October 6, 2020
If you have a good understanding of what IP rights exist in your business, you can make sure that they are protected, cannot be used without your permission and can be commercialised in order to maximise your business revenue and growth.
Tegen Quinn outlines the benefits of an IP Audit and the simple steps to arrange one for your business.
The Intellectual Property team at Darwin Gray work closely with many clients who have benefitted from an IP Audit. The audit will provide your business with legal advice on how to identify and protect its existing IP assets. It can help you to:
identify the IP in your business
protect your IP
assess potential threats to your IP by third parties, including customers, suppliers and also employees
explore greater commercial exploitation of your IP
help your business to grow
make your business more attractive to investors.
Get in touch to find out how we can assist with arranging your IP audit: email tquinn@darwingray.com or contact our Intellectual Property team.
Each audit we undertake is tailored to the needs of your business and will involve an in-depth review of all the intellectual property rights associated with your business. This will involve us having a discussion with you about your business and how it operates, reviewing any existing identified intellectual property and reviewing your contracts with employees, contractors, suppliers and other third parties as appropriate to identify the impact they may have on your ownership of the IP.
We then prepare a written report with a full breakdown of everything that we have identified, including additional intellectual property rights that we have identified, protection and recommendations for future commercialisation.
We have conducted a significant number of government funded audits for a wide range of businesses and sizes, whether you are a start-up or a larger business looking to expand, maximise your revenue or prepare for a future exit.
In our experience, every business could benefit from an IP Audit. For example, a tech company will need to know what patent rights it has or can potentially obtain, whether it has full ownership of the IP rights in any software (including the name) it has created so that it can potentially be licensed or commercialised in another way.
For goods and services business, you may want to know about the rights in your name and website. Perhaps you have built up substantial goodwill in your business and/or product name and want to protect that.
Even professional services firms could benefit from an IP Audit. They might also want to know about the rights in their name and their website, such as who owns the domain name and any photographs.
Businesses do need to meet eligibility criteria and will need to submit an application to the Welsh Government. Get in touch with us so that we can introduce you to the Welsh Government representative and assist with your application: email tquinn@darwingray.com or contact our Intellectual Property team.
If you do not want to engage with the part-funded application process then we can offer a privately funded option. The privately funded option offers an opportunity to tailor the IP Audit to your specific needs and the cost would be dependent on the scope of work to be carried out.
