Marshall Phelps on Strategic Innovation and the Intellectual Property Rights

One of the nation's premier authorities on intellectual property strategy, Marshall Phelps discusses his views on the value of IP in technological progress, economic development and individual and small business entrepreneurship.

His remarks reviews the historical development of patent policy in the United States, discusses the current era of open innovation and the benefits of collaboration, and compares IP strategies that other countries like China and Korea have successfully employed to aid in their economic development.

Marshall touches on the paradigm shift that occurred at Microsoft toward institutionalized IP collaboration and cooperation under his leadership, and introduces the new book he co-authored, Burning the Ships: Intellectual Property and the Transformation of Microsoft, which provides a detailed and candid account of what one analyst has called "the biggest change Microsoft has undergone since it became a multinational company."


About
Marshall Phelps is a leading figure in the field of intellectual property management and performance, pioneering many of its leading strategies, generating unprecedented results and heading IP business and related activities at IBM and Microsoft. As Board Member of IPXI, he is actively engaged in helping IP owners unlock the value of their assets through efficient technology transfer. Mr. Phelps served as Vice President at IBM in the 1990s, responsible for overseeing standards, telecommunications policy, industry relations, licensing, intellectual property law and management of a worldwide intellectual property portfolio of more than 35,000 patents and 8,500 trademarks. By actively licensing these and other IP rights, such as trade secrets and copyrights, he transformed a function that had previously been costly overhead to a $2 Billion annual profit center. Prior to heading IP business, he served IBM as Director of Government Relations in Washington and as Vice President of Asia Pacific operations in Tokyo.

From 2002-2010 Mr. Phelps was Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Intellectual Property and Licensing, Microsoft Corporation. At Microsoft, his duties entailed worldwide management of the company’s intellectual property portfolio, patent prosecution, licensing, standards and business development. He facilitated Microsoft’s emergence as one of the world’s largest IP companies with over 60,000 patents and applications, extensive copyright holdings and numerous trademarks.