This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Large companies frequently exploit their vastly superior legal resources and capabilities to the disadvantage of smaller competitors. The mere threat of litigation and the prospect of a prolonged lawsuit are often all that is necessary to persuade a smaller business to acquiesce to the larger competitor's legal demands. The author writes about a defensive strategy he calls "lawsourcing"that turns the tables on large companies by gathering public support, typically through social media and public relations. The idea of lawsourcing -which is a variation of what has become known as "crowdsourcing"-isn't completely new. Back in 1984, when Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. was a six-year-old upstart in the ice cream business, Pillsbury (then the owner of the Häagen-Dazs ice cream brand) attempted to pressure some of its distributors not to handle Ben & Jerry's products. Ben & Jerry's fought back hard, with a scrappy campaign built around the slogan "What's the Doughboy Afraid Of?" Well-executed lawsourcing campaigns can deliver significant benefits to companies, including greater brand awareness and loyalty and increased sales. The author cites a number of examples, including: Hampton Creek Foods Inc., a small San Francisco-based food producer. In the fall of 2014, Unilever, owner of the Hellmann's brand of mayonnaise, filed suit against Hampton Creek for using the word "mayo"to describe its vegan mayonnaise substitute, called Just Mayo. Hampton Creek fought back by commenting about the lawsuit on Twitter and Facebook and engaging with media sympathetic to its plight. Unilever withdrew its lawsuit. Vermont artist Bo Muller-Moore, who sells T-shirts adorned with the slogan "Eat More Kale."Atlanta-based fast-food chain Chik-fil-A Inc. claimed that Muller-Moore's slogan infringed upon its federal trademark rights to the phrase "Eat Mor Chikin."After a spirited social media campaign, Muller-Moore got his own trademark.

But this limited perspective of the law does not explain how some leading companies, such as Qualcomm and the Walt Disney Co., have managed to deploy their legal departments to shape the legal environment in order to secure long-term competitive advantage. In their research, the authors have developed a framework that can help executives identify the different ways in which legal strategies can be used to achieve various corporate goals, including the identification of value-creating opportunities. The framework consists of five different legal pathways, which the authors describe using examples such as Qualcomm, Microsoft, United Parcel Service and Xerox. In order of least to greatest strategic impact, the five legal pathways are (1) avoidance, (2) compliance, (3) prevention, (4) value and (5) transformation. In the avoidance pathway, managers see the law as an obstacle to their desired business goals. Companies operating in the avoidance pathway will often have lax internal controls or a failure to perform due diligence, and this approach can lead to disaster. Companies in the compliance pathway recognize that the law is an unwelcome but mandatory constraint, and they think of compliance basically as a cost that needs to be minimized. For businesses in the prevention pathway, managers take a more proactive approach, using the law to preempt future business-related risks. The value pathway represents a fundamental shift in mind-set, from risk management to value creation; managers use the law to craft strategies that increase ROI in ways that can be directly tied to a profit-and-loss statement. For companies in the transformation pathway,executives have integrated their legal strategy not only within the organization's various value-chain activities but also with the value chains of important external partners.

The patent system is introduced to the non-legal professional by reviewing the historical justification for having a patent system and the foundations of the U.S. patent system, contrasting patents with trade secrets, exploring invention requirements for obtaining a patent, and reviewing the patent application process, international patent protection, and the elements of infringement, validity, and enforcement through litigation.

Intellectual property rights are a major source of wealth creation in our modern global economy and continue to grow in strategic significance. For managers and entrepreneurs to take advantage of the strategic options that IPs offer, it is helpful to be conversant in the unique aspects of these legal rights regimes. Provides a comprehensive and easy-to-understand overview of the IP rights regimes, consisting of trade secrets, patents, copyrights, trade dress, and trademarks.