In-House Counsel

Some waves come back from offshoring, such as patent prep at General Electric

By Rees Morrison

Going against the wave of offshoring, General Electric?s law department has begun to handle many more patents in-house, "a change that produces more and better patents with no increase in expenses." No more details are in the article from Corp. Bd. Mbr., Vol. 11, July/Aug. 2008 at 76, that describes this shift, where the company had previously been outsourcing its work on patents.

Brackett Denniston, the General Counsel of General Electric and the quoted speaker, believes that a great technology firm, which GE aspires to be, should have a law department that is as "good or better than anybody in the world and can do the intellectual property that protects the technology."

That is to say, you do not send offshore your core-competency work (See my post of May 23, 2008 ? core competencies with 12 references.).

Full post as published by Law Department Management on August 05, 2008 (boomark / email).