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Television program costs per episode
2008-05-29 15:00:00
The money men at PBL Media and its private equity owner, CVC Asia Pacific, are big fans of Ramsay. Kitchen Nightmares and Hell's Kitchen cost Nine an estimated A$30,000 and A$15,000 an episode, compared with about A$1 million for each episode of Nine's hit local drama Underbelly and about A$300,00 an episode for its new reality show Domestic Blitz. TV chief tells of recipe for success , Rear Window column, The Australian Financial Review, 30 May 2008, p. 48. Further reading: Ramsay's net worth - A recipe to make a high net worth celebrity chef (ip/a-recipe-to-make-a-high-net-worth-cel ebrity-chef.html) PBL Media - Billions made with Internet business exit strategies (ip/billions-made-with-internet-business- exit-strategies.html) and DVRs and video on demand in Australia (ip/dvrs-and-video-on-demand-in-australia .html) Channel Nine - Think digital, think future proofing (ip/think-digital-think-future-proofing.h tml) Television formats law - Copyright t...
More About: Episode , Program , Costs

How to select a suitable business model, deal or contract
2008-05-28 11:11:00
Is your business seeking to collaborate with others but is unsure how to go about it? Are you unsure of the options, legal jargon and financial terms of engagement? Here's the classic process to unblocking this log jam. Business relationships involve deals, deal making, business models and contracts. How do these concepts differ? How do you select the best option for a particular situation? This post illustrates our specialisation in helping clients define their business relationships. It's part of doing business and more broadly, business structuring and enterprise structuring.
More About: Model , Contract , Deal , Select

Report lists top six ICT trends
2008-05-21 10:23:00
A new report by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) highlights six trends in the Information Communications Technology (ICT) sector. The report suffers from a fixation on technology. Its comfort zone is bits, bytes and gizmos. Equal space should have been given to use made of IT and communications by business and consumers and the wide-ranging implications of changing patterns of use. The 18 page report is titled Top six trends in communications and media technologies, applications and services: possible implications (http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/mai n/lib310658/top_six_trends.pdf) (PDF file).
More About: Trends , Report , Lists

Robert Mondavi and the commercialisation of Leeuwin Estate
2008-05-18 14:43:00
Naked ladies dancing on the tongue. This was my comment immediately on first tasting Art Series Chardonnay (http://www.leeuwinestate.com.au/index.ph p?page=84) at the cellar door of Leeuwin Estate in 2004. It is arguably Australia's greatest Chardonnay. It's almost A$100 a bottle. My uncensored appreciation triggered a story about the wine's background. Telling it was Mr D. Moore who was serving at the cellar door.
More About: Robert

Speed pays in IP commercialisation
2008-05-16 06:22:00
Speed pays. You already know that customers pay more if you can deliver fast with no reduction in quality. Speed wins. Speed is a critical pre-requisite to be competitive in markets. Speed in innovation pays and wins. In a commercialisation venture it is helpful to measure speed. Get a measure of the speed of change of intellectual property and the agility of the management team, business processes, methodologies and technology.
More About: Speed , Pays

Structured networks and the next internet wave
2008-05-13 15:00:00
Sydney Olympics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Olym pics) presented Nikki Webster in the Australian experience of going swiming. More than water skills will be needed beyond the Beijing Olympics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Oly mpics) for Australian online businesses to survive and thrive against the next internet wave. From 1995 the web encouraged water sports. Today the internet has moved beyond surfing. The question here is how should Australian online businesses compete in the years ahead to serve local, international or global markets.
More About: Internet , Networks , Wave

How many servers do Facebook, Google and Microsoft use?
2008-05-10 15:00:00
Facebook does not disclose the number of servers it operates. But research firm Data Center Knowledge puts the tally at about 10,000. [Facebook is rumoured to be buying 50,000 more servers with a recent debt raising of US$100 million.] ... Forrester Research's [Frank] Gillett estimates that Google , owner of the world's biggest Web search engine, is buying half a million servers each year, while Microsoft 's annual consumption is as much as 200,000 servers. Source: Facebook: Friends with Money (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/c ontent/may2008/tc2008059_855064.htm?chan= top+news_top+news+index_news+%2B+analysis ) by Spencer E. Ante, BusinessWeek, 9 May 2008.
More About: Servers , Facebook

Social media's deep well
2008-05-09 14:48:00
When did social media or online social networking start? Was it a few years ago off the back of MySpace, Facebook and Web 2.0? No. It was thriving in San Francisco and the Bay Area before Mark Zuckerberg, twenty-something CEO and founder of Facebook, was born.
More About: Social , Deep

