Overview
What came first the chicken or the egg…this same concept often seems to apply in intellectual property, what came first the Intellectual Property or the ownership of Intellectual Property. Intellectual Property is born of a spark, an idea that forms in someone’s mind. You never know when inspiration strikes, so it is important for your business to ensure you are prepared and have sorted ownership before the spark happens.
Inventor Management
We will help ensure you have all your ‘ducks’ in a row and that your company owns all the sparks before they arise, be it innovation, branding, content or designs. We will help you ensure you have an audit trail from the birth of the IP and throughout the life of your IP. We will conduct an audit of company contracts to review terms of business to confirm and reinforce company ownership management of IP; specify robust IP clauses to include in employment contracts and review company marketing collateral to ensure correct notices are in the public domain to protect future IP.
If your established and already own IP, we can help by reviewing your existing set up to ensure your ownership of innovation to protect your IP and the future growth of your business. We will identify any potential issues before they arise and help you put corrective action in place to avoid any future problems. We will conduct an audit of your existing records including employment contracts to ensure correct ownership is in place; where necessary we will suggest robust IP clauses to tighten up ownership as well as identifying when a confirmatory assignment is required.
Inventor Management
We will help ensure you have all your ‘ducks’ in a row and that your company owns all the sparks before they arise, be it innovation, branding, content or designs. We will help you ensure you have an audit trail from the birth of the IP and throughout the life of your IP. We will conduct an audit of company contracts to review terms of business to confirm and reinforce company ownership management of IP; specify robust IP clauses to include in employment contracts and review company marketing collateral to ensure correct notices are in the public domain to protect future IP.
If your established and already own IP, we can help by reviewing your existing set up to ensure your ownership of innovation to protect your IP and the future growth of your business. We will identify any potential issues before they arise and help you put corrective action in place to avoid any future problems. We will conduct an audit of your existing records including employment contracts to ensure correct ownership is in place; where necessary we will suggest robust IP clauses to tighten up ownership as well as identifying when a confirmatory assignment is required.
Watches
Once you have made the investment of your money and time to secure your IP rights, you want to ensure that you get the full benefit of those rights and that third parties do not use your IP without your consent and thus infringing your rights.
We suggest that once your rights are registered that you employ a watching service.
Trademarks
Patents
Theft Intervention
If the worst is to happen and an employee, partner or business owner has exited your business and has taken your IP with them, we may be able to help. Action may still be taken to enforce the restoration of your IP to your business. We won’t just look at the traditional means, such as suing for breach of contract, we will determine the facts around the exit in order to establish whether a theft of IP has occurred and if the theft was deliberate.
We will then prepare a plan of action for you to regain the rightful ownership of your IP and where this is not possible a plan to ensure you get compensation. When appropriate the plan made include consideration of criminal intervention and liaise with the relevant authorities on your behalf.