Definition:

IP Strategy - (a/k/a IPR Strategy) The central playbook around intellectual property and how it supports the business.

As a business faced with a budget, a worldwide (and changing) landscape of potential IP protection, and a dozen different approaches to protection of intangibles, what do you do? Facing this situation without an IP strategy is a bit like trying to play chess against Deep Blue without even knowing the rules of the game.

An IP strategy is the business gameplan – the well that gets revisited each time the business thinking needs refreshing. At its core and IP strategy doesn't have to be complicated: In fact, ideally it should just be one to three sentences. It pulls together all the different avenues of IP protection and matches it to your commercial strategy. Sometimes, especially for licensing-based businesses, a business's IP and commercial strategy can be the exact same document.

A simple IP strategy could be:

• Lock out competitors from the next generation of product;
• Avoid and design around an aggressive competitor; or
• Maintain market lead through secrecy.

Having a good IP strategy will help you decide such areas as:

• What kind of IP protection to pursue and where (and even when) to pursue it.
• How to handle litigation risks from your competitors and IP licensing companies such as Non-Practising Entities (NPEs).
• What existing company policies you should change to support your IP (and your business).
• How to protect your business from the ground up.

The IP strategy as a rule gives guidance to commercial decisions and helps identify areas of risk and ways to build more business.  It is a summary statement at one level, but the building of the strategy looks at all available options and comparable companies before choosing the right purpose for your company. ipVA then puts the components of the IP Strategy into a project plan and roadmap to allow progress against the plan to be monitored. In short the deliverables are a purpose statement and the execution plan, which we then seek to fix as the responsibility of one or more key people in your team to manage and report against.

Please click through to our IP Strategy example from the IP Handbook to see how making one decision about protection can change how the business operates.

ipVA provides IP strategy services and products that help businesses and investors better understand and manage IP. For more, see the rest of our site or get in contact.