Posts Tagged: "innovation gap"

The Real McCoy Part 3: How to Bridge America’s Innovation Gap

In a 1972 court decision, United States Supreme Court Justice Stewart wrote: “Property does not have rights. People have rights.” Accordingly, Blacks must be diligent in making sure that they are aware of their intellectual property rights, like any other civil right, and seek IP legal counsel to secure and enforce these rights for economic gain, the avoidance of economic exploitation and the creation of wealth in the new millennium and beyond. That will only be achieved with the help of those (of all races and other categories that divide us) who work within the IP community. Until then, in a society where innovation is the key to individual wealth and national economic prosperity and where IP attorneys who represent innovators should be the “next generation civil rights lawyer,” I (and many like me) will have failed to live up to my mother’s dream.

The Real McCoy Part 2: I am a Man Who Thinks and My Thoughts are Valuable

One of the more indelible images of the civil rights movement are those from the Spring of 1968 as Black sanitation workers went on strike in Memphis, Tennessee holding signs that read “I am a Man,” in their fight for economic equality. (This is the reason that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was visiting Memphis when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.) Now those signs should not only read “I am a Man Who Thinks,” but “I am a Man Who Thinks and My Thoughts are Valuable.” Thus, a skillful IP attorney can be a modern day civil rights attorney by aiding Blacks to create IP rights in order to preserve their exclusive right to economically exploit the fruits of their creativity.