MANAGEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY :

In an increasingly knowledge-driven economy, Intellectual Property (IP) is an important key consideration in day-to-day business decisions. New products, brands and creative designs appear almost daily on the market and are the result of continuous human innovation and creativity. Generally, the small and medium companies in India either do not understand the value of their intellectual property assets or are not aware of the intellectual property system or the protection it can provide for their inventions, brands, and designs. As the Intellectual Property forms an important part of companies’ assets, its adequate protection is crucial in deterring potential infringement and in turning ideas into business assets with a real market value. In fact, the Intellectual Property system enables companies to profit from their innovative capacity and creativity and enhance their competitiveness.

Companies that dedicate time and resources for protecting their intellectual property can increase their competitiveness in a number of areas, as it prevents competitors from copying or closely imitating a company’s products or services; avoids wasteful investment in research and development (R&D) and marketing; creating a corporate identity through a trademark and branding strategy; negotiating licensing, franchising or other Intellectual Property based contractual agreements; increasing the market value of the company; acquiring venture capital and enhancing access to finance; obtaining access to new markets and most important a careful search for conflicting existing Intellectual Property rights, and the examination of application by offices can help an enterprise to avoid conflicts and unnecessary litigation.

Strategies for Effective IPR Management: The effective management of intellectual property assets requires implementation of a comprehensive asset management plan. In this process, one of the most important step is to review the existing intellectual property assets, so as to identify and locate the company’s key intellectual property assets such as patents, patentable subject matter, copyrights, trade marks, designs, trade secrets, domain names, mask works, inventions, works of authorship, hardware and devices, depending upon the nature of business. Once the intellectual property assets are identified, it becomes important to determine nature and scope of the company’s rights in intellectual property assets, which may range from outright ownership to a license- including contingent rights in intellectual property to be developed in future.

Capitalizing on intellectual property assets so identified require a most constructive approach keeping in view, among others, type of intellectual property assets, the type of business claiming ownership of intellectual property assets, long term and short term goals of the business organization including intended/possible use of intellectual property assets.

Intellectual Property – Risk Management: The ownership and control of intellectual property also attract certain risks and this requires strategies and plans to mitigate those risks. The most important among others being the infringement of rights in intellectual property, the risk management strategy should take into consideration the situations where company’s own Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) may infringe the IPRs of a third party; the company has a valid claim of infringement against a third party. It is also important to analyse the scope of any grant of rights in intellectual property assets, which may include licenses, distribution agreements, reseller arrangements and any other agreement or transaction involving transfer of IPRs that may impact its value.

One of the most important IPR risk management techniques, particularly in respect of trade secrets, is to put in place a system requiring all new employees and consultants to execute a confidentiality agreement. It indeed allows company to establish ownership in IPRs developed by the employees during their employment and also help company to effectively contest infringement in case employee leaves the organization and discloses the same to new employer.

In nutshell, effective management of Intellectual Property enables companies to use their intellectual property to improve their competitiveness and strategic advantage. Acquiring Intellectual Property protection no doubt is crucial but its effective management provides much more than just protection to an enterprise’s inventions, trademarks, designs, copyright or other allied rights.

Effective intellectual property management requires a company to commercialize its inventions and effectively monitor and enforce its intellectual property rights. Indeed, a company’s portfolio of Intellectual Property must be viewed as a collection of key assets that add significant value to the enterprise. Thus, effective management of intellectual property may be seen as critical business strategy to maintain sustainable corporate growth and maximisation of shareholder value resulting into the economic growth.