Below is an article from Michelle Randall with some interesting insight and examples.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1793369/hiring-for-skill-or-spirit

http://www.bnet.com/blog/evil-hr-lady/why-you-should-stop-being-a-wimp/2671

My last post talked about how business owners can achieve greater profitability with a human capital strategy.  Insperity can help make that happen for small and medium-sized companies.

http://youtu.be/z9Xi4yTon-E

Contact me at broh@dfwbusinesspro.com for more information.

 For centuries we have known that leading and motivating employees in a positive way results in a better place for everyone to work.  It also drives greater revenue and profits for the business.

A 1994 Harvard Business Study of 435 public companies showed that companies rated in the top 10% of Human Resources practices had 3.66 times higher revenue per employee than companies rated in the bottom 10% of HR practices.  Annual studies by the Insperity Mid-Market group of the top 100 best places to work in the United States shows these companies out produced and out gained the Dow, NASDAQ and S&P.

 How does this work?  A simple formula.

 A persons total capacity for work, TC, equals their minimum required work, MR plus discretionary effort, DE.

 TC = MR + DE

 As a business owner you can demand MR.  Your employees choose to bring DE.  How can you help with this decision?  Here are the best practices:

• Align employees with business strategy
• Improve employee engagement
• Improved performance management
• Align compensation with goals
• Improve recruiting and retention
• Reduce the cost of benefits compliance

 I will expand on these practices in future articles.  Email me at broh@dfwbusinesspro.com if your business can’t wait.

 Coach Wooden’s quote is more important today than ever before.  The rapid changes and multitude of inputs that surround us can be overwhelming. What should I do now? How can I ensure we can still win tomorrow?

One of the most important questions to ask today is, “What should I QUIT doing?”

 We keep hearing that little voice in our heads telling us “winners never quit.” Unfortunately, that little voice does not always tell us what we really need to hear.  We need to continually challenge and sometimes quit doing things that used to work but now get in the way of success.

•  Quit Taking a Ride . . . and Take the Wheel
• Quit Getting Comfortable . . . and Explore the Edge
• Quit Analyzing . . . and Follow your Intuition
• Quit Managing your Time . . . and Manage your Attention
• Quit Showing Interest . . . and Commit
• Quit Moving . . . and Be Still
• Quit Striving for Success . . . and Seek Significance

Lee J. Colan, Ph.D. is President of The L Group, Inc., a Dallas, Texas-based consulting firm. He is a high-energy leadership advisor, author and leadership expert.  Dr. Colan has a great insight and tools to help with change.  Contact me and I will make the introduction.

4-star general, 5-star grace

You may have heard the story about what happened between White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and Four-star Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli at a recent Washington dinner.

As reported by the website Daily Caller, Jarrett, a longtime Chicago friend of President Obama, was seated at the dinner when a general — later identified as Chiarelli, the No. 2-ranking general in the U.S. Army hierarchy, who was also a guest at the gathering — walked behind her. Chiarelli was in full dress uniform.

Jarrett, apparently only seeing Chiarelli’s striped uniform pants, thought that he was a waiter. She asked him to get her a glass of wine.

She was said to be mortified as soon as she realized her mistake, and who wouldn’t be? But the instructive part of this tale is what Chiarelli did next.

Rather than take offense, or try to make Jarrett feel small for her blunder, the general, in good humor, went and poured her a glass of wine. It was evident that he wanted to defuse the awkward moment, and to let Jarrett know that she should not feel embarrassed.

As Chiarelli wrote in an e-mail to CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr:

“It was an honest mistake that ANYONE could have made. She was sitting, I was standing and walking behind her and all she saw were the two stripes on my pants which were almost identical to the waiters’ pants — REALLY. She apologized and will come to the house for dinner if a date can be worked out in March.”

Now, even if you’ve never met Chiarelli or followed him in the news, you have to be impressed with him after hearing that story. With his lofty rank in the military, he could have given Jarrett the deep freeze, reproached her and corrected her. But he poured her the wine — “It was only good fun,” he wrote to Starr — and invited her to a meal at his home. He came out of the incident as a decent and magnanimous person.

It’s easy to do, if you care about other people’s feelings. Sportswriters who covered the National Basketball Association in the late 1980s and 1990s like to tell a story about Karl Malone, the great forward for the Utah Jazz. It seems that one day in the baggage-claim area of the Salt Lake City airport, a woman was trying to lift her bags from the carousel and, seeing Malone, who was there to pick up his brother from an arriving flight, mistook him for a skycap.

