Managing Intellectual Property Portfolio

Contrary to popular opinion, Intellectual Property (IP) addresses deeper commercial complexities that are well beyond the superficial notions of your trademarks, patents, and copyrights. Consequently, it is an uncommon oversight for younger yet aspiring businesses to disregard their IP Portfolio when attempting to accurately gauge both their capital and intangible value.

In today's innovation-driven economy, a company's Intellectual Property continues to be a pivotal element in the overall valuation of its worth. As a business owner, your capability to leverage your intellectual assets into fiscal gain will predominantly depend on an intricate IP-Management principle known as 'IP Portfolio Management'.

To bypass the early stages of apathy, you must ensure that you have a clear-cut vision of what IP you own in actuality. All whilst keeping in mind that your company is indeed unique and that there is no 'one size fits most' when it comes to creating and then managing an Intellectual property portfolio.

Turn your Intellectual Property into a Business-Catalyst

How? One might ask. By defining what your intangible assets are. While you do so, ensure you do not brush past vital commercial and operational elements as you answer the 4 following questions:

• What IP do we currently possess?
• To what extent is it shielded?
• Which parts of your IP are most valuable in terms of strategic turnover?
• What other IP would we need to acquire and implement, to ensure maximum efficacy of your strategy?

Unique Forms of IP Protection

Due to the intangible nature of IP, it’s almost effortless for others to unrightfully claim your work as theirs. But, fret not, there are ways to legally secure your IP against the actions of such:

Trademark: Trademarks include a business's name, slogan, and design amongst other elements that go with a company's branding.

Patent: Designed a more efficient wheel? Obtaining a patent will safeguard your innovation against rivalling with second-grade competitors. Bear in mind to always seek appropriate IP counsel before venturing into the world of patents. Doing so will further secure your chances in solely exercising your innovation for 20 years.

Trade Secret: Most nations permit businesses to take legal action against competitors on the ground of ‘Trade Secret Theft’. This is assuming that the business in question has indeed taken the appropriate steps to classify their trade as a ‘secret’. There is no complexity to this principle, as Trade Secrets have no expiry date and the key to lawfully protecting yours is early action.

Copyright: This unique type of IP protection applies to literary, musical, graphic, and sculptural works, as well as motion pictures and other audio-visual creations. Most of such designs possess inherent copyright, which makes it one of the IP protection's best features. We say unique because copyright laws are interpreted based on their global geographical locations.

Fine-tune your IP as you make headway

Once you have defined a conclusive inventory of your Intellectual assets and assigned appropriate IP protection, ensure that you’ve also included all innovations that are routinely manifested by your workforce. The way forward would now be setting a simple framework, that would enable you to fine-tune as your business makes headway. As intimidating as the word ‘framework’ sounds, starting its conception is simple as following these guidelines:

• Record and document innovations and processes that undoubtedly work for you as a business.
• Preserve your assets and innovations and build your corporate army around it.
• Maneuver your IP to drum up additional commercial gain. Disrupting rivals’ operations or even deploying your intellectual property in several markets would be a good place to start.

When implementing the first point, keep in mind to only include innovation and processes that deem to possess strategic value to your business. To facilitate this, you are advised to set up exemplary communication channels with both your innovative and administrative taskforce. This would ideally set up from the get-go as new technologies are birthed on the daily and are resulting in an ever-changing perception of the global economy.

IP and Commercial Gain: Educate Yourself

Seminars: Working in IP for over 35 years, we’ve realized that even the most seasoned business moguls are immensely uninformed of the downfalls of disregarding their IP. That's why it's crucial to provide yourself and your employees with appropriate education on the pillars of Intellectual Property protection. This will also fuel innovation by walking them through the intricacies of creating valuable Intellectual Property.

Incentives: In today’s world, incentivizing your workforce through a well-devised reward system has almost never failed to reap fruitful results. This would work best with an industry that operates with ‘patentable’ innovations as the value generated from your patent should be enough to cover financial rewards.

Helping Hands: Numerous smart companies routinely have their attorneys collaborate with their creative workforce. These foster and encourage a corporate culture of reciprocating valuable expertise.

Templates: Create fill-in sheets for workers so they can note down new innovations (small or big) to team leaders as it will increase the chances of funneling and seating valuable information.

A Grander Scheme: Integrate IP with your Business Aspirations

In order to entirely leverage the value of your IP, and reliable IP counsel would suggest that you familiarise yourself with the IP map of the industry you operate in. This would serve as valuable insight into the varying rival market segments and products.

In this respect, shielded IP serves as an impenetrable barrier to unrightful entry. By scaling the IP roadmap surrounding your business, you'll be able to ascertain which segments are indeed susceptible to penetration and will allow you to further assess prospective business leads.

In most cases, the instant response for able businesses is to leap towards maintaining their IP; however, and based on the case-scenario, an indirect route can serve as a tool to further empower your IP portfolio.