Advisory Services
ipVA acts for both insolvency practitioners and on the buy side of insolvency events. We also act for Boards of Directors of companies looking for advice on options pre insolvency.
As an insolvency practitioner do you really understand the quality and value of the IP assets being disposed of as part of a sale before or after an insolvency event?
What is the risk that a creditor will question the value realised unless the IP value question is asked and answered?
There are sufficient examples to demonstrate that IP can realise significant value in insolvency. Whether sold with the core business and assets or sold separately, ipVA devises strategies to extract maximum value from these assets.
As a buyer of a business in insolvency, are you acquiring all of the IP that you need?
ipVA’s IP Audit will identify all categories of IP that exist in a business, creating an identified inventory that can be added to any transfer documents.
What IP issues should be considered when contemplating insolvency options?
It is fair to assume that if a company goes into insolvency the vast majority of its IP value will disappear from that moment. Considering IP holistically, the most valuable IP will often not be patents but the know how of your employees, your trade secrets, contract-based IP, and customer contracts.
Important employees will leave and knowledge will disappear with them. Often the IP legacy they leave behind (a few patents, trade marks and, any know how that happens to be recorded in manuals or documentation) will be of little value without the humans with which to operate it.
We have worked with companies facing insolvency and have successfully argued for the board and to the insolvency practitioner that the business must be kept out of insolvency if possible if the IP value is to be retained.
In a specific instance of our involvement, the returns to creditors were at least 100 times higher than would have been generated had the company gone into insolvency