"Progress and growth require a desire and willingness to change. You can be a catalyzer...and initiate it, be a contributor...and shape it, be an adopter...and embrace it, or be a resister...and suffer it. It's your choice!" ~ Michael
As an incisive Intellectual Property (IP) specialist and experienced inventor, my mission is to promote and protect innovation.
I empower creative people to develop and leverage their ideas into proprietary assets for competitive advantage, transforming innovative ideas into more robust products and business results. I help shape product innovation and marketing programs that fuel business strategies, delivering thoughtful appraisals of the competitive landscape, and identifying ways to plan and execute with a more calculated approach to outperform competition. I strive to make patents and other facets of IP understandable, helping others better appreciate the value of IP, and how it may impact their business.
One key to my success in this capacity is the ability to systematically analyze complex information and problems, and be diligent and deeply focused on providing insightful advice and clear action plans. With extensive experience as a researcher and inventor developing consumer products, I provide strong critical thinking and collaboration skills with diverse technology/product development expertise in FMCG/CPG and professional dental products/medical devices.
As Senior Manager IP for Essential Dental Solutions and Implant & Prosthetic Solutions at Dentsply Sirona, I've led and managed a small team of IP professionals, with emphasis on improving the efficiency and costs of IP processes and decision-making between R&D, Legal and other business partners.
As an IP Manager at Procter & Gamble, I championed protection for products and technologies on 4 of the top 50 most valuable global beauty brands with $4.5B+ in annual sales. I identified IP assets and risks across more than 100 projects, formulating dozens of IP Strategies for hundreds of patent filings. My competitive insights shaped strategic allocation of a $30M+ R&D budget by providing technical intelligence analysis on emerging technology opportunities and threats. Disciplined year-over-year cost reductions were achieved with rigorous portfolio reviews while managing a multimillion-dollar patent budget.
Prior to that, I had more than 10 years of diverse R&D experiences with P&G that included product creation and performance testing, as well as process engineering to lead commercial scale-up and troubleshooting in manufacturing operations. I managed a variety of technologists and programs in product development, enabling more than a dozen successful product launches contributing $500M+ in annual sales.
You can see additional detail about my professional background on LinkedIn here:www.linkedin.com/in/michael-c-sabino
IP Manager, Beauty Technology Development, Procter & Gamble Co.
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Consultant, IP and Technology Commercialization, SF IP Strategy & Patent Advisory Services
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Patent Manager, Digital Lab Materials/Prosthetics, Dentsply Sirona
selecT Results
$6M+
Instant cost avoidance / savings ($25M+ lifetime)
16
consecutive yrs of cost reduction (patent expense)
26%
increase in patent filings (4-Yr ROLLING Avg BASE)
14
personal patent filings as co-inventor
350+
patent filings enabled (utility & design)
50+
ip strategies created & executed
Skills & YEARS OF EXPERIENCE
IP training
15
supervisory
15
project management
15
competitive intelligence
15
Budget management
15
Patent searches & analysis
15
invention disclosures
15
IP Strategy & Policy
15
patent portfolio management
15
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT / R&D
20+
Questions & Answers
What important qualities should an IP Manager/ Strategist possess to be most effective?
I don't know the original source for this, but years ago I came across a list of qualities someone proposed that I think are on target. I've tried to embody and emulate these in my own approach:
They are thinkers
They make decisions
They gather and interpret the right information
They are good at identifying the likely range of future events
They never stop evolving their approaches
They understand the broader landscape, within and outside their company, and are socially and politically astute
What's one of the key challenges you see people struggle to understand or accept about IP?
IP operates in a complex, frequently-shifting landscape, even for IP specialists. As a consequence, there can be considerable uncertainty and ambiguity to address -- there isn't always a simple "yes/no" or clear black-and-white answer. It's more about relative risk assessment and mitigation, and identifying the "strongest" options or opportunities to pursue. A big part of my role is to help others come to terms with that. My goal is always to provide the best information and advice I can, in a timely manner, that meets the needs of the final decision-makers.
Why should businesses care about IP?
Because their very survival likely depends on it! As the world's economy has become more information-driven and knowledge-based, IP will be an even greater driver of business success.
Both now and in the future, "physical assets" contribute much less to the total value of most businesses than in the past. It's the "intangible assets" -- in other words, the "intellectual assets" -- of creative ideas and know-how that are increasingly responsible for generating and sustaining business value and competitive advantage. IP is an investment in your future.
What motivates you in your role as an IP specialist?
My professional inspiration and motivation is fed by helping innovative technologists and business leaders be more successful. I enjoy the challenge of using my technical and IP know-how to bridge the gap between their hard-earned insights and efforts, and the work of patent attorneys trying to navigate through the complexities of the IP landscape.
Enjoyed being one of the invited speakers at PIUG's 2018 Northeast Conference in Iselin, NJ on October 9, 2018. Shared some of my perspectives as an IP Manager on how to think more strategically when tackling the information search and analysis process, with a mindset focused on actionable outcomes for the business.
USPTO Patent Agent Registration Certificate