Business endurance depends mostly on you
2008-05-07 15:00:00
What is the secret of enduring greatness for a company? Jim Collins has an answer. Collins is a prominent writer on business management (http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/18/news/com panies/enduring_greatness.fortune/index.h tm) and author of business books which are among the best selling of all time. He wrote Good to Great (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Compani es-Leap-Others/dp/0066620996/ref=pd_bbs_s r_1?ie=UTF8 s=books qid=1209605202 sr=8-1) and co-authored Built to Last (http://www.amazon.com/Built-Last-Success ful-Visionary-Companies/dp/0060566108/ref =pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8 s=books qid=1209605202 sr=8-3). An excellent overview of Good to Great is the one here (http://www.ndarala.com/index.cfm?id=996) by Jim Belshaw. Writing in a recent issue of Fortune magazine, inThe secret of enduring greatness Collins revisits his familiar theme of business survival and endurance. He is prompted by who's in and out of the Fortune 500 list. And this is what he concludes is ...
More About: Business , Endurance

Ratatouille director on employee morale
2008-05-07 15:00:00
In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget - but never shows up in a budget - is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale. Source: Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird , The McKinsey Quarterly, April 2008. Bird is a two-time Oscar-winning director for Pixar, the production company behind Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Story 2, The Incredibles and Ratatouille . He was hired by Pixar's senior executive team which includes Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter
More About: Morale , Employee , Director

Six fashion hints for entrepreneurs
2008-05-05 15:00:00
Fashion, industrialisation and entrepreneurship (commercialisation-knowledge-management/s pecial-collection-entrepreneurship-to-76. html) are forever linked. Something old. The word entrepreneur was made fashionable by someone who grew rich as a cotton factory entrepreneur. The French economic theorist, Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), is credited as the first in continental Europe to write about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. He was inspired by Adam Smith.
More About: Fashion , Hints , Entrepreneurs

Cue > Intellectual property law advice
2008-05-01 08:22:00
This is the May 2008 issue of Cue, the Dilanchian email newsletter. Cue is a monthly selected list of our Library (general-items/library.html) articles and Lighbulb (lightbulb-dilanchian-ip-blog-/index.php) blog posts on IP and business law. You can freely subscribe to Cue (component/option,com_contact/task,view/c ontact_id,3/) or our full RSS feed (rd-rss/index.php), or both.
More About: Advice , Property , Intellectual , Intellectual Property

Collaboration for invention
2008-04-29 15:00:00
A mantra for our business environment emphasising innovation and collaboration could be: Collaborate to survive and invent. Collaboration is as old as the first invention. Bill Bryson's remarkable book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, tells us in his 29th chapter about teardrop-shaped stone hand-axes. These axes first appeared about a million and a half years ago and are certainly the most common technology for the vast majority of human history. They have come to be known as Acheulean tools.
More About: Invention

What's your intellectual property strategy?
2008-04-29 15:00:00
QUESTION: What are the most effective strategies for commercialisation of a company's ideas, products, R D and intellectual property? ANSWER: It is the approach that best suits - and is most closely aligned with - the company's overall corporate strategy and the competitive environment in which the company operates.
More About: Strategy , Property , Intellectual , Intellectual Property

Economics before legal solutions
2008-04-28 05:02:00
I have a favourite question in conversations with start-ups and new clients. It is a question which leads to discussions about the client's business or commercial situation. It's a question designed to shed light on the client's business model, industry economics and facts relevant to providing a better legal solution.
More About: Economics , Legal , Solutions

Ray Charles learned from his mama
2008-04-27 15:00:00
We all know that owning, controlling and trading in intellectual property (IP) can create wealth. Losing ownership and control, or not trading IP, can lose wealth. Industry case studies bring these truths to life. One for the music industry (http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/con tent/apr2008/sb20080421_919951.htm?chan=s earch) was in BusinessWeek last week. It reports US census data showing one in four U.S. record stores around in 2002 was gone by 2005, a net loss of 1,900 stores. It points at digital retailer, iTunes, which boasts 6 million songs. Personal case studies make the truths register. We did it in Music Business Entrepreneurship: Eulogy for James Brown (ip-tech-e-biz/music-business-entrepreneu rship-eulogy-for-james-7.html). We do it now for Brown's predecessor, and fellow Georgian, Ray Charles (1930-2004).
More About: Mama , Learned

