I believe all intellectual property rights usage should be seen as a strategic function of a company as intellectual property rights (IPRs) are vital, strategic assets for any business and should be treated accordingly. In modern economies a company that is not fully aware of its IP potentials and is not leveraging them properly will always remain in disadvantage to its competitors who are fully using theirs. This means that the IPR portfolio creation, maintenance and management should not be left to the legal departments or other mid-management levels only. So long as the top leadership of a company or other entity using the IPRs in its business is not taking the ultimate responsibility and disposes with full information on the intellectual property (intangible) resources and assets, a company cannot compete successfully on a modern global market. I am not talking about immediately introducing a CIPO (chief intellectual property officers), but that remains a possibility and if a CIPO is not introduced as a management position, his or her role should be assigned to other top management officers.

Consequently, I decided to structure a service that is not primarily legal in its nature as it is directed to improving the market behavior of a company and facilitate its usage of IPRs to its competitive advantage. We now regularly work on different levels with various company departments in creating the seamless creation and usage of the IPRs avoiding the legal emphasis of the activity. In effect we are commoditizing the legal aspect of the IP services and are striving to add value on top of it so that a company could create its future smoothly using its IP potentials and assets. The added value lays in a more organic usage of the IP as opposed to the overly legal, technical usage. By using the ethical, responsible tools a company will be able to empower itself to gain significant market advantage over its competitors who remain on the old, technicalities leaden level. In addition we are trying to instill the frictionless approach to dispute resolution by using the early dispute resolution techniques and mediation if a dispute is already underway.

The fact that the legal intellectual property services are getting ever more widely available contributes to their commoditization, as more and more law students get IP training. As more and more firms add IP services, it in effect stops being a specialization as most providers will offer such a service. Accordingly, it is essential that the top IP experts start adding value to their clients businesses, and this is exactly how I decided to structure the offer of my team.

Over the years I have gained significant experience in evaluating, assessing the current practices and recommending the business policies to the businesses of various sizes, from the small local companies to the multinational companies. I think that the best way to help any company in this sense is to embed our team in its business to reorganize, recommend best practices and bring the practical IPR knowledge to the different levels of a company. In this way it is an optimal help to start using the top-notch practices in creating and managing the IPR portfolio and compete better in doing its business in a range of industries. Of course, this could be done in a traditional way, by working from the outside with the internal resources in a team.

More to follow. Let me know what do you think?