Overview
Part 1
Read the following scenario and review the eight principles addressed by codes of conduct that meet world-class standards, according to Harvard researchers. (The 8 standards are listed at the end of Ch. 18 of your textbook.)Scenario
A regional director of intellectual property for the U.S. division of a multinational cosmetics company was responsible for overseeing the process of preparing and filing patent applications. As a licensed attorney, he was bound by state professional conduct rules as well as regulations issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The company’s global headquarters implemented an annual filing target requiring each regional office to submit a specified number of patent applications. Management communicated that meeting these targets would be tied to performance evaluations and continued employment. At the same time, U.S. leadership emphasized improving the technical quality and defensibility of patent submissions. Stricter internal review standards reduced the number of applications that met filing criteria, creating tension between quantity expectations and quality requirements. The director informed senior leadership that he would not authorize the submission of applications that did not meet ethical and legal standards for patentability. After ongoing disagreements, his employment was terminated. He later filed a legal claim alleging that he was dismissed for refusing to compromise professional and regulatory obligations.
Part 2
You are a senior compliance and risk manager for the U.S. operations of a multinational corporation. Senior leadership has asked you to evaluate this dispute and determine whether current policies and controls sufficiently address legal, regulatory, and ethical risks in the organization’s patent operations.
Input the scenario into the generative AI tool of your choice, such as Copilot or ChatGPT. Instruct AI to:
Summarize the important elements of the case and identify alternative managerial responses that could have been used.
Identify the key legal, regulatory, employment, and professional-conduct risks.
Identify at least 2 alternative managerial responses and the potential legal and regulatory outcomes and trade-offs for each response.
Verify the source information where possible.
Save the AI conversation, including prompts and outputs, to include in your deliverable. Assessment Deliverable
Write a 525- to 700-word analysis with the following sections. Refer to the eight principles from the Assessment Preparation section for guidance.
Risk Overview
Identify the key legal, regulatory, employment, and reputational risks raised by the scenario.
Discuss the top 3 risks that pose the greatest threat to the organization, rank them in order from greatest to least threat, and explain your ranking and why these are the most serious threats. Ethical and Regulatory Evaluation
Select four of the eight principles addressed by codes of conduct that meet world-class standards and explain how they apply to this case.
Evaluate whether management’s actions and the employee’s actions adhered to or conflicted with these principles and cite examples.
AI-Supported Risk Analysis
Summarize the AI-supported risk analysis you completed.
Summarize the potential legal and regulatory outcomes and trade-offs for each alternative managerial response.
Identify any risks that should inform your managerial recommendations that were not included in the AI output. Managerial Recommendations
Propose two to three concrete policy or process changes that would reduce future legal and regulatory risk.
Explain how these recommendations balance business objectives with compliance and ethical obligations.
Appendix
Write a 1- to 2-paragraph critique of the AI tool’s usefulness and limitations for this analysis. Include accuracy, gaps, and risks of over-reliance on the AI outputs.
Include your documentation of the conversation with the AI tool from your assessment preparation.