She asked him to carry her bags to her car.

Malone was a wealthy and world-famous athlete at the time. He could so easily have hurt the woman’s feelings, rebuked her. But what did he do?

According to longtime Salt Lake Tribune sports reporter Steve Luhm, who covered the incident at the time and who confirmed it to me last week, Malone carried the woman’s bags all the way to her car. Only when she reached for her purse to give him a tip did he in a friendly manner introduce himself and decline the offer.

One of the most indelible stories about a person going out of his way to avoid humiliating another person was told in Gay Talese’s 1966 Esquire article “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” widely considered to be perhaps the finest magazine profile ever written.

In the article, Talese described a party at the home of Sinatra’s former wife, at which Sinatra, who maintained cordial relations with her, was acting as host. A young woman at the party, according to Talese, “while leaning against a table, accidentally with her elbow knocked over one of a pair of alabaster birds to the floor, smashing it to pieces.”

Talese wrote that Sinatra’s daughter Nancy, also a guest at the party, started to say: “Oh, that was one of my mother’s favorite…”

Talese continued:

“But before she could complete the sentence, Sinatra glared at her, cutting her off, and while 40 other guests in the room all stared in silence, Sinatra walked over, quickly with his finger flicked the other alabaster bird off the table, smashing it to pieces, and then put an arm gently around [the young woman] and said, in a way that put her completely at ease, ‘That’s OK, kid.’ ”

It can work the other way, too, and can be remembered just as long. I was once working on a profile of a famous singer, also for Esquire, and one evening we rode in his limousine to a concert hall. As he walked backstage he was stopped by a young, nervous and inexperienced usher with a clipboard who had been assigned to make certain everyone in the area was authorized. The usher asked the famous singer if he was the comedian who would open the show.

The singer did not speak to the young usher or make eye contact with him, but instead walked immediately over to a person in the management of the auditorium and demanded that the usher be dismissed.

The singer, in trying to make the young man who had made a mistake feel small, had only managed to make himself seem tiny. What Gen. Chiarelli did, though — like Karl Malone, like Frank Sinatra — was to demonstrate, instinctively and in an instant, what it means to be a big person.

The rest of us may never reach the exalted status of those three men. But kindness knows no social stratum. Every day, we’re given the choice. Consideration? It’s free of charge. It can echo forever.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/13/greene.gracious.gesture/index.html

What You Say Online IS Your Reputation

You’ve spent your entire working career carefully crafting and protecting your reputation. You’re honest with suppliers and work exceptionally hard to exceed your clients’ expectations. You operate with integrity, are transparent in your activities, and treat everyone with respect. If anyone were to check your references, people would rave about what a great person you are.

And then you opened a Facebook account.

From any mobile device, anywhere, at any time you can share what’s on your mind. Out with your buddies and heard a great joke?  Share it with your friends!  Receiving poor service at a new restaurant? Gripe about it and let the world know!  Agree with the latest rant by Rush Limbaugh?  Share it with your online colleagues!

And guess what?  Now that image you’ve spent your entire career building and that reputation you’ve worked so hard to create have vanished. Instantly. Because that great joke about the rabbi, the priest, and the Irish guy wasn’t too well received by your Irish co-worker, your Jewish client, and your Catholic board member. Although your friends appreciated knowing about the restaurant’s poor service, the restaurant itself wasn’t too fond of the negative review and thus they pulled their sponsorship of the nonprofit where you serve on the board. And sure, your political views are certainly your own business. Except for the fact that your best customer doesn’t agree and he has now decided to give his business to your competitor.

Web 2.0 has literally taken the world by storm. Web 1.0 is defined as one way communication whereby your company creates a website to share your information, and search technologies make it easy for people from around the globe to find you. Web 2.0 is defined as two-way communication, whereby parties can interact, often in real time, over the Internet.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, micro-blogs, Skype, texting, digital photography, YouTube and other technologies allow us to communicate in ways previously unimaginable. With mobile devices, we can broadcast when it occurs. The great benefit of Web 2.0 is that anyone can be a publisher of information and the world is the stage. The great danger of Web 2.0 is that anyone can be a publisher of information and the world is the stage.

