Managing an IP portfolio
Whether your company has two patents or thirty, one trade mark or hundreds, they're of little value unless you make them work for you. This requires effective management of the intellectual property "portfolio" as a whole.
The management process must be active and ongoing. It requires constant monitoring and evaluation of all of the company's IP rights as well as those of your competitors, and strategic decisions about how to exploit, prosecute, defend and enforce those rights in the context of the business as a whole. It demands an awareness of what you are trying to achieve, in the market place, using your IP rights. Your IP strategies can then be consistent with your overall commercial ones.
What does this "management" involve?
Here are some of the things you should do to manage your IP :
- Evaluate all of your IP rights. What use is each of them? - Is it protecting you against competitors? Is it making you money, for instance royalties from licensees? Does it have strategic value? - Set bench-marks against which to assess whether your rights are achieving what you want them to; if they're not, consider dropping them.
- Check whether you're handling all your IP rights - patents, trade marks, design rights, know-how - in line with the same business objectives.
- Prioritise your IP rights, so that you can allocate resources to them more efficiently, focusing on the key business areas.
- Do these things regularly, and be prepared to alter your IP strategy as your overall business strategies evolve. Make sure you take into account your future business plans, so that the IP rights can be in place ready to support them.
- Keep a watch on your competitors' IP - they may be infringing your rights, or they may have their own which you risk infringing, or they may be branching out into new technical fields. This can open up new collaboration opportunities as well as helping you to respond more effectively to threats.
- Implement systems to ensure you're aware of all IP generated within your company, that it's appropriately protected and that there can be no disputes over its ownership. Ensure your staff understand your IP.
- Tackle potential dangers (eg, third party IP rights, infringements of your rights or IP ownership disputes) promptly and positively, in a way that's consistent with your overall commercial strategy.
- Talk regularly to your IP advisors; keep them up to date with your business plans, your needs and your priorities.
How can we help?
At Greaves Brewster LLP we believe that the patent or trade mark attorney should be actively involved in the IP management process. The larger the portfolio, the more important this is.
What we can do to help depends entirely on your needs. We might for instance help you to audit your IP portfolio, preferably on a regular basis, to identify strengths and weaknesses and shape your IP strategies. We can advise on general good practice to do with, for example, invention capture, publication clearance, competitor monitoring, IP ownership safeguards and licensee controls. If you wish we can talk to your staff to help keep them aware of IP issues and of the value of your IP rights. And we can liaise if appropriate with your other advisors (solicitors, accountants and PR consultants, for instance) about exploiting your IP rights.
We like to be kept up to date with your activities and plans, so that we understand what you're trying to achieve with your intellectual property. We encourage our clients to keep in constant touch and we are always available to advise when you need us, however small the query. This allows us to give you a much better service, not only protecting your IP but also helping to increase its strength and value.
