KNOW WHAT YOU'RE WORTH
[ KNOWLEDGE ]
– Mr Behar (below)
40 The SME Magazine
TOP GUN
Ms Yap made the prestigious Intellectual Asset Management 250 list of The World’s Leading IP Strategists for the third year running, and is the only lawyer from Singapore to appear on it
PHOTO: YEN MENG JIIN
❝
“People that are really productive will get more work. But they also get the promotions too.
appear in the company, and that just kills productivity because what happens is: people stop doing things. They wait until their boss tells them to do something. And then the boss comes along and says: why can’t you think for yourself?” Mr Behar has had enough of bosses saying “don’t ever disappoint me” to their employees. “We make mistakes all the time. The mark of great leadership is to allow those mistakes to happen, though not a repetition of the mistake. At Starbucks, we don’t want to do anything illegal, unethical or immoral, we sure as hell don’t want to poison anybody. But other than that, there are lots of things we can do in service to our customers,” he said. “The quickest way to kill productivity is to chastise people when they do something wrong.” Mr Behar, too, has had his share of mistakes in his more than 20 years with the company. “When I first started with the company, I had made the decision that we needed to raise the hourly wages for people in the stores. There was lots of consternation about it, and we thought we knew what the number was going to be, we thought it was going to increase our costs by about one per cent,” he recalled. “We implemented the wage increase, I went on vacation and about two weeks later, I got a call, the P&L (profit and loss statement) had come out, and our costs had gone up by two points, exactly double. It was a huge issue, but nobody panicked. We made some changes, and we made it work,” he added. “Life is an endless series of mistakes that we’re correcting for.” There’s also an earthly leadership that Mr Behar prefers that more bosses adopt. This is despite the perception that such bosses are meek. “People see leadership with a capital L. In other words, they think they are there to be served, and their people are just there for them to tell them what to do,” he said. “If the condiments stand was dirty and needed to be clean, I didn’t look around and chastise somebody. I cleaned the stand.” He wishes that more leaders would have conversations with their employees on how to make the business better with each job well done, right down to the task of getting the floor swept and telling the staff why that is important. “We also have to let them choose their own broom, maybe they’ve been on the Internet and found a broom that can do a better job. Instead we say, this is the broom that we use, use it and shut up, instead of finding out what they know about sweeping the floor,” he said. “All too often we see autocratic leaders, and truth of the matter is, it’s not very productive.” ■
➤
cause you do more. But it shouldn’t translate into a meaningless clocking-in of hours by employees, especially when they are just waiting for the boss to finish for the day before going home. “We all know what happens – they’ll just give you double the work. People that are really productive will get more work,” he said. “But they also get the promotions too.” He added: “Leaders need to stop worrying about how many hours people work and start thinking about whether people are getting the job done. I used to spend lots of time in Japan, and no one wants to leave before the boss does. Why should that be the criterion?” And leaders out to boost productivity should celebrate mistakes from their employees, rather than obsess over not making them. “Most people want to accomplish things in their lives. What we tend to do is constrict people, we hold them back from achieving their fullest potential. The reason many leaders do that is they are afraid that their people are going to make mistakes,” said Mr Behar. “They’re worried about how they are going to
[ by Lisa-Ann Lee ]
KNOW WHAT YOU’RE WORTH It doesn’t matter whether you are a one-man start-up or a global corporation. Everybody has intellectual property (IP) to protect, and how well you do so could make or break your business
I
MAGINE this scenario: You’re a successful company with a product that everybody loves. As part of an advertising campaign, you run a series of commercials on prime-time TV and these turn out to be such a hit that even viewers across the Causeway are hooked on it. Before long, an almost identical – and cheaper – product starts appearing on the shelves in Malaysia, and Singaporeans flock to Johor to buy it. To your horror, you find that you can’t stop the other company because you don’t own trademark rights to your product in Malaysia. This, says leading intellectual property (IP) strategist Audrey Yap, is an example of how competitors can steal your IP if you don’t protect it. A founding partner of boutique IP and commercial law firm, Yu Sarn Audrey & Partners, she recently made the prestigious Intellectual Asset Management 250 list of The World’s Leading IP Strategists for the third year running, and is the only lawyer from Singapore to appear on it. Her firm is known as “the law firm for entrepreneurs” and for good reason – its clients include successful home-grown companies such as Goodrich Global, Old Chang Kee, Ya Kun and 77th Street. WHY PROTECT IP? BECAUSE YOUR COMPANY IS WORTH IT. IP has come a long way since the days when it was regarded as little more than an esoteric concern of publishers. Thanks to the explosive growth of the Internet, which has revolutionised the way that companies run their businesses and communicate with customers, it has become more important than ever to know how to protect one’s knowledge and ideas, and ensure that competitors don’t encroach upon one’s territory. This is where IP comes in. In order to protect your IP, it is necessary to identify and under-
The SME Magazine 41
[ KNOWLEDGE ]
>> TRUE OR FALSE?
