IP challenges for start-ups

For technology start-up companies, including university spin-outs, the IP stakes are high.  Generally speaking, intellectual property will be vital to getting the company off the ground and to its growth and prosperity.  Investment funding will depend on a strong IP portfolio, as will partnerships with larger companies and licensing deals to generate revenue.  IP will provide the reassurance of exclusivity as the business begins to trade and persuades others to take it seriously.

Yet in the early days of a start-up, IP can often be neglected.  A shortage of time and money, and limited understanding of IP issues, can combine to create a reluctance to tackle this difficult area.  IP is an expensive commodity, and there is rarely a short term return on the investment.

At this stage, it's tempting to view IP as a series of discrete tasks – patent applications, for instance – rather than as part of a wider, more coherent strategy.  This then makes it difficult to decide what to protect and when, and all too easy to fall for "quick fix" solutions which ultimately limit your longer term options.  It's also hard to establish the right balance between your commercial needs and your IP position when planning R & D activities.

The need for an early IP strategy

As a start-up it's important to be aware of your IP, and of your competitors' IP, right from the beginning.  And since IP will be helping you to achieve your business objectives, you need an IP strategy that complements your business plan.  That strategy will allow you to focus your resources more appropriately on IP that's important to the core business, and to ensure that your IP portfolio grows far enough ahead of the business to be in place ready to support your commercial activities.

Having an IP strategy from early on helps to reduce IP-related risks, or better still to turn them into strategic opportunities.  It also increases the efficiency with which you can handle your IP issues.

Our experience with start-ups

Our patent attorneys have considerable experience of helping technology start-ups to devise and implement sound IP strategies in their crucial formative years.  We have worked with both university and government agency spin-outs as well as small IP-based start-ups.  Our holistic approach, and willingness to work as part of the core team, has led to many companies actively seeking our involvement at the start-up or spin-out stage.

We can help you to audit the IP you have and that you are likely to generate in the future, to exploit it in line with the overall business plan and to manage it so as to optimise its value and effect.  Sensitive to budget constraints, we can advise on techniques for improving the cost effectiveness of your IP activities and for tailoring them to fit with cash flow or other requirements.  All of our advice takes account of your commercial and strategic aims as well as the strict legal and technical issues.  We can therefore help guide you towards your commercial objectives, for example investment funding rounds, industrial collaborations, flotations or acquisitions.

Improving your IP awareness

Also of value is the way we can help you to learn the IP basics for yourself so that you can go on to manage your IP more effectively.  We can provide seminars for your staff, and day to day guidance until all members of the team – from bench level to board level – are comfortable with IP issues.

IP best practices

Perhaps most important of all for a small business, but often overlooked, are the underlying "best practices" which help to maintain the value of your IP.  These can include policies for capturing and evaluating new IP, for clearing publications to avoid accidental IP loss, for safeguarding your entitlement to your IP and of course for maintaining awareness of relevant third party rights.

It's extremely important to have these practices in place from the beginning.  They will have a huge impact on the level of risk you're exposed to and the potential value of your IP, and investors will look out for them when they do their due diligence in the future.

Please get in touch...

As a firm, we very much enjoy working with early stage technology companies.  The work is challenging and rewarding and a chance to see IP at its most vital and effective.  You'll find our input to be broad minded, creative and above all enthusiastic, yet totally focused on your longer term business objectives – exactly as your own approach will be as you embark on your new venture.

Please give us a call if you'd like to meet to find out more, or for information about the start-up companies we've worked with.