Joost doing by the book

John Naughton's blog, Memex 1.1, picked up a story in the New York Times about Joost.

Basically, it is about the two people who were behind Kazaa and Skype. The story talks about how they created new products that took the market place forward and to some extent, pushed the legal boundaries and involved them, in the case of Kazaa, in legal disputes.

It seems that they have set their new venture up with the legals sorted at the outset. According to the paper:

“The reason we’re doing this is because of our history,” Mr. Friis said in a telephone interview last week. “We know how these things work. And above all, we know that we don’t want to be in a long, multiyear litigation battle.”

This something we see in practice time and time again. New ventures do not even consider looking at legal issues unless they really have to, such as when sorting out office premises. Issues like checking to make sure you don't step on other people's legal toes are easy, and expensive, steps that any new business venture is generally happy to skip. However, the downside is that if you do find yourself on the receiving end of litigation it can be even more expensive, even more costly and might jeopardise your whole venture.

The lesson is simple and summed up Mr Friis neatly.

In my words, prevention is better than cure, especially if the cure fixes it for the other party and not you!

One of the great things about intellectual property is that so much of it is searchable and you can, with relative ease, avoid getting yourself into a problem.