How can you prioritize IP protection for new product innovations?

It is important to consult with someone who actually knows what each of these forms of intellectual property is and can help you identify them. They are all very different, and each has a different ownership, protection, and monetization protocol and if you screw that up at the beginning, it’s very difficult to undo it later.

Prioritizing IP Protection for New Product Innovations: Conduct thorough patent searches to ensure your innovation is unique. File for patents to protect your innovations legally. Keep developmental processes confidential. Use non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with all stakeholders involved. Regularly review and update your IP protection strategy.

Work with an experienced IP professional to understand what IP asset types can be accretive to your company's strategy. Obtaining assets of a given type for its own sake can be a waste of resources, while focusing those resources on IP assets that support business goals can be a multiplier.

An initial audit of what IP assets exist is necessary. Next get a solid understanding of company, business unit, and product strategies and vision. This will provide the basis to map those assets to real strategic value to the business, or show that assets may need to be repurposed, value-reimagined, or pruned.

Be cognizant that any IP strategy must be in service to a business strategy or vision of the company, a business unit, or product. The IP strategy should be directly mappable to business strategy/vision, otherwise it may be seen as abstract, unrelated to the business, or worse, self-serving to the IP function.

The purpose of IP is to grow your company's competitive moat. While revenue generation from IP assets via enforcement and licensing is attractive, most organizations are better served utilizing their resources where their expertise and passion shines -creating on great customer outcomes. In this context IP assets let the competitive landscape understand that your organization is serious about creating and protecting its competitive advantage as reflected in IP assets causing competitors to steer clear of your IP assets and innovate their own way. IP assets create options for mitigating competitor encroachment from enforcement and licensing, to motivating accretive partnerships that grow market opportunity.

The last step should actually be to monetize your IP assets, through a licensing program or an assertion strategy or an exit of your company. The point of an IP portfolio is to develop a lawful monopoly that will add value to your company whether you plan to sell it or be a CEO for the next 50 years.