stand the value of what you have first. According to the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), IP refers to “the creations of the human mind”, meaning that it encompasses everything from ideas to technical solutions. Even the process of selling something can be regarded as an innovation in itself and considered IP. Says Ms Yap: “The basis for IP registration is a name, word, product or company name that’s synonymous with quality and a certain class.” What is also important to understand is that there are different categories of IP – for example, trademarks, patents, design laws and copyright – and that they are governed by different laws. For example, patents give a company monopoly over its inventions; design laws protect the aesthetics and appearance of an innovation; and trademarks protect a company’s brand or name. Knowing what kind of IP you have will determine how you should go about protecting it.
42 The SME Magazine
1
It is for big companies only. Not true, says Ms Yap. IP is for public and private companies of every type and size. “Old Chang Kee started off as a curry puff stall but look at how they’ve grown,” adds Ms Yap. “They don’t have large resources or huge financing but they’re able to grow and leverage on their brand and trade secrets. All these are the IP of the company.”
PHOTOS: YEN MENG JIIN
2
DIFFERENT IP LAWS FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS: THE IMPORTANCE OF PLANNING AHEAD Apart from protecting one’s business from squatters, having a proper IP strategy in place also enables a company to expand its business more efficiently. Before entering overseas markets, companies need to take into account the fact that IP laws vary from country to country. For example, in Singapore, companies get trademark protection from the day that they file for it; but in China, your rights are protected only when you register your trademark. These are important considerations that local companies have to understand, says Ms Yap, as they determine when a company should register its IP, when it can enter a market and even the way that it franchises its business. The benefit of factoring this into your expansion plans early on is that time is not wasted on unnecessary delays, and that a company can enter a market secure in the knowledge that its assets are respected and recognised by law. “Many companies are lulled into a false sense of security. They think just because they’ve registered their trademark in Singapore, they’ll surely get it in (another country),” says Ms Yap. “It doesn’t work that way because
➤
EXPANDING OVERSEAS? PROTECT YOUR IP FIRST Ms Yap relates the story of a company that discovered, just after it had sold its franchise rights to a foreign buyer, that its trademark had already been registered in the country by someone whom it had talked to a few years earlier. “It may sound bizarre but it happens more often than you realise,” she says, adding that this problem affects not just SMEs but large companies as well. Such perpetrators are known as squatters, and their modus operandi involves registering or using another company’s trademark with the intention of profiting from it when the company enters the market unsuspectingly. Given Singapore’s growth as a hub and its wealth of IP resources, the danger of squatters registering the names of local businesses in their home countries is a very real one – and one that is often overlooked by growing companies, which cite cost as a reason for not protecting their IP. However, the truth is that litigating to get one’s trademarks back is often a far costlier exercise. “It costs around $2,000 to register your trademark while you could spend anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 just to get your rights back at the registry level,” says Ms Yap, adding that going to court will probably set a company back by at least $80,000.
