We discussed with Tiki Dare about her experience with the International Trademark Association, the initiatives in the field of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, her role and the activities of her team at Oracle, as well as the interaction between technology and legal services.
- Tell us a bit about yourself and your professional course.
I am currently the Vice President of Trademark, Copyright and Marketing Law at Oracle, in California. My interest in intellectual property (IP) started back in law school, where we had a very engaging copyright professor, who inspired many of my classmates and got a lot of us into IP. I started my career in a Washington, D.C., law firm, where I had the opportunity to connect with people in the trademark and copyright practice. I have had amazing mentors and role models all through my career and it has been exceptional. As I wanted to focus and specialize on trademarks, I then moved to California and worked for a law firm that counsels Silicon Valley companies, and that was a great way to learn more about the business. The following year I shifted from private practice to in-house and joined the trademark practice at Sun Microsystems, a hardware and software company, which was then acquired by Oracle in 2010. I was on the INTA board during Sun’s acquisition from Oracle and then returned to the board in 2016, this time as an officer. I have really enjoyed the progression through the different officer levels, you learn so much at each level. For example, by being the treasurer you get a ‘deep dive’ into the financials which is a great experience. In 2020, as the Association’s President Elect, I was chairing the Strategic Planning Committee, where we developed INTA’s 2022-2025 Strategic Plan. It is important to note that, as we were working on the Strategic Plan, the pandemic was expanding and George Floyd was killed; we had these really pressing issues that we had to respond to, so
Οur Strategic Plan reflects the need to be resilient in times of change and the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- During your tenure as INTA 2021 President, you introduced a Presidential Task Force on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. What were its main objectives? Did you accomplish them?
Let me first take you back chronologically: In March 2020 right before the pandemic, on International Women’s Day, INTA’s 2020 President Ayala Deutsch launched the Women’s LeadershIP Initiative which was designed to foster development of strong leadership skills for women in the IP field and empower them to advance their careers to the next level. That initiative published a report and best practices toolkit in February 2021, and it has become a sustaining permanent program in INTA. The Women’s LeadershIP Initiative was an incredible ‘springboard’ for us to go into the Presidential Task Force on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I), because we had looked at gender and we were then expanding our focus to LGBTQ status, race, and ethnicity, as well as other dimensions, such as disability. We achieved the goal of getting a worldwide understanding of these major trends and how people in IP are impacted by them. Our report is now published and available on the INTA website and includes best practices and detailed information on the issues.
- Did you encounter any challenges?
One of the challenges was that the vocabulary of DE&I is different from region to region, and even from country to country. Therefore, asking at a global level to participate in surveys and get feedback on such topics was a challenge for us. The task force team managed to overcome and address that challenge very effectively, we had terrific leadership and support from Kimberly Redick from Uber and Michael Hawkins from Noerr – a diverse team representing both in-house and outside counsel. Internationally, we include in our work both attorneys and non-attorneys, paralegals, and we have had some diversity by industry, as we always seek to do when we create any kind of group. We are also trying to ask questions internationally to understand how people think about these issues. For example, in some countries it might be illegal to practice an LGBTQ lifestyle, so we must be aware of those differences when we are looking into the DE&I issues.
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion can often “stay in theory”. In your opinion, what are the actions required for such policies to be successfully integrated in a company’s culture?
This is a great question, and I am glad that you raised it because you are right, it is easy to just say it. In my opinion, the most important thing is setting the tone from the top, the leadership of the company must be committed to it and value DE&I. Then, as is the case with all CSR and ESG initiatives,
It must be cascaded down from the leadership and applied holistically, it must become part of the strategy, and the values must be ingrained in the company’s DNA.
This means establishing leadership positions, advisory boards, embedding the principles in the policies – there could be a code of conduct depending on the size of the corporation. In addition, a measurement and accountability structure is critical. Many leaders will say that “we only do what we measure”. The organization needs to set smart, measurable, concrete and time-bound goals and the results need to be made public, they need to be transparent; an organization should be accountable to its members, to its employees, to its consumers and the public. One reason why this is so important for INTA is that we see brands being asked by their consumers and the general public to address all kinds of social issues that, perhaps 25 years ago, would only have been for the government. Consumers are asking brands to take care of this, and they are holding them accountable, they make their purchase decisions based on this – there is a huge buy-in. Particularly during the pandemic, the public was watching the brands closely, looking for companies to step-up as leaders and help. We have also done some reports within INTA looking at purchase patterns and customers are much more willing to change the brand they buy from, based on commitment to DE&I and accountability around a commitment to sustainability.
