When Do You Need A Technology Lawyer?

With Steve Job’s passing and the release of a new biography about him, issues of technology law are all over the press and the internet these days.

Most work at home folk will simply be reselling products and services from others who presumably have done their own legal due diligence.  This post is about those who go on to produce their own actual products… those are the people who will need a technology lawyer!

Just consider some of the recent revelations about Apple’s once cozy relationship with Google. Jobs and Google’s CEO were fast friends with Jobs offering advice about how Google needed to stop having its fingers in so many pies and focus on products/services that they could deliver with superior impact and profits. That’s why Apple makes a “iPhone” and other handset makers squander their efforts over numerous “phones”  each with marginal utility.

Google just discontinued “Google Labs” to follow Jobs’ advice. Some would argue they should have followed that advice sooner. As the new biography reveals Jobs wanted to use his fortune and last remaining days to destroy Android, the Google phone operating system. Jobs swore the software took every advance Apple had made and pilfered it and distributed it to the unwashed masses who wanted in on Job’s phone advances.

Did they? Probably.

But ultimately that will be for two teams of competing lawyers to sort out before a judge or judges. As in all cases of this nature,  the courts will ultimately decide the issues at stake based on the available evidence and the skill with which they are presented.  In the process there will be lots of minutiae to sort through and thousands upon thousands of billable hours on both sides.

Now that Steve Jobs has passed on, Apple has – in my opinion – lost it’s best advocate for their cause. He likely knew the details intimately and had the zeal and money to – at least – command royalties from every “Android” handset to fund the iPhone’s ongoing march to superiority.

When do you need a technology lawyer? Perhaps as soon as you have your first patent but sometimes in advance if you discover your research may be infringing on an existing patent in your field.  If you truly are on the verge of a breakthrough, it pays to protect your intellectual property from – as Jobs learned – even your “friends”.