Intellectual Property Protection and Commercialisation
Intellectual property protection and commercialisation are corner stones of our work for clients. We define and evaluate your IP and position in business, embed appropriate legal protection, and only then produce recommendations and documentation.
Top questions answered
What's the first best step to protect company intellectual property?
The first step is to contact a lawyer who can identify and categorise your IP and develop a strategy for it. Plan before you implement or register!
- Every organisation has a name, few have a brand strategy integrating trade mark registrations with trading, company and domain names and social media handles.
- All have confidential information, few define and manage it.
- Many have copyrights but no written licences or assignments.
- A few invest in patents seeking profit, a small percentage get there.
Once IP is identified what’s needed is a clear IP strategy and associated business decisions. We’ve done this for several hundreds of clients.
What clauses should an IP licence include?
There’s no short answer. Call for us to select and email a suitable and very informative complementary custom questionnaire. There’s many options and alternatives for licences, including those below.
• You need provisions or attachments to identify the IP.
• The IP licence may need a duration, territory, use rights, definition of the scope of exclusivity, assignment of adaptations and quality and standards compliance.
• Depending on the situation there’ll also be security provisions such as warranties, restraints of trade, indemnities, liability limitations and exclusions, powers of attorney, and a termination clause.
It’s best to call us for a free questionnaire.
How can I increase the value of my company's IP assets?
Identify the current and future company IP. Maintain an up-to-date IP register, documentation and records. Grow followers, users and customers for the IP. Work with collaborators to leverage the IP towards new audiences and markets. Centrally manage IP, ensuring employees and contractors assign IP in any work creation.
What laws protect inventions?
Every invention needs to be assessed to determine what laws might provide monopoly ownership and control. Where there is a patentable invention there’s also confidential information. When that’s written there’s also usually some copyright rights. Every invention needs a name, select a legally protectable one will provide support under trade mark law and related name protection laws. As for control over the invention, there’s a host of laws depending on the nature of the entity or entities with legal interests in the invention.
What financial models do IP owners use to make money?
Here’s a short list of 10.
1. Crowdfunding
2. Licensing (it’s akin to rental)
3. Pay per view
4. Sale
5. Subscriptions
6. Profit sharing
7. Freemium
8. In app sales
9. Free distribution supported by advertising
10. Free distribution of content supported by paid performances (eg as used by music composer-performers)
What first IP job should a start-up attend to?
In most cases, order a professional name and trade mark availability search for the proposed start-up brand. If the ambition is international then the availability search should be internationally. Getting an available domain is hard enough. Use experienced search professionals to implement a name strategy and seek to adopt a brand which can be a registered trade mark, in target countries, and for a broad range of products or services. It’s helpful to also adopt consistent social media handles.
Frankly, all that that describes our expertise, Tel 1300 31 42 82 for a costed proposal.
Commercialisation work comes after creation work. Right?
Wrong. The world is awash with apps, software, music, books and websites that nobody uses. It’s a common error to postpone thinking on business models, ecommerce, monetisation and commercialisation. Certainly having real IP to begin with is critical. How to gain from it should usually be progressed in parallel.
We’ll provide a fixed price after we conduct an initial review of your business structure and IP assets, and existing legal documents.
The fees or fee range for common IP documents are listed below.
Examples:
• Confidentiality agreement (aka NDA) with a confidentiality guide: $660
• IP assignment: $880
• Licence from: $880 to $1,650
• IP register: $660 to $990
• Privacy policy: $660
All figures indicated above are inclusive of GST.
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Any existing IP agreement and the following:
Trade mark: A list of all your business’s trade marks, business and company names, logos, brands and domain names
Copyright: Examples of copyright works your business uses or intends to use (eg website text and images)
Patent: Short description of any patent (application and registration)
Confidential information: Any confidentiality agreement
Designs: Image of your design and description of its use