What makes Web 2.0 so dangerous is that not only can you share information and distribute it on a global scale without the benefit of an editor, but worse, what you say online can be archived and searchable by anyone … forever. Meaning that one online mistake can come back to haunt you theoretically for the rest of your life.

Crazy? Not at all. Tiger Woods, Brett Favre, Michael Phelps and other celebrities have all had their reputations tarnished because of what they said or did via technology or what was captured and disseminated about them online. Think it can’t happen to you? Think again. There are countless examples of everyday people who have posted seemingly innocent messages online only to have those messages come back and cause real damage to the individual’s career and reputation.  For example:

Did you hear the joke about President Obama? A business executive did and posted the joke to his Twitter account. Pretty funny until the Secret Service showed up at his office because the joke—taken out of the context of being told in person with your buddies at the bar—was viewed as a legitimate threat on the President’s life.

Did you see the photo of the young girl on her Segway pushing her baby carriage across the street?  Hundreds of people did and posted vulgar and rude messages about how lazy she was, including posts that “she should die.” The last comment on the blog where the photo was posted was from the young woman’s cousin. He explained that the young lady on the Segway had her legs amputated in an accident, and using the Segway was the only way she could take her new baby out for a stroll.  Oops.

How about the woman who answered a Facebook survey asking if she believed in God? The woman answered no.  Seemingly innocent. Except that she was a teacher at a religious school and when her supervisor saw her response, she was fired from her job the next morning.

The concept of branding has historically been important only inside the walls of advertising agencies and corporate marketing departments. Companies spend billions of dollars each year to protect and promote their brands. They buy media on the airwaves, in print, and online, all with the goal of disseminating their key messages—their brand promises—to potential and current customers.

What is a brand?  Quite simply, it’s the unstated promise a person believes he will experience if he associates with a specific company and/or product. Coca-Cola’s brand promise is “fun and refreshing.”  Nike’s brand promise is “kick-butt on the competition.”  Volvo’s brand promise is “safety.” When you think of those companies, those are the images that they want you to have in your mind and again, they’ve spent billions of dollars to help develop that unstated promise within each one of us.

In today’s information-rich and publisher-easy world, if you post anything online then you are disseminating your message to the world and, by default, are promoting your brand—your personal brand. Unlike big companies, promoting your personal brand costs virtually nothing. But unlike big companies where countless hours are spent thoughtfully planning the brand, your personal brand can be broadcast to the world with the simple click of a mouse.

What is your personal brand? If I only know you by your Tweets, blog comments, or Facebook posts, what is the unstated promise I believe you represent? What is the unstated promise I believe I will receive if I associate with you?

Does your personal brand complement or conflict with the image you’ve worked so hard to craft in your personal life? Is your personal brand consistent both offline and online? Do you act one way or say things one way in a person-to-person setting, and then say something completely different with your online persona, veiled behind the perceived virtual wall of Web anonymity?

What most people truly don’t understand is that the Web, by its very essence, is not anonymous. The Web, by definition, spreads and grows, connecting computers and people around the globe. Even one-to-one text messages or even emails can be archived and shared with the masses (what’s stopping me from posting that email that you sent me). There is no such thing as “your online friends group” or “private message boards.” Because once it is in a digital format, nothing is limited and nothing is private.

The good news is there are steps you can take to ensure you manage your reputation, and they aren’t limited to living in a cave with no Internet access (because even then, you still can probably be found online).  There are techniques you can use, steps you can take, and online resources you can leverage to create, maintain, and even further your personal brand.

When people type your name into Google or other search engines, what do they find?  Following are some simple tips you can immediately implement to manage your online reputation. Many are important to Google and other search engines, meaning, if managed correctly, you can be sure to have the information you want to be seen showing up in the top of search results when someone searches your name. Best of all, for the most part, you control the message.

Own your name online. If your name is “Joe Smith,” do you own www.joesmith.com, www.joe-smith.com, and even www.joe-smith-sucks.com (and all of the .org and other variations of the above names)? If you don’t “own” your own name, then you’re leaving your online reputation in the hands of someone who does.

Manage Your LinkedIn Account.  LinkedIn has become one of the key places for business executives to be found. Setting up a LinkedIn account at www.linkedin.com is easy.  Make sure you complete all of the fields and craft a well-written professional profile. Be honest, as it’s fairly easy to verify or refute any information you enter. Follow the LinkedIn guides to learn how to best take advantage of this powerful resource.

