All of the nonprofits were asked who is authorized to make decisions regarding the use of organization’s Intellectual Property on behalf of the organization. This question is distinct from the one asked earlier about the day-to-day management because it gets at the strategic, rather than tactical, usage of IP. The nonprofits shared that: Comparing this […]

The next set of questions in the 2014 survey circled back to the ownership of the nonprofit’s intellectual property. There is no ability to exclude if an organization does not have some ownership in the IP assets. The more I thought about ownership of IP assets in the nonprofit sector and discussed this series of […]

As I’ve written about previously, one facet to IP rights is the right to exclude others from using intellectual property that your organization owns. When I wrote this survey I didn’t know how applicable this question might be for the small sample group. I was actually pleasantly surprised that more than half opted to answer […]

The next two questions in the original survey focused on the day-to-day management responsibilities for intellectual property assets. An earlier question showed that most of the written policies were on management tasks: proper use and display, registration of assets, and the use of non-disclosure agreements. If there are policies for management tasks I wanted to […]

The next question asked the respondents to share who suggested the need for written policies. This question was a follow-up to the 10 organizations that said they had written policies for their intellectual property. They indicated that the idea for the policies came from the following roles: I think that internal legal counsel fits within […]

I then asked respondents whether the organization has any written policies regarding the intellectual property assets. Written policies are not necessary for having internally understood standards or expectations of management regarding organizational decisions and processes. However, in this context, written policies were chosen as a way to determine the more thoughtfulness than just awareness of […]

The next question I asked the respondents was whether the organization had officially registered their copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office or their trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Asking about the registration of intellectual property is insight into two things: that there is a desire to claim ownership and the ability to […]

I sent the survey to 107 people at the organizations curated on the theS&I 100 list, which was a list of vetted social entrepreneurs and social enterprises. The point of using this list was to highlight innovators working on social challenges, i.e. social entrepreneurs, since innovation is linked to the creation of intellectual property. I […]

Okay, my next decisions weren’t nearly life and death. But, the quality of my research choices at this point would be the difference between meaningful data and just an interesting exercise. If I was going to focus on surveying social entrepreneurs I needed to know that the definition I was using would enable me to […]

After all of that reading I knew more about intellectual property law and economics, theories of justice and knowledge, and the landscape of innovation. I did not know any more about intellectual property in nonprofit organizations, though. I took the new concepts to the library and did some new searches of the nonprofit literature. Everything […]