Rene Chung, Partner and Practice Head of IP Licensing & Monetization, was recently interviewed by IAM to share her views about recent trends in the IP monetisation job market, together with her analysis of the leadership blueprint for a high-performing IP Licensing Executive / Chief IP Officer.
See below some key quotes taken from the interview or click here for the full article.
“When corporations are hunting for new patent professionals, they must seek out niche executive recruiters. Drilling down deeper to hire a patent licensing executive is a niche within a niche. The person that many IP-rich companies turn to when looking to hire for monetisation programmes is Rene Chung, Partner and Practice Head of IP Licensing & Monetization at Adamson & Partners…Clients have turned to Chung for headhunting for Chief IP licensing officers, Vice Presidents of IP, Directors of IP Licensing, and similar titles.
“Our business has been going since the ’80s and we started working exclusively in IP in the ’90s. If I were to cast back 20 years ago, IP was used by companies more as a defensive tool to protect the company’s innovation and competitive edge. Most companies just hired IP professionals to protect their IP, develop the portfolio and that would be it. In terms of making money with IP, it was something that has become a mainstream focus for some organisations in the past 10 to 15 years. Telecoms was one of the pioneers in driving that forward. What I have witnessed is that increasingly, knowledge is being transposed to other industry sectors where they recognise that it is important to generate revenue or commercial value using IP, be it through a cross-licensing agreement or patent, trademark, or brand licensing, or the sale of IP assets. There are a lot of interesting things happening in the market.
Some [IP] roles are very specialised, whereas some IP licensing and monetisation roles tend to be broader. They require a commercial skillset…what tends to be the real differentiators in an exceptional IP monetisation executive is what the individual brings with him in terms of industry contacts, commercial knowledge, negotiation skills and the ability to close deals. These are the skills that we tend to look for…You will see that with the chief IP licensing and VP positions, usually they do not need to be a specialist in a particular domain, but they need to have the overall knowledge and the executive gravitas to be able to close deals.
[In addition to working with clients in the telecom sector] We have done quite a bit of work placing IP licensing and monetisation executives for companies coming from a wide spectrum of industries including lighting, enterprise information technology, material science, chemistry, semiconductor, entertainment and media, and gaming technology.
We take a clear, comprehensive briefing with our client…We ask what they intend to do and what they would like to achieve or the target they have for this individual. Are they looking to defensively protect their IP position or are they looking to generate a revenue stream out of it? The KPIs or how this person will be measured is so important in terms of us drawing out the calibre of individual personality that will fit well with the culture of the company and the nature of the role. If your position is meant to be defending the company’s IP position against licensing and monetisation efforts, chances are, the kind of person and his career history in the past would be quite different to someone who is coming in with the aim to generate a seven-figure deal right off the bat. The industry and nature of the role makes a different proposition and different search strategy for how we map out the talent pool for that client.”