Leverage Your LinkedIn Account.  Set up other accounts in places similar to LinkedIn such as www.naymz.com, www.zoominfo.com, www.plaxo.com, and www.businesscard2.com. Copy and then paste your LinkedIn profile into these accounts, and then modify it to fit the specific site’s format.

Create a Google Profile. Let Google know that you exist and who you are by setting up your own Google Profile at www.google.com/profiles. Set up your free account, link your website and social networks, and more. Again, leverage your LinkedIn profile that you’ve already written when creating your Google Profile biography.

Create a Twitter Account (and Use It). Create a Twitter account at www.twitter.com and Tweet on a regular schedule. Refrain from Tweeting about what you had for breakfast. Rather, Tweet educational articles related to your business or industry. Share information that others will find valuable. On Twitter, follow others whose reputation you respect.

Manage Your Facebook Account. Remove any photos that don’t show you in a professional manner. Certainly share information about your personal life because that’s what people want to see on Facebook, but don’t post anything that you wouldn’t want your mom or grandmother to see. Remember, it’s not just you, but it’s also your online “friends” who help form your online reputation. “Unfriend” anyone who posts inappropriate content on his or her Facebook page. If someone posts a photo of that party you attended in college that embarrasses you, kindly ask that they remove it and if they won’t, certainly un-tag your name (yes, if you’re tagged in someone else’s photo on their Facebook page, it’s possible that that the photo can be found by searching your name).

Set Your Facebook Privacy.  Want to keep your personal life personal? Make sure you set your Facebook Privacy settings. Login to your Facebook account find “Account Settings” on the main navigation, and then choose “Privacy Settings.”  Customize your settings to the level of privacy you wish. Make sure to click on the multiple links under “Privacy” including “Application Settings.” You need to manually opt-out of Facebook’s default settings because Facebook itself is an opt-in program, meaning you opted-in to Facebook’s default privacy settings upon opening your account. Facebook’s default setting are basically “share everything with the world,” so if you don’t want that, then you need to change your settings individually.

Get Involved. Participate in LinkedIn Groups and answer questions in LinkedIn’s Questions and Answers section. Use your real name when identifying yourself. Write articles for your industry blog and website and make sure to link to your website and, again, use your real name. Serve on nonprofit boards and make sure the biography you want is posted on the organization’s website. The more credible places where you can get your name posted and seen, the more credible sites that will appear when someone searches your name in Google and other search engines.

Keep Your Cool. If someone writes something negative about you or your company, don’t respond with an angry rebuttal.  Instead, recognize that when people criticize, they usually just want to be heard. Call the person, email him or her, and/or respond online with a genuine apology. Even if it’s not really your fault, apologize anyhow at the very least, for the negative experience the other person experienced. Let him or her know how you’re going to fix the problem, and then apologize again. How you respond to negative comments probably says more about you than the positive messages that you control or that even others post about you.

Think Before You Post (or Send). Remember, 80% – 90% of communication is non-verbal. What you think is funny others might think is highly inappropriate. Where you might be just slightly angry at someone, in an email, your comments can be taken out of context and you could be portrayed as spiteful and mean. Don’t send an email, don’t text a friend, don’t post a Tweet, don’t comment to an online post until you’re sure that what you say won’t be taken out of context, and how you say it is done in a calm, professional, manner.

IMPORTANT TIP: Did someone else’s message cause you to feel angry or emotional? Before posting a response online, Tweeting, texting, or emailing the other person, write down exactly how you wish to respond at that very moment in your emotional state, but write it in an email that you send to yourself. Then wait a few hours or even until the next morning and read the email. Once you’ve had some time to reflect, you’ll most likely refrain from sending the message altogether or you’ll edit out the emotional parts before you send.

Remember, once you hit “Send” or “Post,” it’s archived and theoretically searchable forever. Do you really want your permanent online legacy to be one written in a time of anger? Ask yourself this question every time before you hit “Send” or “Post:” “How would I feel if this post made the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper … would I be embarrassed if my professional network read this?” If the answer is yes, then don’t “Send” or “Post.”

In today’s information-rich world, it’s nearly impossible for you to not be found online. Whether it’s information that you post or information that others post about you, virtually everyone today has some form of online presence. The key question you need to answer is, who is going to control the message?  You, others, or fate?

http://www.samrichter.com/sam-richter-blog.html

Bill Roh

Strictly Business:  Where Do You Buy Cigars?

