This year we introduced the new tagline: Learning. Excellence. Sharing. Much of our efforts this year have been to imagine and create ways for our members to elevate their personal performance through these three pillars. Today I want to emphasize the third pillar, Sharing, and its importance to our members and the other two pillars.
For me, one of the most important parts of LES is the feeling of community. I feel a sense of belonging to not just a group of professionals, but a community of professionals, who support each other and share their expertise and experience. LES has long been known for this sense of community and our members’ willingness to share. We recognize that IP deal making and enforcement require individuals with diverse skills, and are unique in our membership diversity. Yet despite our diversity, or maybe because of it, LES provides a community atmosphere, which has the potential to elevate all of our performances. We are a society made up of attorneys, business development specialists, business strategy professionals, technology transfer experts, valuation and litigation authorities and many more. We work across many business sectors, including Life Sciences, High Tech, Chemicals, Energy, Environment, Materials, Consumer Products and the intersection of Universities, Governments and Industry as well. Some of us work for large multi-national corporations or firms; others work for smaller firms, or are self-employed, while still others work for academic or government entities. Yet, our members continue to share and learn from each other and grow our professional knowledge and networks.
This year, in the spirit of community and to underscore the pillar of Sharing, LES has developed initiatives for members to connect and increase their engagement without taking a formal volunteer role. Our hope is that each of you–our members–will take advantage of these opportunities to contribute and become more active.
New Community Platform
We recently launched a new platform to facilitate active and continual communications within our greater community and within our subcommunities, such as the Sectors. Residing within the LES Membership portal, the platform enables peer to peer sharing on topics of interest, and supports inquiries, sharing of best practices, and news/information. It changes our model from one where all information flows from one central source to one where each individual member can be an information provider to the community. It gives each member the opportunity to query the membership about their thoughts on everything from a how to handle a difficult negotiation to how they feel about a public policy issue, such as the proposed TRIPS waiver for IP relating to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chapter Leader community provides a great example of how this platform can work. Chapter leaders have long been asking for a way to share successful programs and other best practices. Within this Community, chapter leaders can ask a question of the group, such as, “what topics have you found that draw a large audience?” or “can you recommend a speaker on a certain topic?” Any member of the community, in this case the other Chapter Leaders, can provide responses. This increases knowledge sharing and leads to better outcomes for all Chapters. Threads can be created for ongoing topics and everyone who is a member of that Community can contribute and learn. The higher the level of engagement, the more valuable these resources become. As we roll out additional communities, our hope is that each of you consider joining, participating, and expanding the conversations. We’ve put links below to take you to the community platform, to an FAQ list on the platform and to a six6- minutes video on how to use it. If you are in a Sector, or on a Committee, you have already been put into that Community. I have experienced the benefits of being active in the LES Community, and I encourage you to take advantage of and be active on this new platform.
Share your News, Information, and Content
I invite and encourage members to contribute content that LES can share or reshare through The Pulse, our website and on social media. If you are looking for ways to expand the audience for a professional paper you have written in an LES-related field, LES may be able to help. In addition to our quarterly journal, Les Nouvelle, we have the ability to get articles through review and published on our website with links in our weekly newsletter, in a short period of time. Your contribution can be shared to an interested community in a timely fashion. Perhaps you have written something that has been posted on your company website –a case review, reflection on industry trends, or the like. Consider submitting it to [email protected]. We have developed a set of guidelines for publishing these documents (with copyright permission). One such example published the week after the Supreme Court decision in Arthrex is this article: The Supreme Court Preserves the PTAB System by Scott Hejny, Kat Li, and James Quigley of McKool Smith P.C. We are eager to help you share content with the LES community.
In summary, the pillars of our new tagline, Learning. Excellence. Sharing will grow stronger, the more we take advantage of these new opportunities to engage. The expanded opportunities, highlighted in this blog post, provide more opportunities for engagement and contribution to the LES Community. These contributions come without large time commitments and deadlines. A small suggestion responding to a post asking for assistance or a fresh perspective, may be very significant to the inquirer. As an LES member, I value your participation and look forward to getting to know you better through your increased activity in our community.
LINKS OF INTEREST:
- View and Access All Communities (*you will need to be logged in): All Communities – Licensing Executives Society (les.org)
- FAQs on Communities / Discussions: Help/FAQs – Licensing Executives Society (les.org)
- Communities Platform Demo Quick Overview* (6 minutes): Chapter Leaders – Licensing Executives Society (les.org)
About Louise Levien
Louise Levien, Director, LES USA & Canada
Louise Levien, Ph.D., CLP Louise is currently a licensing consultant. She also is an active volunteer, not only for LES, but for the MD Anderson Venture Mentor Service, for Brown University and for College Money Matters. She continues to use her experience as a scientist and licensing professional to mentor others as well as develop and deliver training in the field of IP licensing. Louise retired from ExxonMobil Upstream Research in 2017, after holding diverse scientific, managerial and staff assignments. She spent the last third of her career working the company’s Commercial, Intellectual Property and Licensing group, and was responsible for IP processes, the intellectual property aspects of agreements, and licensing transactions impacting ExxonMobil’s upstream business. She holds a ScB degree in Geological Sciences from Brown University and MS and PhD degrees in Geochemistry from Stony Brook University. She is a Certified Licensing Professional and co-inventor on two patents.