Debbie McGrath

Patents and Trademarks, the End of Talent Management and The opportunity to be in Fortune Magazine.


Patents and trademarks have not played a major role in the HR space yet but I suspect they will. Look at the issues and impact on these patents.

1. Sending a candidate referral by email - I do not know of a firm that
has not breached this one.
2. Scraping job listings from a website: So what happens to
SimpleHired, Indeed, careerbuilder and the others that are scraping and consolidating jobs?
3. Parsing resumes and jobs into fields. Don't all applicant tracking
systems do this?
4. Webinars ® - Don't we all use that name?
5. And yesterday a patent was granted for 360 degree feedback for their 360 feedback tool, to the Leadership Versatility Index (LVI).
6. How about Talent Management ® ? Tell me about a vendor who is not using this in their materials.

Yikes ... when many of these patents and trademarks were granted, the Internet did not exist as it does today. The enforcement of these patents will stifle creativity and innovation. Patent and IP firms are already buying firms just for their patents. It could be a huge issue for all of us, especially patents and trademark infringements that impact each and every employee. Do you know of any other patents or trademarks that may affect you managing the people side of your business? If so, let me know.

New terminology...

Okay, so we are no longer allowed to refer to the Talent Management ®
word... I am officially declaring the new term (short term) as the Talent
Continuum ... I like this name as it signifies the entire lifecycle of
employees and also aligns to the labor market. Of course, this makes the
definition even broader but since everyone is going to use it, it may as
well be as broad as possible. It is a short-term solution and I would
love your input into what the next hot term should be ... Send me your
ideas.

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