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Course: Entrepreneurship > Unit 1
Lesson 12: Jason Christiansen - President & CEO of Rigid IndustriesThe World of Copy Cat Companies
Jason Christiansen has heard all the familiar comparisons between running a business and being a team player, but as a former major league baseball player, he steps to the plate with a unique perspective. Christiansen talks about building Rigid Industries and how the company deals with imitation product lines and compares the pressure of
standing on the mound to standing before his team of employees. Created by Kauffman Foundation.
standing on the mound to standing before his team of employees. Created by Kauffman Foundation.
Want to join the conversation?
- What is "IP" that he keeps referring to?(19 votes)
- It stands for Intellectual Property and consists of Design patents he refers to at0:23seconds. In essence if he invents a new type of light and files a patent for it then no one else can use it for 14 years. see http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/patents.jsp(16 votes)
- What stops companies outside the states from copying their IP. Are their any actual lawa that apply to companies outside the US(2 votes)
- The laws governing Intellectual Property outside the United States tend to be still be a country by country patchwork of regulations. Most of Western Europe has laws similar to the US.
Most people seeking a patent in the US also will file for patent protection in other countries as well.
Many countries ignore patents that aren't filed in their particular country or have no restrictions protecting Intellectual Property at all.
Even in the US, having a patent, copyright, trademark etc. does not remove the burden of enforcing/policing the use of what you've created. That burden is still put on the owner.(7 votes)
- i want to see wall project yu have for led light(0 votes)
Video transcript
- Jason Christiansen. I'm the President/CEO of Rigid Industries. In the lighting industry,
it's crazy to think that there are so many copycats. We continually are designing
new products, new parts, that we try and protect
as much as possible. We file as many design patents as we can, and we are continually
fighting that battle. It's very, very tough, because you can change just a little bit and make a gray area there. But we do as much as we possibly can in all of our new designs
and creating that IP so that we have that foothold. But it's a tough process. It's something we
continually struggle with. Being a linear-based system, we have anything from a four-inch light all the way up to a 52-inch light. With that, the IP is protected
within that series of lights. So there might be 17 or
18 different products within that product family. All of the IP is covered in
all of those 17 or 18 products. We're trying to design
as much IP into that as we possibly can for production, whether it's the way we cool something, maybe the way the circuitry
is designed, our optic, maybe the way it's put together. So you try and develop
as much IP as you can into a new product, so that
you do have that protection. So when somebody does try
and come out with something that's extremely similar, or maybe it's a true copycat or a forgery, we have that foothold to be
able to stand up and say, hey. Wait a second, you guys are doing this, and you're not allowed to because of this. The big problem we have is a lot of the offshore-based companies that they don't really care of the US IP. We have a company offshore
that is selling product that uses our name. I've seen a box with our logo on it, and copying some of our
videos that we've done, and they use our pictures. They use our light graphs. They've copied our catalog. I've seen our instructions,
our wiring harness, our switch, absolutely everything. Your knee-jerk reaction is I'm flying over there and
we're gonna have a sit-down. That's just not something you can do. They really don't care. And this is one company. And there's two or three
companies that we deal with, and we're very, very diligent
on keeping up with that. Our distribution base will
contact us immediately if they find somebody that is selling something in the states, even in Canada, for that matter. A little bit harder to
enforce some of that on the worldwide market
than it is domestically. Anybody that we find we
automatically send a C&D to, and we very much respect
other people's IP. We definitely are focused on making sure that we don't step on anybody else's toes. I think we did once. We immediately stopped,
and we changed our design, and I sent a nice apologetic letter with a nice gift card, and
we were all good after that. They knew it was an honest mistake, and we weren't trying to be
deceitful or hide anything. That's not the type of company we are.