IP, Globalization, and the Future of Supply Chains – A Conversation with Sonja LONDON
“IP has been a cooperative effort, and business is global. Global business is good both for IP and for business. Sonja London
This episode of IPWatchdog Unleashed features Sonja London. Sonia is the general counsel of TactoTek. She previously worked for Nokia for 14 years, where she was responsible for standardization, consumer electronics licensing and global licensing programs for connectivity and video codescs. Sonja’s time as president of Licensing Executives Society International is coming to an end as the annual meeting of LESI in Singapore nears at the end of the month. London said with a chuckle, “There’s no ugly and no bad.” We begin our conversation by talking about London’s experiences from the past year–the positive, the negative, and the ugly. London laughed and said, “There’s nothing ugly or bad.” “
that’s lack of sophistication has surprised me a bit,” I said. “I wonder… is it getting more sophisticated or do you think people still have a lot of misconceptions?”
“I think both,” she said. It’s a bit of a difficult subject. It depends on the situation. Sometimes the answer is obvious. You have a formula for something you want to keep a secret. So, then you protect it adequately… Then you might have other combinations, especially in technology…
ou need to know and identify. But I understand if you make an inventory of all the secrets that you have how long will that list be secret. So, you are kind of then creating a risk for your trade secrets to be leaking or misappropriated.”[T]We move on to discuss culture, and lesson London learned as she has visited more than a dozen countries in her time as President of LESI over the last year. We discussed technology in general, and specifically the automotive industry. We saw how new companies are challenging the long-time incumbents by rethinking technology from the ground. This led to a discussion about agile development of technology. “Are we at pivot point?” I asked.
I think we’re in a time where everyone is trying to figure out where things are going,” London said. “I think we are in a moment where everyone is trying to see where it goes,” London said. Global business is good both for IP and for business. Global IP is good business and vice versa. Now it seems that the globalization era and the idea of producing things where it makes the most sense and where it is economically viable and so on and then importing and exporting has led to a recalibration of the entire system. I hope there will be a collaborative solution to any questions we may have, as that is good for business. And that’s good for everybody.”[Y]Our conversation weaved in and out of what is happening the moment, to lessons from the past, with both of us discussing lessons learned regarding agile development and businesses pivoting at a moment of existential thread during World War II. We also discussed the breakdown of supply chains during COVID which caused great business disruption due to the weak link in supply chain causing delay and lost commerce. We talk about TRIPS, and how we can use the current global trade issues to our advantage, even if the opportunity is not immediately apparent. “But, on the other side, more expensive could mean jobs and other things closer to the players.” London said. Who knows? We don’t yet know. We don’t yet know that.” You can listen to the podcast wherever you normally access podcasts, or visit IPWatchdog Unleashed on Buzzsprout.
Gene Quinn
Gene Quinn is an expert on patent law, innovation policy and patent law. Mr. Quinn was twice named as one of the 50 most influential people in the world
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