The conference's location in Boston provided the opportunity of hosting Harvard Business School Prof. Deepak Malhotra as the conference's keynote speaker, discussing global lessons in negotiations (as well as handing every participant a copy of his recent book, Negotiating the Impossible). Keynote talks over lunch are a challenge to every speaker: the talk needs to be captivating enough to be heard over the noise, general enough to address a wide variety of participants, yet also specific enough to appeal to the specific needs to the group. Prof. Malhotra's talk was all of that, and more. He delivered a highly entertaining, yet educational and relevant talk, addressing universal negotiation challenges through a series of stories covering historical events. He used real-world situations and vivid anecdotes, ranging from the NFL salary negotiations to the Cuban missile crisis, to highlight ways in which people overcame conflicts that seemed impossible to resolve through negotiation.

Prof. Malhotra left the audience with several takeaway lessons for negotiating in tough situations, which generally fall under three categories - below are a few that stood out:

(1)   Understand your counterpart in negotiations, including:

(2)   Focus on the process, including:

(3)   Make sure the outcome is a 'win' for all sides.

3. Deals of Distinction Awards: Beyond IP Licensing

The LES Deals of Distinction Award (DDA) is an annual industry sector award program of LES (U.S.A. & Canada), which recognizes worthy IP licensing deals that promote creative and innovative solutions to business issues involving the exchange of IP rights between parties. Now in its 14th year, the DDA awards for 2018 were presented at the annual meeting to the selected deals over the 5 main LES sectors: Chemicals, Energy, Environment & Materials (CEEM); High Technology (HTS); Industry University Government Interface (IUGI); Life Sciences; and Consumer Products Sectors.

 

This year's award winners represented a broad range of deal structures, beyond just traditional IP licensing. As a matter of fact, the only deal involving a traditional patent licensing structure is the Consumer Products Sector's deal: the Ericsson-Micromax global Standards Essential Patent (SEP) license agreement.

Another trend that emerged with this year's DDA recipients is the cross-border nature of the deals in several sectors. Take, for example, the CEEM Sector's deal: Lightbridge Corp. (U.S.), Framatome, S.A. (France), and Framatome, Inc. (U.S.) - Enfission Joint Venture between Lightbridge and Framatome, formed to commercialize a game-changing Nuclear Fuel Technology. The Life Sciences Sector's deal: Pieris Pharmaceuticals and Astra Zeneca's worldwide preclinical alliance for antibody mimics to treat respiratory diseases, is another example of international collaboration to commercialize IP. Finally, the IUGI Sector's deal also featured an international player: The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (part of the National Institutes of Health and Serum Institute of India, Pvt. Ltd.) which has been honored for releasing ROTASIIL®, a low-cost, temperature tolerant rotavirus vaccine for developing countries.