- You have been volunteering to INTA for over 15 years. How has the Association evolved during that time? How has it contributed to your personal and professional development?
One of the most exciting things to me is that INTA has internationalized more and more deeply over that time. We have representatives offices in China, Singapore, Latin America, Europe and in the United States, in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area. We have had a Chinese language track at our Annual Meeting, we do more delegations abroad and we’ve held Board Leadership and Annual Meetings in more international locations. And, of course, Zoom has brought us together. We spent last year [2021] meeting, on a weekly basis, with groups of Members from different countries. And I think that was very valuable not only for them, but it was also tremendously valuable for me, as President. It has always been important for me to try and become more and more global and this has just been such an exciting opportunity to do that.
The other stream of a real change over the last 15 years is that the Association has broadened its focus from trademarks – which is a very legal notion – to brands. We now encompass the business of brands that includes looking at things beyond just trademarks, such as valuation, complimentary rights, the intersection with copyright, privacy, rights of publicity, and more. It is an interesting shift on which President Zeeger Vink is doing a lot of work, through his Presidential Task Force, looking at valuation, taxation, how trademark attorneys can extend their understanding of the business.
- What are the main aspects of your role as Vice President, Legal at Oracle, and what do you find most challenging / rewarding?
Our aim in my practice team is always being that trusted partner to our internal clients, no matter what problem they are solving. When it comes particularly to the marketing department, I always want to understand their business and help them achieve their goals.
On the IP side, my team manages the trademark and copyright portfolios globally. We also do very heavy counselling around domain names, and anything related to activities taking place in a digital environment (considering that Oracle is a cloud company). Our practice also includes counterfeiting, contest and lucky draw sponsorships, events support, advertising, open-source software and many more. I usually do not interact directly with our customers – the outside customers – and it is very rewarding when I can help one of my marketing business partners create a positive experience for Oracle’s customers.
- How do you think lawyers can leverage technology to facilitate their work and improve the provision of legal services?
There are so many ways to do that, either directly or through a supplier. At a global level, in the US and Europe, this has happened for a long time, for example with the digitization of records. This is a way of leveraging technology, making the processes very efficient and the documents shareable. As far as IP offices are concerned, some countries are ahead of others. Even before the pandemic, some offices had already digitized their records substantially or they had given employees laptops, so they were able to sustain operations more easily.
I am tremendously impressed at how the international IP offices and international practitioners managed to keep things going and strive during the pandemic. There are stories of heroism, in terms of people’s commitment to their clients and trying to keep offices open, using whatever technology they had at that moment.
You can also see technology and tools such as online searching and databases becoming more robust as more countries bring their records online. The searching needs to get better: it was initially developed around Roman characters, so adding alphabets like Cyrillic, or the Asian character sets would enhance the search and the results would work for different systems. This is critical as the industry is moving forward, it is a tremendous service to in-house practitioners and law firm colleagues.
An application process which available online can save people very significant time and if it is user-friendly enough, it can also enable small businesses to participate and that’s a group that we are very excited to serve more and better. INTA, for example, has done a digital transformation over the last few years, we have dramatically modified our website and we are continuing to do more things. We want to serve small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) better and provide them with more resources and online tools. Online application forms, search engines and AI enhanced tools, can help them reduce costs and conduct more robust online investigations for any enforcement or anticounterfeiting reason. It also allows the legal professionals and the business to have a faster look, considering that the speed of business is always increasing.
- In general, how has the global pandemic affected the nature of your work?
I work for a technology company, and I have always had employees who worked remotely even before the pandemic. Therefore, compared to others, the transition was very gradual for me. I also think that the appreciation of the skillset to work remotely is very different. I remember, years ago, I had been asked to hire someone outside the San Francisco Bay area and I realized how much easier it is when you have someone physically in your office, rather than interviewing them online. As a matter of fact, at that point we didn’t even have Zoom or Skype in the office, so I wasn’t seeing people face to face; their screening interview was just a phone call. I remember speaking with someone and being impressed by her remote skills, she was able to connect and communicate effectively, even with a cold phoneline. After the Covid-19 global outbreak, we are seeing more and more people learning skills that are necessary to communicate remotely. I think that the challenge for us now is figuring out how to have an outstanding hybrid meeting, with a mix of people in the room and people on phones or conference technology, maintaining the flow of conversation.
Another issue which I find very important, is implementing work policies and technologies to ensure that the workforce is equitable. I recently read an article explaining how working mothers need to deal with their children, while young men were racing back to the office to get facetime with senior leadership. I think that, as we come out of this pandemic, we need to monitor the impact on employees who still need to be remote and make sure we enable people to work under the same, equal conditions.
