When Good Legal Advice is Bad Business Advice - Part ?
One of the areas I find particular interest in is where what appears to be good legal advice is bad business advice. Usually, it involves a decision to enforce rights - often IP rights - that creates a PR nightmare.
The latests in the "oops I forgot to think" category comes to us from Creative Labs. As reported in The Consumerist, Creative Labs' sound cards have had difficulty working properly with Vista. This is a problem when they are labeled Vista compatible. Enter a hacker - Daniel_K - who had the nerve to actually create drivers that made Creative Labs' sound cards work properly with Vista. He also enabled some previously crippled features. The public apparently appreciated his work, as he had over 100,000 downloads of his drivers.
Creative Labs responded by removing Daniel_K from their forums and threatening him with stealing the IP. Eventually, after being flamed all over the internet, Creative Labs reinstated Daniel_K. In the process, however, they gave themselves a big black eye.
So the end result is that Daniel_K is back - fixing what Creative Labs has either been unwilling or unable to fix. Creative Labs has now given itself a credibility problem with its customers. Just another example of good legal advice being poor business advice.
The latests in the "oops I forgot to think" category comes to us from Creative Labs. As reported in The Consumerist, Creative Labs' sound cards have had difficulty working properly with Vista. This is a problem when they are labeled Vista compatible. Enter a hacker - Daniel_K - who had the nerve to actually create drivers that made Creative Labs' sound cards work properly with Vista. He also enabled some previously crippled features. The public apparently appreciated his work, as he had over 100,000 downloads of his drivers.
Creative Labs responded by removing Daniel_K from their forums and threatening him with stealing the IP. Eventually, after being flamed all over the internet, Creative Labs reinstated Daniel_K. In the process, however, they gave themselves a big black eye.
So the end result is that Daniel_K is back - fixing what Creative Labs has either been unwilling or unable to fix. Creative Labs has now given itself a credibility problem with its customers. Just another example of good legal advice being poor business advice.
Someone at Creative Labs was responsible for making this decision and it probably wasn't in the Legal Department. Each part of the company with a stake in the decision has an obligation to provide the final decision maker with their best advice. I would, in this case, expect that Legal would come down on the side of protecting Intellectual Property. I would have expected Sales (representing Customer Service) to have a different opinion. The concern I have about Creative Lab's handling of this problem is that the decision maker didn't seem to have received (or not paid attention to) thoughtful, thorough advice from all concerned departments. This debacle has the stench of bad (and perhaps corrupt) corporate politics rather than the perfume of "how do we take care of the shareholders".
Thanks!
Roland Smith
http://techmatters.rnsmith.com/
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