IP Protection

Without any second thoughts, Intellectual Property Protection is indeed a crucial aspect of every other business and legal strategy out there as it ensures that the IP assets are profitable. The IP assets should always offer a competitive advantage to brands and businesses. On the other hand, the business owners must put in sincere efforts to understand their Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) while protecting their business entities from the issues of Intellectual Property Infringement and theft. So, let us now make ourselves familiar with the prime elements, which the business owners need to consider in their overall IP protection strategy.

  1. The number one consideration for an ideal IP protection strategy lies in ensuring that all your IP rights are well protected. When it comes to defending your IP rights, a successful and fruitful outcome shall primarily always depend on how well your IP rights are protected; for instance, if your Patent Application is incorrectly processed or your business entity doesn’t hold the said patent in some specific markets, then it may not be able to obtain and enjoy all the applicable rights. This scenario can even affect a business adversely and financially, especially in cases where a competitor uses your IP assets. Hence, you need to make a point of the fact that IP rights can be enforced only in those nations where they have been registered and granted.
  2. In addition to protecting your IP rights in all aspects and at all times, it is equally imperative to have a well-defined process in place for maintaining those rights. By doing the same efficiently, you will be able to safeguard the financial interests of your brand or business in the long run. Remember, the protection of IP assets is effective in its real sense when it is valid. Even if your business is the original patent or trademark holder, all the rights associated with the ownership shall expire if you fail to file for the patent or trademark renewals within the appropriate deadlines.
  3. If your business owns a Registered Trademark or patent, which, in turn, holds immense potential for significant financial gain, then it is beneficial to stay prepared for IP Enforcement. In the scenario where a new market entrant or competitor attempts to copy, use, sell, or distribute your IP assets without your legal consent, it will require a legal action to enforce your IP rights and protect the revenue and reputation of your business.
  4. While preparing for potential litigation, it is essential to know and understand the value of your IP assets. Without any doubt, having an in-depth understanding of your IP assets can provide multiple benefits to your business. Besides, benefitting from the financial outcome of the litigation, the same can also be efficiently used to support sales agreements, credit rating for loan applications, and the business valuation for issuing new stock market listings or shares.
  5. If we consider the expenses associated with maintaining an in-house litigation team, we may observe that for some businesses, it can be more cost-effective to take assistance from external litigation attorneys. However, in such a scenario as well, it is equally critical to preempt potential litigation for robust IP protection. All in all, for having an effective IP enforcement plan, you can always look forward to consulting a legal service provider. As per your everyday business activities, you may also decide to have a plan for offline and online IP enforcement.
  6. If you want your IP assets to remain valuable to your business in the long run, then you need to manage them both correctly and cost-effectively. For optimizing the costs of IP protection, the best method is through IP benchmarking. Irrespective of whether you carry out this process in-house or with an external consultant, the ultimate objective is to make sure that you are not overpaying the official costs or external counsel fees. However, there are many benefits associated with seeking assistance from an IP management specialist as well, like competitive intelligence, which can play an integral role in developing your winning IP protection strategy.
  7. For all the legal departments, the best way of protecting the IP assets lies in maintaining a comprehensive IP portfolio. By doing the same, they can evaluate every IP asset both individually and as a part of the overall IP portfolio. It will help them significantly in removing the IP assets that are no longer contributing to the business objectives. Furthermore, it will also result in more resources, time, and money to manage other IP assets in a better manner.