Why patent, you ask? To make profit from your invention! In order to succeed in business, you must protect and manage your innovation. Remember – the wolves are always at the door, just waiting to pounce on your ideas. Patents are part of an offensive and defensive strategy. Intellectual property law keeps your competitors from copying, using, selling or importing your idea. Patents protect your trademark against counterfeiting and unauthorized use.

If your organization has a portfolio of intellectual property, it is necessary to hire an IP attorney that will protect, enforce and handle valuation of your intellectual assets. It is time and money well spent, as IP attorneys manage patents as well as a comprehensive list of intellectual property concerns including trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, unfair competition, false advertising, computer law, technology licensing and related litigation.

To choose the right IP firm for your organization, look for an attorney who has experience in your product or service arena. Find out if they have a degree in engineering or expertise working in your industry. Does the law firm specialize in any particular business segment, such as entertainment, machinery or financial products? Do they work with small, midsized or large companies? These are all questions you should address when selecting the best fit IP firm.

Tips:

-Make sure you patent and protect surrounding inventions to eliminate alternatives to copy what you try to do or deliver. When you develop a technology you normally will come across additional options and surrounding IP, protect these as a defensive strategy

-Make sure you stay current with the changing Patent laws, including the possible upcoming change to “first to file” vs invent and having a year to file.

-According to Futurist David Houle we are entering the “IP age”. Make sure you are part of it

-Make IP as much a corporate governance issue at the Board level as any other strategic elements that is covered and watched over

-Make sure you cash in on your IP Portfolio

Here are some resources for information on patents:

-          U.S. Patent and Trademark Office www.uspto.gov

-          Patents.com www.Patents.com

-          Google Patents www.google.com/patents

-          Patently Obvious: Chapter 6 in “Robert’s Rules of Innovation”

Remember, in high-stakes industries, your competitors are always looking for a way to get a leg-up. With increasingly advanced technology, it is easier than ever to unravel ideas and inventions through reverse engineering. The only way to truly protect your intellectual property is by patenting your IP portfolio. As they say, “the name of the game is the claim.” Without patenting, you will not share in the profits of your competitors. Be sure to educate your employees on the importance of protecting your company’s IP rights and create value for all the stakeholders.

What’s in your IP cupboard?

Progressive companies create innovation teams. They invest countless man-hours, dollars and other resources in investigating and pursuing innovation. Yet they often leave their intellectual property untouched, thereby failing to translate patents and other IP into revenue opportunities.

American industry and academia hold some two million current patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Yet, the vast majority remain idle. In a tight economy – and even in the best of times, failure to exploit existing patents for profit means more than money’s being left on the table. New opportunities – and the possibilities they spawn in kind – are lost.

At a recent Intellectual Property Owners meeting in Atlanta, the importance of corporate innovation and IP governance were tied directly to the potential for value creation. The consensus was that this untapped resource represents a significant lost potential value and income generation.

The combined roles of innovation governance and IP management cannot be over-emphasized. While the roles of corporate IP governance, supervision and even leadership are critical, companies that have respectable IP portfolios must install an IP Officer on the innovation teams or new product development board. The intention would be for the IP Officer or team to…

• Manage the IP portfolio, keeping a keen eye on that place where consumer or market trends and the portfolio intersect.
• Present opportunities to the innovation or NPD teams. And
• Work with those teams to craft approaches to maximize potential monetization.

Even small businesses with no IP portfolio can maximize IP potential. For example, IP Teams can search IP auctions or licensing opportunities to see how patents available match with the company’s goals or vision. For example, some 40% of the two million patents held are “common patents” for such generic products as components or parts for automobiles and software elements for cell phones. The patent owners often work out licensing agreements to put the patent into use. It can be cumbersome, costly and time consuming to work out one on one deals. But it often can serve the buyer’s near- and long-term needs.

One such marketplace about to take off , IPX International seeks to work with corporate IP owners and market leaders to maximize intellectual asset management on an open market exchange. “Establishing a fair and reasonable price for IP, the Exchange provides companies with an economical opportunity to be both a corporate good citizen and an innovative leader.”

In the end, these seized opportunities can increase shareholder value.

At the IPO conference and around Innovation war rooms across the business landscape, smart organizations are realizing that IP exploitation is an enabler. It empowers companies to transform often idle holdings into a significant source of income generation and the mindset for continued innovative thinking.

Managing that place where innovation and the IP portfolio meet is not a one-off event. This process must be a habit, an ever-present line-item on the Innovation / NPD To-Do List. Only when it is emphasized and embraced internally will it ensure the contents of the cupboard become fuel for the bottom line.

By Robert Brands with Jeff Zbar

Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com, and the author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation“: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival, with Martin Kleinman, published Spring, 2010 by Wiley.

In 1980, the Coca-Cola Company was struggling, and its market share was underperforming compared to its competitors. So at a worldwide management conference in 1981, CEO Roberto Críspulo Goizueta decided to refocus the entire organization on putting value creation first.

The company refined its marketing investment, expanded into new markets, and acquired new bottling companies and the intellectual property and patents they held. The company created new products, including Diet Coke. It embraced a global vision; to wit, some market researchers say the company became the world’s best-known brand.

This transformation of company and IP doubled the company’s market share in 15 years, and Goizueta reportedly created more shareholder wealth than any other CEO in U.S. history.

Much has been written about innovation – the imperatives that drive the process and the results borne from the exercise. The purpose of innovation ostensibly is value creation that translates to enhanced stakeholder value. Process-driven organizational innovation drives value creation that transforms ideas into vital intellectual property, IP into revenues, and revenues into increased stakeholder value.

In any for- and not-for-profit organization, “value creation” can be translated in many ways. It is

• Improved, silo-busting, team-building collaboration
• Amassed IP and new product development, which gives the company or organization a competitive edge on the market or competition
• Strengthened fiscal performance, which lures additional investment

This is why organizations invest the time, energy, creativity, research, planning, refining, modeling and retesting that it hopes will pay off in terms of improved process, better teamwork, a new business model, a refined brand – and black-ink results. These are assets that add value to the company, which is why it is absolutely crucial to protect these ideas.

Yet Intellectual Property will drive the future. As we move past the Industrial Age and the Age of Technology, the future era will focus on process that drives IP – and the real value it delivers. As much as teams and share, it is imperative to build and protect IP through the use of patents. Patents protect and define the innovation so they are the key step to commercialization and enhancing value.

It is essential for every company to keep a patented Intellectual Property portfolio. The IP portfolio of Airspray doubled in value because of the patented technology that turned liquid hand soap into foam. Airspray realized – and its fiscal results proved – that the regular and persistent renewing, refreshing and updating of patents was well worth the cost.

To this day, IP remains arguably the most powerful driver in innovation’s Value Creation.