Improve your creativity, invention, innovation
2008-04-17 23:59:00
We welcome and make no charge for conversations with new clients about how we might help with their intellectual property. To get you into the groove to call, here are some thoughts on creativity, invention and innovation. We are tracking with Australia's 2020 Summit (http://www.australia2020.gov.au/about/in dex.cfm). All human beings have a creative urge. Mine for some months has been to write about the following four minute home video on YouTube. It's the Fountains of the Bellagio Hotel in Los Vegas. The music is Dawn, Ayeshe's Dance, a piece in the Gayane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayane) ballet by Aram Khachaturian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aram_Khacha turian). Observe the fountain's interplay with the music and then read on. 24AtoZz_-_U feature
More About: Innovation , Invention , Creativity , Improve

Recoupment record of the Film Finance Corporation
2008-04-16 15:00:00
The Australian government's Film Finance Corporation (FFC) will close in 2008. In its 20 year history it part-financed a total of 1007 projects with a total production value of A$2.38 billion, ie the FFC funded part of that sum. Successive governments transferred treasury sums to support the FFC and its investments, ranging from A$200 million for the first three years, scaling down to $A55 million per year under the Howard government and rising in the last few years to A$70 million. It has invested in more than 1,000 projects but has only fully recouped its investment in 10 of them. ... Total recoupment is A$259 million. Returns peaked in 1994-95 with A$25.6 million (largely due to Muriel and Priscilla) and reached a low last financial year [2006-07] with A$9.3 million (returns in 1989-90 were lower but the FFC was still in its infancy. Michaela Boland, Fade out... Film body swalled by super agency in The Australian Financial Review, 17 April 2008, p. 29.
More About: Record

Intellectual property is not a thing
2008-04-16 15:00:00
Speaking in workshops and seminars I've often posed a puzzle to wake up the audience. I've asked: What is the most powerful thing in the cave of a cave man when he skins a freshly killed beast using a stone tool? Most guess that the most powerful thing must be the stone tool. Few point to the one thing that helps the cave man know where to hunt, what to hunt, how to skin and how to fashion tools to help in all aspects of survival. That most powerful thing is the cave man's brain.
More About: Property , Intellectual , Thing , Intellectual Property

Consultant or contractor intellectual property
2008-04-16 10:41:00
In disputes between clients and their consultants two questions often arise. They are whether money is outstanding and who owns the intellectual property in completed and delivered work. The short answer for both questions is, it depends... and a lot on what is in writing.
More About: Consultant , Property , Intellectual , Intellectual Property , Contractor

Website terms of use reduce risk
2008-04-16 04:40:00
Millions of people each day accept or click OK to terms of use on websites and internet facilities. The terms of use (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=41) regulate legal relationships, particularly contractual dealings between users and site owners. Terms of use are useful because most online intellectual property (IP) and general business law issues can be partially or fully treated or neutralised with comprehensive, customised and site-specific provisions. This is apparent from common law (ie court decisions in Australia and elsewhere), and our day to day practice as specialists in IP (commercialisation-knowledge-management/i ntellectual-property-asset-manag.html), internet law, IT and E-business law (ip-tech-e-biz/it-e-business.html).
More About: Website , Risk , Reduce

Employee or independent contractor?
2008-04-15 07:00:00
In the eyes of the law, employees and contractors are as different as apples and oranges. Hence numerous legal issues turn on whether a person is another's employee or, alternatively, an independent contractor. The distinction is critical for ownership and protection of copyright and other intellectual property. It is also vital for legal compliance considerations under workers compensation, superannuation, insurance, taxation and other legislation. A good contract prepared by a competent business lawyer will help remove legal doubts. However, take care. Consider the bias of the person preparing the contract. Creative lawyering involves genetic engineering ( GM ) to modify the distinction between employee apples and independent contractor oranges. What you see in some contracts is not necessarily what you get.
More About: Independent , Employee , Contractor

Poster advertising legal claims
2008-04-11 06:07:00
Poster advertising is a prominent ad trend in the release of 2007 statistics yesterday by the Commercial Economic Advisory Service of Australia. An inappropriate poster ad was also the cause of bad press for Virgin in 2007.
More About: Advertising , Legal , Poster , Claims

