Making the Most of Your IP During the Economic Downturn

Article from our Winter 2008-2009 edition of InsideIP.

The newspapers are full of doom and gloom and there will be very few businesses that are untouched by the global economic downturn. This is a time when it is particularly important to manage your IP assets. Commentators talk of the current credit crisis lasting up to two years, but IP assets can have a much longer life-span and rash decisions now could have painful effects for decades to come.

The key to making the most out of your IP, especially in the current economic climate, is to identify, evaluate, protect, manage and use your IP, ensuring that it forms an integral part of your business strategy. An IP audit can be key to achieving these goals. An audit can help you to ensure that your valuable IP is being adequately protected. It can also serve to identify where costs may be best saved, by allowing you to understand the commercial value of certain rights and the cost of pursuing or maintaining protection. An IP audit can also help you to identify IP rights that could be attractive to third parties and that could therefore be potential sources of revenue.

When preparing an IP audit, Venner Shipley will firstly make sure that we have a complete understanding of your business. We will get to know your commercial activities and aspirations, your products, your development work and what your main competitors are doing. There is no simple formula to apply when conducting an audit – a thorough understanding of your business and of how it uses its IP is the foundation upon which our advice is based. Without this, it is impossible to accurately assess the value of your IP rights.

Once armed with this knowledge, the review of your existing IP rights can begin. These rights may include patents and patent applications, technical know-how, trade marks (whether registered or not) and designs (again, whether registered or not).

We then prepare a report providing a summary of your IP assets and setting out a strategy for maximising the value that you can extract from your existing rights and identifying ways to improve your IP portfolio. The report will not only confirm whether or not key IP is adequately protected, but will also assess whether or not your existing IP rights are providing you with value for money in view of your commercial strategy. The report may even be able to identify which IP rights might be potentially sold or licensed to third parties without damaging your company’s commercial position or future plans.

To summarise, an IP audit can provide you with the information to enable you to make informed decisions on how to spend your IP budget, identifying key areas where money is likely to be well-invested and where money can be generated.

If you are interested in having an IP audit conducted on your business, please do not hesitate to contact us. As always, we will be more than happy to discuss your specific needs and to tailor the job to your circumstances and budget.

Siân Gill 13 Feb 2009

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