In an age when “customer service” is rare, I recently had an
example of outstanding customer care that went far beyond
my expectations. I want to tell you about it, with an emphasis on the potential profits involved.

Not many of you value cigars, but stay with me for a second.
This is important to your bottom line. I recently ordered a
box of excellent Carlos Torano cigars as a gift for a
colleague who had done me a favor. Unfortunately, when they
arrived, they were terrible!

I was disappointed and embarrassed, and expressed my
feelings by posting a negative review on the website of the
company I bought them from. Then, a remarkable thing
happened.

Arthur Zaretsky, the President of famous-smoke.com saw my
note and sent me an email. He expressed his personal concern
and said he had forwarded my note to the President of Torano
cigars. As a customer, I was impressed that he had taken my
complaint seriously. This is good customer service!

But it gets better. Within an hour(one hour!) I got an
email from Charles Torano (Carlos’ son) expressing dismay
and offering to send me a replacement box and a bonus gift.
They sent it by express delivery and it arrived two days
later.

Even if you hate cigars, there’s a vital business truth
here.

I want to emphasize that there is absolutely no evidence the
problem was caused by either famous-smoke.com or the fine
people at Torano! The cigars could have been damaged in
shipment, or even frozen in the UPS truck right in front of
my office. These gentlemen had no obligation to take care of
my problem! But they did. They went “above and beyond” and
they have a customer for life.

Now, I don’t smoke many cigars, but I’ve just told this
story to 42,000 people and there is no question where I’ll
go when I do buy a cigar.

Think of it this way. What is your cost of attracting a new
customer? What does it cost in advertising, account-set-up,
time and trouble to get that cautious first-time buyer? Now,
compare that to the cost of working with an existing
customer to create a “raving fan” who will sing your praises
to (potentially) 42,000 people. Get the point?

Figure it out! Answer your phone. Make it right. Go the
extra mile. This is not rocket science. Extreme customer
care does not cost, it pays.

 Contact him at:
www.philiphumbert.com or email Coach@philiphumbert.com

Eventually the “I’m just thankful for a job” business climate will improve.  Creating an environment where employees give that “discretionary effort” for success today will also keep them when opportunities open up.  It will also help your bottom line, now and down the road.

Call or email me if you want proven help with this critical situation!

Happy New Year!

Bill Roh

Is It Time to Leave Your Job?

by William C. Taylor

It’s the holiday season, when we start making lists of the gifts we want — and of the pros and cons of the jobs we have. The end of one year and the start of a New Year is the time when just about everyone takes stock of where they are with their work, and whether they are where they expected to be.

So as you get ready to transition from your Christmas list to a wish list for your career, ask yourself these five questions about your company, your colleagues, and your personal game plan for what comes next.

1. Does my company stand for something — anything — special?

It’s hard to be thrilled with your job if the company you work for is struggling to succeed, or feels stuck and irrelevant. I’m not talking about obvious problems — red ink and layoffs. I mean the nagging sense that the company will never be anything more than OK, just another ho-hum player in its field. In this hyper-competitive age, you can’t do great things as a company if you’re just a little better than everybody else. Does the company you work for really stand out from the crowd? If not, why on earth are you working there?

2. Am I excited to see my colleagues when I show up for work on Monday morning?

Lots of people sign on with a company because it’s got a cool reputation, or it’s prestigious, or it’s got a great stock price. But quickly you realize that “working for” a company is an abstraction. The reality is that you work with the people closest to you — those in your department, in your unit, in your region. Most experts say that over the long term, employees aren’t loyal to a company as a company. They are loyal to the people they work beside day after day. Can you imagine not spending 40 or 50 hours a week with the people you work beside every day? If so, maybe it’s time to make a move and fine a group of colleagues who stimulate you and motivate you.

3. Do I have a voice at work — does anyone who matters listen to what I say?

There’s nothing more depressing and demotivating than feeling that you don’t matter as a person — even if you’re part of a group that’s working well in a company that’s doing fine. In this age of participation and communication, people are hungry for a say, a voice, a sense that their opinion counts. If you feel like your opinion doesn’t count, maybe it’s time to find a company where it does.