We debunk three commonly held misconceptions about IP.
STRATEGIC THINKING
To be effective, IP strategies have to take into account the growth of the company
EXPERT ADVICE ➤
Yu Sarn Audrey & Partners is known as “the law firm for entrepreneurs”
IP is based on law.” And understanding how a foreign market’s IP laws protect your rights can also save you the unnecessary hassle of going to court to enforce them. With this in mind, when should a company start considering an IP strategy? According to Ms Yap, the earlier the better, especially for companies with technology embedded in their products. “If you are relying on technology, the traditional area of law that protects it is patents – and patents are very sensitive to disclosure. The minute you have launched it to the public, it’s essentially disclosed and you can no longer take a patent.” Registering one’s designs, patents and trademarks constitutes just one part of a company’s IP management strategy. For it to be truly effective, Ms Yap says that it has to be customised according to the company’s needs as every company’s IP is different. “It’s important to understand that formulating an IP strategy is almost like coming up with a health programme for someone based on his or her DNA,” she says, adding that to be effective, IP strategies also have to take into account the growth of the company. “As it grows, the company must have a system and strategy in place that’s robust enough to adapt to the changes of the company.” ■
It is expensive. According to Ms Yap, it costs around $2,000 on average to obtain a registration of a trademark. This sum includes government charges, professional fees and, in some cases, agency fees. But to register a trademark alone costs $340, according to IPOS. If IP forms the core of your assets, not protecting it would incur even higher and more detrimental costs in the long run. “Because of the relative size of their assets compared to a big company that has a diversified portfolio, IP is all the more important for SMEs,” says Ms Yap. “What is the effect if you don’t have a patent? Anyone can just copy your (invention). That’s how SMEs get killed: when somebody takes their idea, copies it, produces it faster and that’s it – the market’s gone.”
3
It is associated with lawsuits. Again, not true. “IP is a means for people to transact with real, albeit intangible, assets,” says Ms Yap. In fact, going to court is best avoided because of the enormous costs involved.
The SME Magazine 43
– Mr Behar (below)
40 The SME Magazine
TOP GUN
Ms Yap made the prestigious Intellectual Asset Management 250 list of The World’s Leading IP Strategists for the third year running, and is the only lawyer from Singapore to appear on it
PHOTO: YEN MENG JIIN
❝
“People that are really productive will get more work. But they also get the promotions too.
appear in the company, and that just kills productivity because what happens is: people stop doing things. They wait until their boss tells them to do something. And then the boss comes along and says: why can’t you think for yourself?” Mr Behar has had enough of bosses saying “don’t ever disappoint me” to their employees. “We make mistakes all the time. The mark of great leadership is to allow those mistakes to happen, though not a repetition of the mistake. At Starbucks, we don’t want to do anything illegal, unethical or immoral, we sure as hell don’t want to poison anybody. But other than that, there are lots of things we can do in service to our customers,” he said. “The quickest way to kill productivity is to chastise people when they do something wrong.” Mr Behar, too, has had his share of mistakes in his more than 20 years with the company. “When I first started with the company, I had made the decision that we needed to raise the hourly wages for people in the stores. There was lots of consternation about it, and we thought we knew what the number was going to be, we thought it was going to increase our costs by about one per cent,” he recalled. “We implemented the wage increase, I went on vacation and about two weeks later, I got a call, the P&L (profit and loss statement) had come out, and our costs had gone up by two points, exactly double. It was a huge issue, but nobody panicked. We made some changes, and we made it work,” he added. “Life is an endless series of mistakes that we’re correcting for.” There’s also an earthly leadership that Mr Behar prefers that more bosses adopt. This is despite the perception that such bosses are meek. “People see leadership with a capital L. In other words, they think they are there to be served, and their people are just there for them to tell them what to do,” he said. “If the condiments stand was dirty and needed to be clean, I didn’t look around and chastise somebody. I cleaned the stand.” He wishes that more leaders would have conversations with their employees on how to make the business better with each job well done, right down to the task of getting the floor swept and telling the staff why that is important. “We also have to let them choose their own broom, maybe they’ve been on the Internet and found a broom that can do a better job. Instead we say, this is the broom that we use, use it and shut up, instead of finding out what they know about sweeping the floor,” he said. “All too often we see autocratic leaders, and truth of the matter is, it’s not very productive.” ■
