You need an intellectual property strategy: define the benefits of your IP to know how to protect it.

• Author: Coles, Jim
• Position: ADVICE: LAW

MANY DECISIONS involving intellectual property are made without a strategy. This leads to protection that is not cost effective, intellectual property that has no specific purpose, and increased risk of problems. With no strategy, some businesses elect to do nothing about intellectual property because they cannot see the benefits.

The primary objective of intellectual property protection should be commercial exploitation. While the ability to use intellectual property protection offensively can provide support for commercial exploitation, it should not be the primary objective.

There are three reasons to exploit intellectual property: (1) to increase revenue through exclusivity or competitive advantage (income); (2) to increase recognition of products, services or name in the marketplace (goodwill); and (3) to establish a bargaining position in a business transaction, e.g., raising capital, selling a business interest or resolving an intellectual property dispute (asset).

Reasons to exploit your company's IP. If exclusivity is a reason for exploiting, then the intellectual property protection selected should protect the competitive feature(s) of a product or service and be cost effective in view of the plans for marketing the product or service. Intellectual property protection does not guarantee the commercial success of a product or service but marketing plans should maximize the benefits of the investment in protection to enhance the likelihood of commercial success. If there is no plan to market a specific feature of a product or service, then it is probably not cost effective to protect that feature.

If recognition of products, services or name is a reason for exploiting (e.g., license, franchise or bundling), then intellectual property protection may not need to cover competitive features of products or services. However, successful exploitation for this reason should include several intellectual properties that can be bundled in one or more identified areas of technology and/or a branding strategy that creates an indelible impression in the marketplace. In order to effectively bundle intellectual properties by technologies, a business should conduct an audit of its intellectual property In order to create a indelible impression in the marketplace, a business should have a consistent and well-recognized appearance in the marketplace.

Intellectual property audits come in all shapes and sizes, but at a minimum should include a self...