Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about how Toyota is leveraging it’s investment in product development with patents.  More specifically, Toyota has been diligently patenting the inventions resulting from the engineering developments associated with its best-selling hybrid Prius brand automobile. 

According to the Journal, Toyota has applied for more than 2,000 patents and is building a castle wall around its technology.  Raising the barriers to entry in this segment of the car market not only makes it more difficult for competitors to enter the field.  It also tees up Toyota’s patents (if and when they issue) for licensing and royalty potential.  It’s a great example of legal leverage.

For more information about the power of patents and how to use them for strategic business advantage, click here.

Bratz dolls are the brain child of toy designer Carter Bryant and are made by MGA Entertainment.  A big hit with the pre-teen set, in some parts of the world their popularity has eclipsed Mattel’s Barbie doll as the number one selling fashionista doll.  The business rivalry might have ended there except for the fact that Carter Bryant was once employed by Mattel.  

Bratz Doll Funk and Glow Cloe

In the lawsuit that followed, Mattel claimed Mr. Bryant’s Bratz design work began while he was still employed at Mattel.  The company further claimed that under the terms of his employment agreement, all doll designs made by Bryant during his employment at Mattel, including the Bratz designs, belonged to Mattel.  A jury agreed and awarded Mattel $100 million in damages.  The court also granted a permanent injunction that was later modified to allow MGA to sell through its inventory until the end of 2009.  More recently, the parties have begun settlement discussions.

The Bratz lesson here: the value of enforcable contract rights.  Without a contract spelling out what kind of inventions, creations, or designs belonged to the company it would have been much harder for Mattel to achieve such a decisive victory or to put itself in such a favorable bargaining position.  Their legal literacy gave them legal leverage.

My guest blogger posting at SCORE.org this week is on the staying power of trademarks.  When used properly trademarks not only have staying power, they are valuable assets that appreciate over time. 

The more you use them the stronger they get.  Think of them as little brand names, logos, slogans and trade dress, all pumping iron and working in tandem to create a legal fortress around your core marketing strategies.

Unfortunately, businesses sometimes fail to realize that even certain common words they´ve been using over and over again may have acquired a secondary meaning in the minds of their customers that associate those words with their business.  When that happens a legal leverage opportunity could slip between their fingers. That´s what almost happened to the Yellow Pages, one of the cases discussed in my book, The Business Guide to Legal Literacy. 

The Yellow Pages had carved out a unique marketing space as a business directory for many many years.  Then along came someone else who started to publish their own yellow pages and called it just that — the Yellow Pages.  Advertisers, the heart of the Yellow Page business model, got confused.  Customers got confused.  And the Yellow Pages fought back by finally registering Yellow Pages as a federal trademark.  Only by the time they got around to it, with the competition already honing in on their marketing platform, they wound up registering The Real Yellow Pages instead.  That´s the way you see it on your phone directory today.

You too can legally protect the marketing platform you´ve invested precious time and money in developing.  Unlike patents that have complex filing procedures, trademarks are much easier.  Talk to your lawyer.