➤
cause you do more. But it shouldn’t translate into a meaningless clocking-in of hours by employees, especially when they are just waiting for the boss to finish for the day before going home. “We all know what happens – they’ll just give you double the work. People that are really productive will get more work,” he said. “But they also get the promotions too.” He added: “Leaders need to stop worrying about how many hours people work and start thinking about whether people are getting the job done. I used to spend lots of time in Japan, and no one wants to leave before the boss does. Why should that be the criterion?” And leaders out to boost productivity should celebrate mistakes from their employees, rather than obsess over not making them. “Most people want to accomplish things in their lives. What we tend to do is constrict people, we hold them back from achieving their fullest potential. The reason many leaders do that is they are afraid that their people are going to make mistakes,” said Mr Behar. “They’re worried about how they are going to
[ by Lisa-Ann Lee ]
KNOW WHAT YOU’RE WORTH It doesn’t matter whether you are a one-man start-up or a global corporation. Everybody has intellectual property (IP) to protect, and how well you do so could make or break your business
I
MAGINE this scenario: You’re a successful company with a product that everybody loves. As part of an advertising campaign, you run a series of commercials on prime-time TV and these turn out to be such a hit that even viewers across the Causeway are hooked on it. Before long, an almost identical – and cheaper – product starts appearing on the shelves in Malaysia, and Singaporeans flock to Johor to buy it. To your horror, you find that you can’t stop the other company because you don’t own trademark rights to your product in Malaysia. This, says leading intellectual property (IP) strategist Audrey Yap, is an example of how competitors can steal your IP if you don’t protect it. A founding partner of boutique IP and commercial law firm, Yu Sarn Audrey & Partners, she recently made the prestigious Intellectual Asset Management 250 list of The World’s Leading IP Strategists for the third year running, and is the only lawyer from Singapore to appear on it. Her firm is known as “the law firm for entrepreneurs” and for good reason – its clients include successful home-grown companies such as Goodrich Global, Old Chang Kee, Ya Kun and 77th Street. WHY PROTECT IP? BECAUSE YOUR COMPANY IS WORTH IT. IP has come a long way since the days when it was regarded as little more than an esoteric concern of publishers. Thanks to the explosive growth of the Internet, which has revolutionised the way that companies run their businesses and communicate with customers, it has become more important than ever to know how to protect one’s knowledge and ideas, and ensure that competitors don’t encroach upon one’s territory. This is where IP comes in. In order to protect your IP, it is necessary to identify and under-
The SME Magazine 41
[ KNOWLEDGE ]
>> TRUE OR FALSE?
stand the value of what you have first. According to the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), IP refers to “the creations of the human mind”, meaning that it encompasses everything from ideas to technical solutions. Even the process of selling something can be regarded as an innovation in itself and considered IP. Says Ms Yap: “The basis for IP registration is a name, word, product or company name that’s synonymous with quality and a certain class.” What is also important to understand is that there are different categories of IP – for example, trademarks, patents, design laws and copyright – and that they are governed by different laws. For example, patents give a company monopoly over its inventions; design laws protect the aesthetics and appearance of an innovation; and trademarks protect a company’s brand or name. Knowing what kind of IP you have will determine how you should go about protecting it.
42 The SME Magazine
1
It is for big companies only. Not true, says Ms Yap. IP is for public and private companies of every type and size. “Old Chang Kee started off as a curry puff stall but look at how they’ve grown,” adds Ms Yap. “They don’t have large resources or huge financing but they’re able to grow and leverage on their brand and trade secrets. All these are the IP of the company.”
