New Tools, New Profits

As intellectual property grows in importance to business, protecting IP is growing as a business. Quick to nose out opportunity from others’ distress, entrepreneurs are developing novel ways to help copyright and brand holders fight back against the harm posed by new technologies and business practices. For instance, with its hard-to-copy holographic tags, OpSec Security Group helps the licensors of products ranging from baseball caps to printer cartridges to maintain better control of their brand names and to limit counterfeiting. Digital fingerprinting technology developed by start-up company Audible Magic can thwart the illegal downloading of copyrighted music.

Venture financing is flowing to the most innovative and successful companies, though mostly as part of a focus on a large industry sector such as software. According to Bill Rosenblatt, founder of Giant Steps, a New York?based media technology consultant, “There aren’t that many people looking at this kind of company in and of themselves.” But for in-house counsel and their outside lawyers, these service providers are quickly becoming a necessary part of the IP tool kit.?Laura Legere