Telstra guilty in keywords advertising
2008-04-09 05:31:00
The rise in keyword advertising has brought with it opportunity for some and piracy, theft or misleading conduct for others. Telstra yesterday admitted it fell into the later camp in 2005 in its use of keyword advertising. A court case report (http://www.australianit.news.com.au/stor y/0,25197,23510634-15306,00.html) in today's Australian, indicates that Telstra announced yesterday that its classifieds division, the Trading Post contravened sections 52 and 53(d) of the Trade Practices Act through its search engine marketing on google.com.au in August 2005.
More About: Advertising , Keywords , Guilty

Teenage mobile phone use statistics
2008-04-08 22:53:00
What use do 58,480 teenagers aged 12 to 18 make of their mobile phones in 31 countries? A major survey indicates a lot has changed in 18 months. It is immediately relevant to the IP commercialisation strategy (commercialisation-knowledge-management/c ommercialisation-strategy-innov.html) of many businesses trading in intellectual property (ip/intellectual-property-defined-2.html) . The teenagers were surveyed in October and November 2007 by Habbo, part of Sulake, an online entertainment (http://www.sulake.com/company/index.html ?navi=1.1) and social networking company in Finland. Habbo states that statistical weighting was employed to give all participating countries an equal weight in the global results. Habbo's virtual world website (http://www.habbo.com/) claims 8.6 million unique users on a monthly basis. Gathered below are statistics from the survey released in April 2008. It follows Habbo's first survey in 2006. A lot has changed in 18 months.
More About: Mobile , Phone , Mobile Phone , Statistics , Teenage

Record domain name sale prices mask a reality
2008-04-06 10:24:00
While a .com.au domain name may be transferred, it cannot be sold given licensing arrangements, for example with IT Melbourne which issues them. The position is different for .com names. Year on year record prices are being achieved for .com names. That's great news for a few, but for millions of others a reminder is needed that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
More About: Reality , Domain , Domain Name , Sale , Record

Cue > 2008 April - Business and IP law insights
2008-04-01 23:25:00
This is the April 2008 issue of Cue, the Dilanchian email newsletter. Cue is a monthly selected list of our Library (general-items/library.html) articles and Lighbulb (lightbulb-dilanchian-ip-blog-/index.php) blog posts on IP and business law. You can freely subscribe to Cue (component/option,com_contact/task,view/c ontact_id,3/) or our full RSS feed (rd-rss/index.php), or both.
More About: Business , Insights

What is the value of your blog?
2008-03-27 14:00:00
In short, the task of valuing the largest blogs is impossible. That makes it much more interesting than writing about the P/E at General Electric. Douglas A. McIntyre, writing in the 24/7 Wall St (http://www.247wallst.com/) blog post titled The Twenty-Five Most Valuable Blog s (http://www.247wallst.com/2008/03/the-twe nty-five.html), 26 March 2008. It's original research.

Australia's mobile phone mania
2008-03-27 14:00:00
...[I]n 2007, 9.64 million mobile devices were shipped to Australia and 3.55 million of these shipped in Q4, the highest quarter on record reports IDC’s Quarterly Mobile Phone (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerI d=prAU21155708) Tracker on 25 March 2008. Other IDC report highlights: Converged devices (smart phones) accounted for 27% of the total devices shipped. Nokia extends its market dominance in Australia to 55.1%. The popularity of GPS in Australia shows no signs of slowing, with the mobile industry now at a point where consumers are assuming that GPS will come with their new mobile, the same way that cameras are taken for granted. The lack of 3G device diversity and no Telstra NextG capable device for the Australian market is seeing RIM's Blackberry growth slowing as consumers opt for HSDPA-equipped devices, which also provide access to high-speed mobile Internet. Background reading: Content licensing for mobile commerce [Update 1] (ip/cont...
More About: Mobile Phone , Mania , S mobile

How to be smart in patent search work
2008-03-27 12:55:00
I viddied right at once what to do says Alex in the 1962 book and 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange. I had Alex's sensation this evening as I viddied a superb slide presentation titled Web 2.0 goes social credited to Jia Lynn Yang of Fortune magazine. Viewing it I viddied right at once how it provides insights on conducting smart patent search work. This is a very real issue, including for inventors of software patents and business method patents. Earlier today I had a phone conversation with an inventor client about how he might go about commissioning a patent search. His invention will be initially rendered in software and later as a hardware product. As an analogy, image if Apple first launched with iTunes, and followed up with the iPod and iTunes pre-loaded Apple computers. Advising an inexperienced client about IP search work takes time. The conversation turned to how to gain from patent protection and avoid patent threats.
More About: Work , Search , Smart , Patent