How to Label: IP Management

There is no “right way” to use the intellectual property but there are efficient ways to utilize intellectual property to produce better business results. Intellectual property assets strategy can assist and guide  daily business decisions and help to generate sound business results. Intellectual property is the results of innovation and a properly designed intellectual property strategy should align with the overall business strategy and innovation strategy of the company. More than often, companies’ intellectual property strategies are focused on obtaining and protecting the patents and licensing patents for revenues. However, an intellectual property strategy should do more that that. An intellectual property strategy provides the framework for acquiring, protecting, leveraging and managing intellectual property. [1] For example, Apple strategically manages its intellectual property to maintain its leading position in the smartphone business.

In order to better manage intellectual property, companies should treat  their IP as business units. In many companies, IP is either managed by a business unit or by a legal department which usually depends on the overall business strategies of the company. We hereby will discuss a few aspects about label IP that managers should  look at when managing their IP.

Risk -- is an inherent component of any business. From the perspective intellectual property management, managers should be able to asses and quantity the risk of different IP. Thus, when labeling the intellectual property from an IP management perspective, managers should not only understand different types of IP, but should also be able to asses and quantity the risks of different IP. For example, a movie director wants to shoot a few plots similar to another movie, the risk of infringement will be particular high if this movie is going to distribute nationally.

IP Budget—everything has to deal with budget, especially in the case of intellectual property management. Budget in many situations serves as a cost control mechanism and help managers to pick and choose different assets to protect and use to generate future revenue.

Investment – investment is closely connected with IP budget. It sets the budget for IP management and development. IP managers should decide the desire level of investment for planning and development of IP. As discussed earlier, investment decision should align with the overall business strategies of the company or the industry. Pharmaceutical companies usually invest heavily to develop and protect its intellectual property.

[1] Christopher Arena, Eduardo Carreras. "The Business of Intellectual Property". Oxford University Press. 2008.