is one of the program’s finalists and has made a point of advertising his name as often as possible. During a recent show, one of the show’s attendee’s asked “What’s Matsuflex? It sounds like an energy drink.” Here’s another suggestion, a Matsuflex sounds like a pull-up machine hawked on late night t.v. The point is, the name Matsuflex may have real commercial value.

If that is the case, Matsuflex would do well to trademark the name as soon as possible. I ran a quick search at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database and was unable to find a trademark registered as Matsuflex, which means it is still open for someone to claim, so long as they can prove they will offer something for sale called Matsuflex in a particular class of goods or services.

Matsuflex should think about running to the USPTO to claim the name, if he hasn’t done so already. Otherwise, an unscrupulous entrepreneur might take it over, and misappropriate all that positive Matsuflex energy.

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Cohen and copyright

The New York Times recently reported a story on the singer and composer Leonard Cohen’s upcoming tour, after a 15-year hiatus from live music performances.

Here is one of Mr. Cohen’s quotes that most grabbed my attention (he is speaking about the ownership of his songs, which have been popularized by other, younger performers):

“My sense of ownership with these things is very weak,” he responded. “It’s not the result of spiritual discipline; it’s always been that way. My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn’t pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs.”

When I mentioned this story to C.E. Hanifin, the acclaimed journalist and music critic, she said: “If Leonard Cohen can’t keep track of his copyrights, I’m sure there are a lot of other artists who need help, too.”

Even if you don’t own a Leonard Cohen album, you are probably familiar with some of his songs. As the New York Times article pointed out, many popular artists have covered his works. For example, Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” has been covered more than 200 times by such artists as Jeff Buckley and John Cale.

How different from other artists (like The Beatles) who zealously guard their intellectual property.

So, how does one lose a copyright?

There are several ways. First, you can neglect to read a contract from, say, a manager or corporation like a media company who gets you to assign your creative content rights to them. Along similar lines, you can sell the rights. Or, you can donate them to the commons through a public release, or creative commons-like license.  Be wary, since once that copyright is gone it is usually very hard to get back.

Regardless of whether an artist decides to defend or give up their copyrights, every creative person should at least know the basic rules so that they can choose which path to take.

Acknowledgements: C.E. Hanifin.

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A Fail Whale Trademark?

I recently sent a call to readers asking for stories to blog about. Mr. Joe Scarry from Chicago kindly sent me a recent article in the New York Times Magazine profiling the curious rise of the Fail Whale.

The Fail Whale
The Fail Whale

The Fail Whale image was created by Ms. Yiying Lu. Ms. Lu initially created the image to send as an e-card to a friend. Eventually, she uploaded the image to iStockPhoto. Under the iStockPhoto image license terms, the image was made available for a few dollars under a perpetual license.

Things unfolded when Mr. Biz Stone, one of Twitter’s founders, purchased an iStockPhoto license of the whale image. Mr. Stone used the image so it would appear on Twitter whenever that site experienced an outage due to heavy traffic (a smart branding move in my opinion since the image is funny, unexpected and connotes teamwork). The Twitter community quickly grew fond the whale image. One of the fans named the image the “Fail Whale”. Another fan tracked down Ms. Lu and her online fame only grew from then.

There is now a Fail Whale fan club, Flickr site and community art site. In true Web 2.0 spirit, the Fail Whale image has become part of a community’s culture.  The community owns the image, freely adapting the image in new ways. It was a community member who first named it the Fail Whale. Many of the community websites use the Fail Whale term without worries about ownership. Here is what the Fail Whale fan site says about itself:

“This site is here to poke fun at the people who seem to take online social network downtime a little too seriously. Failwhale.com is not affiliated with Twitter. Rather, it’s a love letter to the hard working folks at all of our favorite online social networking sites who lose sleep over the concept of scalability.”

The community for all purposes owns the whale. Will that someday change since it has become valuable? Ms. Lu already took the image off the iStockPhoto site which allowed users to perpetually license the image for a low price. She has also  recently created an official Fail Whale Merchandise Site. The next logical step to build a business around the Fail Whale is to apply for a trademark, and then license the trademarks for merchandising. (Note: a copyright can eventually become a trademark if it identifies a source of goods).

Will the Fail Whale remain open for the community’s free use? Would that be the best thing? Or, will it be Generation Y’s version of Micky Mouse or Hello Kitty? The next time you see the Fail Whale look closely. You just might see a small round trademark symbol.

P.S. Have you lately come across an intellectual property controversy that piqued your interest? If so, please send it my way.

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Copyright Battle Over Obama’s Image

Artists borrow material to create new art. This practice is widely acknowledged and condoned in art circles. Daniel Grant makes this point in a recent Wall Street Journal article. Mr. Grant also points out, however, that copyright law can potentially render artistic borrowing an unlawful transgression. What is routine practice in the arts may lead to litigation and an intellectual property minefield.

Mr. Grant’s article discusses the Rogers v. Koons case. In that case the renowned artist Jeff Koons was sued by photographer Art Rogers. Mr. Koons made an unauthorized sculptural and literal rendition of a photograph taken by Mr. Rogers that depicted a family with eight puppies. A federal court found that the sculptural representation amounted to copyright infringement. Mr Koons unsuccessfully argued that creating the sculpture from the photograph was a transformative social commentary. This type of commentary, he argued, was an important artistic activity. It was a good argument, but not a legally persuasive one.

The Rogers v. Koons case was decided in 1992. Seventeen years later, a very similar case is now publicly unfolding. This case also involves an artist and a photographer. In this case, the artist is Shepard Fairey, who created the Obama Poster shown below from a photograph taken by photographer Mannie Garcia. Mr. Garcia, who is a freelance photographer, was working for the Associated Press at the time he took the photograph, shown below next to the poster image. Mr. Fairey based his image on the photograph without asking the Associated Press for permission. Now, Mr. Fairey has sued the Associated Press to have the copyright issue resolved.

AP Photo vs. Mr. Fairey's Rendering
AP Photo vs. Mr. Fairey's Rendering

The question, however, remains contested. How can one determine if their new work has unlawfully copied another work? How much borrowing is permitted? Prior cases, like Rogers v. Koons state that an original work is copied when “the accused work is so substantially similar to the copyrighted work that reasonable jurors could not differ on this issue.” That is a fuzzy boundary that is determined on a case-by-case basis.

So here’s my question:

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