Capturing the Intangible
As the technology change curve becomes steeper, ever increasing numbers of entrepreneurs will focus on developing innovative processes, services and products to both create and drive growth on a global basis. Capturing and protecting intellectual property (IP) is a major key to success; however, entrepreneurs all too often fail to adequately protect the results of their creativity.
Protecting your IP basically provides you with a type of market monopoly to make, sell, use, import, export and license your property.
Protecting Value
How valuable is protecting your IP? If your IP has value in the marketplace, then the monopoly IP protection provides will have a similar value times the length of the monopoly.
Intellectual property may be protected in a number of ways, depending on its nature. Knowledge-based competitive advantages like trade secrets are best protected by documents such as confidentiality agreements and employee contracts. Patent and design registrations can only be gotten fro products that are not in the public domain, so confidentiality agreements are essential to obtain.
If the advantage of your product is its function, the best way to protect it is with a patent. Patents can also protect concepts, including software and business plans.
If the look of the product is your advantage, you should get a design registration that protects shapes and patterns.
Brands, including words, shapes, sounds, logos and colors, can be protected with a trademark.
Some examples of the above include: secret ingredients like spices and herbs that would be covered under a trade secret; a special embossing on a surface would be covered by a design registration; the shape of a product, if unique and distinctive, could be protected by a trademark; or a distilling process for a beverage could be covered by a patent.
Mining Your IP
IBM, long an international leader in patent creation, reviews its unused patents and licenses them to other companies, including competitors, adding $1 billion to their bottom line. Dell is another good example. It has patents around its built-to-order process and has cross-licensed its patents to IBM in a $16 billion deal. IBM gained access to Dell’s patented business processes and Dell gained access to IBM’s patented integrated circuits.
Your protected IP can also be marketed to a complementary market or an entirely different industry that might benefit from applying your process to a completely different product or service.
Before you begin, develop an IP strategy based on your long-term objectives. Consider your competitive advantages, business strategies, existing IP, third-party relationships, internal resources and exit strategies.
Opportunity to both create and protect IP has never been greater. The time to start is today.
Daniel Burrus, one of the world's leading technology forecasters, business strategists, and author of six books
Copyright 2005 Author retains copyright. All Rights Reserved.
