Deal making and risk mitigation

I will be the keynote speaker at the Canadian Healthcare Licensing Association's Summer Meeting 2010, on June 9-11, 2010, which is billing itself this way (from the registration form):

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; How to successfully mitigate risks in deal making."

Deal making involves risks: risk of financial failure, risk of product failure, risk that the company’s investment won’t be returned. The focus of the summer meeting is learning ways to mitigate the risks we encounter on a daily basis. Led by James Hatton, a commercial solicitor with more than 20 years experience focusing on licensing and related transactions, the summer meeting will tackle significant risks including:
• What happens when a licensee acquires a competing product or restructuring de-emphasizes their focus on your product?
• How do you manage performance expectations and ensure/define “reasonable” efforts?
• How do you avoid litigation when everything is going wrong?
• What are the effects of termination, under what circumstances is it best to terminate?

This meeting is a must for all those involved in healthcare licensing." [emphasis added] :-)

I forgive anyone in advance who doesn't consider hearing me exactly a must. I will post the guts of my thoughts on the subject here over the next two weeks.