PHOTOS: YEN MENG JIIN
2
DIFFERENT IP LAWS FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS: THE IMPORTANCE OF PLANNING AHEAD Apart from protecting one’s business from squatters, having a proper IP strategy in place also enables a company to expand its business more efficiently. Before entering overseas markets, companies need to take into account the fact that IP laws vary from country to country. For example, in Singapore, companies get trademark protection from the day that they file for it; but in China, your rights are protected only when you register your trademark. These are important considerations that local companies have to understand, says Ms Yap, as they determine when a company should register its IP, when it can enter a market and even the way that it franchises its business. The benefit of factoring this into your expansion plans early on is that time is not wasted on unnecessary delays, and that a company can enter a market secure in the knowledge that its assets are respected and recognised by law. “Many companies are lulled into a false sense of security. They think just because they’ve registered their trademark in Singapore, they’ll surely get it in (another country),” says Ms Yap. “It doesn’t work that way because
➤
EXPANDING OVERSEAS? PROTECT YOUR IP FIRST Ms Yap relates the story of a company that discovered, just after it had sold its franchise rights to a foreign buyer, that its trademark had already been registered in the country by someone whom it had talked to a few years earlier. “It may sound bizarre but it happens more often than you realise,” she says, adding that this problem affects not just SMEs but large companies as well. Such perpetrators are known as squatters, and their modus operandi involves registering or using another company’s trademark with the intention of profiting from it when the company enters the market unsuspectingly. Given Singapore’s growth as a hub and its wealth of IP resources, the danger of squatters registering the names of local businesses in their home countries is a very real one – and one that is often overlooked by growing companies, which cite cost as a reason for not protecting their IP. However, the truth is that litigating to get one’s trademarks back is often a far costlier exercise. “It costs around $2,000 to register your trademark while you could spend anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 just to get your rights back at the registry level,” says Ms Yap, adding that going to court will probably set a company back by at least $80,000.
We debunk three commonly held misconceptions about IP.
STRATEGIC THINKING
To be effective, IP strategies have to take into account the growth of the company
EXPERT ADVICE ➤
Yu Sarn Audrey & Partners is known as “the law firm for entrepreneurs”
IP is based on law.” And understanding how a foreign market’s IP laws protect your rights can also save you the unnecessary hassle of going to court to enforce them. With this in mind, when should a company start considering an IP strategy? According to Ms Yap, the earlier the better, especially for companies with technology embedded in their products. “If you are relying on technology, the traditional area of law that protects it is patents – and patents are very sensitive to disclosure. The minute you have launched it to the public, it’s essentially disclosed and you can no longer take a patent.” Registering one’s designs, patents and trademarks constitutes just one part of a company’s IP management strategy. For it to be truly effective, Ms Yap says that it has to be customised according to the company’s needs as every company’s IP is different. “It’s important to understand that formulating an IP strategy is almost like coming up with a health programme for someone based on his or her DNA,” she says, adding that to be effective, IP strategies also have to take into account the growth of the company. “As it grows, the company must have a system and strategy in place that’s robust enough to adapt to the changes of the company.” ■
It is expensive. According to Ms Yap, it costs around $2,000 on average to obtain a registration of a trademark. This sum includes government charges, professional fees and, in some cases, agency fees. But to register a trademark alone costs $340, according to IPOS. If IP forms the core of your assets, not protecting it would incur even higher and more detrimental costs in the long run. “Because of the relative size of their assets compared to a big company that has a diversified portfolio, IP is all the more important for SMEs,” says Ms Yap. “What is the effect if you don’t have a patent? Anyone can just copy your (invention). That’s how SMEs get killed: when somebody takes their idea, copies it, produces it faster and that’s it – the market’s gone.”
3
It is associated with lawsuits. Again, not true. “IP is a means for people to transact with real, albeit intangible, assets,” says Ms Yap. In fact, going to court is best avoided because of the enormous costs involved.
The SME Magazine 43
