Original Ideas are Property to be Protected
By Jan Quintrall, President, CEO, BBB jquintrall@spokane.bbb.org
Posted December 21, 2008 in the Spokesman ReviewIt was their fifth design meeting. The kitchen remodel drawings and job schedule had been fine-tuned, so they figured this would be their final meeting – where they’d sign the contract and begin what was going to be a great project.
Lots of detail, innovative touches and such a great relationship between them made it feel more like collaboration than a job. Suffice it to say, the client and designer had their hearts and souls in this.
They sat at the kitchen table and studied the old kitchen with anticipation, both knowing this was it. The client asked to take the drawings and all supporting documents downstairs to show a friend.
“No problem,” the designer said.
So the client took the hours and hours of paperwork and headed down as the designer sat thinking about the coming months and how incredible the final pictures would look in her portfolio.
She then heard a familiar sound: a photo copier. She had forgotten that her client’s basement office was fully equipped. He had not yet signed a contract and he was taking copies of her work. These were her drawings, not his, so in the eyes of the designer, he was stealing her intellectual property.
She sat in the kitchen listening to the machine go, feeling betrayed and angry. Perhaps he was just copying something else and she was simply being paranoid.
The designer was me, 20-plus years ago when I was in the remodeling business, and the scenario reflects the first time I faced this sort of ethical challenge. Over the years, I have experienced similar situations. In fact, the remnants of such an issue met me when I arrived in Spokane in 1998.
KHQ approached the Better Business Bureau about a co-op advertising program that our former BBB CEO liked. However, wanting to be inclusive and neutral, he also took the idea to the other two local stations asking what kind of offer they could make the BBB.
While I understand why our former CEO did this, the first thing Lon Lee, former general manager of KHQ, told me when I met him was that we had “shopped his idea,” inevitably handing it to another station. Ouch.
Long ago in that kitchen, I learned about the ethics of intellectual property and how one needs to be careful about the possibility of taking someone else’s idea without paying them. If you sell ideas, you risk this kind of problem every time you meet a potential client.
I have a friend who sells ideas. He meets with clients, gets to know their needs and challenges, and comes back to them with helpful suggestions and a proposal. I was once privy to the details of one such meeting, and was surprised to see that one potential client had taken his ideas and used them in the marketplace without ever hiring my friend.
How does a person “lifting ideas” and not paying for them rationalize doing so? What makes this kind of behavior acceptable?
Short of cluttering your proposals with a variety of disclaimers and legal threats, what can you do to protect your intellectual ideas? Here’s what I suggest: Talk about it. Get the issues on the table right when you present your ideas. Let your client know that while you have no presumptions that they would ever have such an ethical slip, it happens, so you just want to be upfront that if they use your ideas, you will expect payment and present a fee for the services.
Offer only enough information to let the client see the potential, not the end result. Not always possible, I know, but purposefully leaving out a couple of important points might make it a bit more difficult for them to grasp the whole picture.
If these tips make them think before taking your intellectual property, you may achieve your goal of protecting your ideas.
If you find a potential client is using your ideas, call them on it. By saying nothing, they might never understand they broke your trust.
So what did that young woman in the kitchen do when faced with the noise of the copier?
Nothing. I just sat and waited for him to come back upstairs. When he did, I acted as though I didn’t suspect a thing and went on to hopefully close the sale. But he said he wanted to wait and that he would contact me later in the week. He never did and stopped returning my calls. Eventually, I saw a photo of his kitchen completed by a less expensive competitor. While it was not exactly done to the specifications of my drawings, the sketches were mine. Then the competitor entered it into a remodel contest.
As for the ethics of my competitor, well, that is the topic of a whole other column.
Holiday Season Brings out the Scam Artists
Jan Quintrall
Posted by the Spokesman Review on December 7, 2008
Sometimes, on a busy day, I'll take a break in my office to stop and listen as my intake staff takes calls. This gives me a good idea of what is happening in our area, based on the type of answers I hear them give.
I have to admit, it is getting a little redundant these days; I can tell times are tough for some, based on these exchanges. All in all, people spending money are being a lot more careful.
What are we mostly hearing?
•Work at home offers: We probably get 30-plus calls a day from individuals hoping that ad they saw for envelope stuffing or medical billing transcription is real because they want to make some money from home. Remember those ads that told you of "potential" riches from raising chinchillas in your basement? How about getting paid to simply surf the Internet? Rule of thumb here: If they want money upfront from you, it is most likely a scam.
People do not stuff envelopes from home, but this is the scam most callers ask about. People want to believe there is a painless way to work from home and make extra money. The spike in this type of call is typical this time of year, as people are looking for a little cash for the holidays. The need seems more urgent this year.
•Fake checks in the mail: The BBB gets so many calls on this subject that we have set aside a recorded message just to give people enough basic information to make the smart choice to shred that random check from nowhere.
How do check scams work? You receive a real-looking check in the mail stating you have won a lottery or sweepstakes, have been approved for a grant, or have been chosen to become a secret shopper.
If you stop and think about it, you realize that you never entered the Bohemian Sweepstakes, purchased a Lagos lottery ticket, or asked for a grant from the Office of Official Refunds. You never knew how lucky you were!
The check is, in fact, coming from a legitimate company that has been the victim of corporate ID theft. And if you deposit that check, usually for $2,000 to $8,000, and spend any of it before the check clears (it won't), hold on to your wallet.
Ten days later you will hear from your financial institution that the check bounced and you owe the bank all of what you spent. Looks like your luck has suddenly ended.
Granted, most tellers will catch these checks and warn you about it, but not always. This problem is just getting worse as people look for desperate ways to replace income they no longer have.
•The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Americans are nervous enough and the news media are full of stories that make us want to hide in a cave with our money in a coffee can. But ask questions before you do silly things.
We have recently seen an e-mail circulating that talks about a number of national retailers that are or "may be" going out of business. The e-mail states right at the top that some content may not be true, but it never tells you what part. How helpful is half-baked information without verification?
This e-mail goes on to discourage purchasing gift cards this holiday season because the laundry list of stores provided could or could not be going out of business.
What a disservice to retailers this kind of urban legend can be. And if you choose to forward e-mails to others without confirming facts first, you are adding to the fear and misinformation. If you want to send information to friends and contacts, confirm how much truth is in the message. Don't have time to do that? Then think twice about contributing to the cyber-gossip machine.
•Black Friday and pending doom: National reports show that Friday, Nov. 28, retail sales were better than expected. My own non-scientific survey of downtown Spokane merchants indicated that it was a darned good day.
We are seeing the effect of news hit us in ways that are tough to measure, but contradiction seems to be the norm of late. If we keep telling ourselves that times are tough, then we can plan on times being tough. Yes, we will be facing challenges on many fronts over the next several years, but don't buy into all the rhetoric. Locally, we are not hitting the same kinds of lows seen across the nation.
As you make your holiday plans, remember that consumer spending is the oil that keeps the economic machine moving. People are still spending; they are just being more thoughtful and selective about trusting how and where they spend.