Your Intellectual Property (IP) rights can provide a number of significant benefits to your company.
The most obvious benefit is that they can prevent your competitors from copying your products or brands, but they can also be used to generate revenue through licensing or selling your IP rights to others.
It is important to have a complete strategy for your business when it comes to IP. Your comprehensive IP strategy should consider four main areas:
In our previous three posts we have discussed Generating IP, Obtaining IP rights and Avoiding IP rights; in this final post in the series we discuss ways in which Sandersons can help you with Leveraging your IP rights.
Passive Approach
What are your competitors doing?
If you are aware of your competitor’s products and brands, then you can be in a better position to assert your rights against those products and brands. Sandersons can monitor the products and brands of your competitors and can help you to identify potential infringements. We can also provide an assessment of the strength of your IP rights and advise on the likelihood of there being an infringement.
Collaborative Approach
Do you want to compromise?
Sometimes the most appropriate approach is to grant a licence or assignment of your IP rights to a potential infringer. Sandersons can assist with negotiating licences or assignments of IP rights, and we can be on hand to review licence and assignment agreements to ensure that they are suitable for your needs from an IP perspective. We can also work with solicitors on the wider commercial aspects of a deal.
Pro-active Approach
Is further action needed?
Ultimately it may be necessary to assert your IP rights against others. However, this must be done in the right way so as to be effective and so as to avoid you being accused of making groundless threats.
At Sandersons we can help you to assert your rights in the right way, for example by sending appropriately worded warning letters. We can also assist with providing arguments to present during court proceedings for infringement actions.
The above are just some of the ways in which Sandersons can help you to achieve your GOAL of a comprehensive IP strategy.
If you would like any advice regarding Leveraging IP or any of the other topics in this series of blogs, then do not hesitate to contact Sandersons to book a free 30-minute consultation. Please remember to mention this blog when booking your consultation.
