New economy business build and sustain their competitive advantage with intangibles: patents, copyrights, trade secrets and trademarks. An entrepreneur, such as Jeff Hawkins of Palm Inc., must leverage these assets in relationships with investors, parners and competitors.

Relevant Texbook Chapters Chapter 10 Legal Formation and Intellectual Property
Discussion Questions 1. What is the difference between a patent and a copyright and why choose one over the other? 2. What is a trade secret? How do you establish one? How do you protect it? 3. Are tradmarks valuable to technology companies? Give an example of why or why not. 4. What are critical issues to be defined in negotiating an assignment vs. a license? 5. Why does Jeff need Tandy to cooperate with him? What does he have to bargain with?
Main Case Study: Palm Computing, Inc. (A) Discusses patents, licenses, and deal-making in a start-up venture. Jeff Hawkins, holds a patent on Palm Print, a pattern recognition algorithm. Focuses on Hawkins's efforts to start up a new, noncompeting venture that requires cross-licenses for the Palm Print enhancements.
Jeff Hawkins: Genesis of Palm Computing Jeff Hawkins talks about his life, his education and work experience. He started his career at Intel for 3 years and then moved to a start-up that he did not start. While working at the latter he created his first product - first pen-based computer. He soon realised that all personal computing ought to be smaller and simpler. With this thought he started on the path to try and accelerate this shift - and that was the genesis of Palm computing.