Five essential IP strategy tips for deep tech startups
Patent strategy evolution and pivot points - Q&A
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This is a single article from the Patent Strategist Volume 1. Download the whole thing here.
Developing an intellectual property strategy is an important task for any deep tech start-up. Knowing what innovation you’ve developed and how you can leverage it to help the business succeed is essential. Whether you are looking for investment, trying to increase market share, or ward off competition, your IP can help you gain a commercial advantage. An IP strategy is about determining how to improve the value of the business with the use of trademarks, copyrights, patents and trade secrets. These are my five tips for deep tech start-ups.
1. Know what you have
A start-up’s greatest asset is its people. You’ll spend a huge amount of money employing bright people who will generate IP. This is your intellectual capital and is an important part of developing a moat. For deep tech start-ups, with complex research-based technology, it can be difficult to know exactly what IP is generated. It’s therefore important to educate your team about the importance of IP and how it is identified. Regular project review meetings can be a good way of encouraging people to talk about their ideas. Ideally, requiring your engineers to write down any important inventions they develop helps keep things documented. Only then can you make proper decisions about how to protect the business.
2. Understand the best types of protection
Having an IP strategy is not all about filing patents. There are multiple forms of IP, and they all play a role in helping maximise protection and boost value. Deep tech companies often develop significant amounts of know-how around manufacturing processes. These processes may not be discernible from the end product and may be best kept confidential. Even features of products can be difficult to reverse engineer, especially when nanoscale features are involved. Trade secrets may be used to protect particularly valuable confidential information, where special steps are taken to restrict access to it. Beyond this, designs, copyright and trademarks all play a role in marking out your intellectual capital.
3. Be dynamic
Some deep tech companies make the mistake of believing their early, foundational IP is the most important. While foundational IP can be of immense value, in many cases it is later shown to have weaknesses, or the business pivots away from those initial innovations. As your company develops, so will the product, customers, and, importantly, the problems you need to address. This is often where the most valuable IP is generated. Be dynamic and regularly come back to your IP strategy to make sure you are capturing the real value. If you have a great piece of science and if there is a market for a product, great IP will undoubtedly follow.
4. Write it down
Whatever your IP strategy, write it down and communicate it to your colleagues. Instilling a culture of IP awareness is important to make sure that IP generation is a democratic process. It’s often your engineers at the coal face of R&D and product development who will develop the real value, so it’s important they know your plan.
5. Speak to your investors
What do the people investing in your business want? While your investors shouldn’t write your IP strategy, they will have views on its importance relative to other factors, such as the team and market fit. Some deep tech investors will place a great deal of importance on having solid IP, so making sure that your IP strategy supports investment decisions will be key.