Randy at EPI Labelers asked the question, “what are you hiding at trade shows?”There is a trend that we have noticed growing over the last few years that seems to be coming to a head…..that is the customer’s demand for information clashing with the supplier’s desire to protect their intellectual property. This was highlighted in a conversation we had with an R&D engineer for a fortune 100 company who attended Pack Expo Looking at labelers for equipment he is developing. He was stunned to find that of the 8 companies on his short list, only 2, just 2 would allow him to take photographs of the equipment that they had on public display! One supplier’s employee went so far as to verbally accost him!

Should you let people take photos of your trade show equipment?

I think there is a trend going on in our society toward open systems and open ideas. That’s not to say that intellectual property isn’t vitally important to the current and future success of industry, but you’re in trouble if your IP strategy is to allow thousands of people to see your machine but not photograph it. We are living in an age of camera phone ubiquity. Soon it will be video camera ubiquity. Randy goes on to say,

Let’s be honest, there just aren’t that many secrets left and patents are only as strong as your desire to defend them. The belief that you are protecting your market by withholding what you believe to be proprietary information is flawed, security by obscurity is dead, it costs sales and alienates customers. How do I know? Our new customer told me so.

In the Henrik Ibsen play, “The Wild Duck,” an inventor laments “Damn it, what’s left for me to invent? Other people have invented so much already,”

That play was written in 1884.

In spirit I agree, but there are always innovations and improvements to be made and Garvey always protects its intellectual property within the law. The patent system itself is an open system and with the advent of Google Patents, it’s never been more open. That said, I agree 100% that preventing people from photographing your booth at a trade show is fruitless and counter productive.

While looking up that Ibsen quote I also found another great one by the great comedian Steven Wright: “I invented the cordless extension cord.”

Tags: intellectual property, inventions, patents, trade shows

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