4. Am I learning as fast as the world is changing?

I first heard this question from strategy guru Gary Hamel, and I ask it of myself all the time. In a world that moves so fast, the most dangerous thing in anyone’s career is the sense that you’re standing still — that you’re not learning, that you’re not being challenged, that you’re stuck. If that’s how you feel, that’s a strong sign that it’s time to make a change.

5. Am I making enough money?

Strange as it sounds, this is the worst reason to leave a job. Virtually every study I’ve seen shows that there’s almost no connection between how much money you make and how satisfied you are with your job. There really are things that money can’t buy — and happiness at work is one of them.

Here’s hoping you get what you asked for-both in terms of what’s under the tree and what’s ahead in your career.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/111648/is-it-time-to-leave-your-job?mod=career-worklife_balance

By Barbara Findlay Schenck

Published December 08, 2010

| Business on Main

Paul Allen’s recent patent infringement suit against Facebook, Google and other tech giants has fueled discussions from boardrooms to coffee shops. What needs to be protected, how can you put protections in place, and how do you defend intellectual property once registrations, patents, trademarks and copyrights are filed? Here’s a primer on what every business owner should know.

Registering a business name
Depending on whether a business goes by the legal name of its owner (John Smith Plumbing) or an assumed name (A-Team Plumbing), and depending on its location and business structure (sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, or corporation), the path into local and state government databases of registered business names varies. The Business.gov website provides forms and instructions for this necessary step toward protecting your business name.

Registering with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
Just because you’re safe to use a name, idea or process doesn’t mean others can’t use it, too. Most intellectual property rights are limited to the territory in which they’re registered. To protect rights across broad market areas, register with the USPTO in one of three categories:

- Trademarks protect words, names, symbols, sounds or colors that distinguish the goods and services of a business. Start by searching the USPTO database to determine that the mark you want appears to be available. If so, hire an attorney who specializes in trademarks to conduct a more extensive search before proceeding to claim the trademark in one of two ways:

- Officially register the mark following the USPTO instructions. The process usually requires the expertise of an intellectual property lawyer but, once registered, the trademark (indicated by the symbol ®) provides government protection from liability or infringement issues and is renewable so long as it’s used in commerce.
- Establish common-law trademark rights by using the mark, accompanied by a “TM” in superscript (“SM” for service marks), consistently and continuously in business dealings. Be aware that common-law trademarks are limited to geographic areas in which the marks have been used and, if challenged, lack the protection of registered trademarks.

- Patents are property rights granted for finite periods to inventors “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States.” The USPTO site links to applications, instructions and registered patent attorneys.

- Copyrights give producers of writings, music and works of art exclusive rights to control reproduction of their work. Copyrights take effect once the work is produced in tangible form. To strengthen protection, include a line on the work that states, “Copyright,” or “ã,” followed by the date of first publication, and the name of the copyright holder. For further protection, file a copyright registration through the U.S. Copyright Office.

In addition, the World Intellectual Property Organization provides information on obtaining international protection.

Defending registered rights
Establishing rights is the first — but certainly not the last — step in protecting intellectual property. Even after registrations are in place, responsibility falls to property owners to:

Protect registrations by carefully following government and legal instructions. Misuse jeopardizes registrations and, as a result, exclusive rights. As a famous example, Otis Elevator Company, owner of the Escalator trademark, allowed the word to be misused as a noun, rather than as an adjective followed by a generic descriptor — e.g., Escalator brand moving stairs. As a result, in 1950, courts deemed that “escalator” had become “genericized” and therefore part of the public domain, and trademark protection was revoked.

Move quickly against intellectual property violations. Waiting can erode rights. Though the Paul Allen patent infringement suit is far from decided, The Wall Street Journal includes this quote from University of Missouri law professor Dennis Crouch: “If the patent holder just sat on their rights for a long time … the patent might become unenforceable.”

Register it, use it and defend it — in that order
To protect intellectual property, first work with attorneys and government offices to establish your legal claim. Then use your property — correctly and to the letter of the law. And, finally, should your rights be infringed upon, move quickly and decisively to keep your property proprietary, out of general use, and of high value to your business.

Barbara Findlay Schenck is a small-business strategist, the author of “Small Business Marketing for Dummies,” and the co-author of “Branding for Dummies,” “Selling Your Business for Dummies” and “Business Plans Kit for Dummies.”

 http://www.foxsmallbusinesscenter.com/sbc/2010/12/08/register-protect-defend/