How IP goes AWOL

Twice in the last seven years my intellectual property has been appropriated without my permission.   I'm not sure if two incidents of blatant theft since 2004 is a lot but it's certainly more than I want to deal with.

Both times the culprit was an overambitious yet cost-conscious training manager who had invited me in to make a credentials presentation.  In both the rip-off was based on introductory slides from that first meeting and despite the intrinsic simplicity of my ideas each end product of it all was rudimentary to the point of being completely useless, yet still vaguely linked to my brand.  The worst of all worlds.

I'm told that in each cases like this the plagiarists' thinking would have followed a progression such as this: -

1. That's such a simple idea!  I wish I'd thought of it.
2. That's such a simple idea!  I've often thought something similar myself.
3. Ideas like that are pretty commonplace.  It's really all about delivery
4. That idea has been around forever.  Much of the delivery techniques are probably already in the public domain
5. Why would I pay this guy to deliver ideas that are no better than my own and which he probably lifted from someone else anyway?

In other words, a pernicious internal monologue that begins with admiration and ends in defiance.  Left uninterrupted it costs me stupid amounts of time and emotional energy to arrive at a financial settlement that will 'make things right'.  Even worse, it also sets back my relationship with that company by years.  The sort of people who pass off others' work as their own usually have a highly attuned political sense and are going to do everything in their power to stop me ever getting back in the building.

This phenomenon, albeit rare, is why I have to out so much stock in my personal brand: my ability to convey my own ideas better than anyone else can is the reason why I make credentials presentations instead of watching them.

The business world's often cavalier attitude to plagiarism ('getting caught is the real crime') is also one of the differences between B2B and B2C.  When you're selling direct to the public at large the progression is likely to be: -

1. I wish I'd thought of that
2. I wish that I could do that
3. I wish I was doing that
4. I don't have time / energy / talent to be doing that but I'm so happy that someone out there is doing it and I get to enjoy it

Commerce isn't anywhere near as squeamish as Art on matters of originality.  You have to call the foul because it's unlikely that anyone else is going to do it for you.