More than two-thirds of a company’s asset value is represented by Intellectual Property (IP). As a result, companies often invest a lot of human and financial resources in an IP Asset Management (IPAM) system or process. Regardless of how sophisticated or basic the system, though, the effort to manage an IP Portfolio can be significant.
It is important to consider the fact that an IPAM is essentially a document management system. Such systems are very good at helping people implement workflows and processes. Depending on how sophisticated the system is it can notify the maintenance requirements, and help understand the existing IP investments broken down by classification and suggest who should do what next.
An IPAM can be implemented as a very sophisticated workflow and reporting tool-but what they can’t do is provide analytic data about the portfolio in the context of other companies and markets.
These systems range in complexity and sophistication from basic spreadsheets to expensive, enterprise-level patent software applications. Consider, for example, something as basic such as how to make the decision of whether to maintain a patent that is up for renewal. A sophisticated IPAM can send a renewal notification, but it can’t help to decide whether it’s a good idea to renew the patent.
For that reason many companies have a blanket business policy of maintaining all patents until they permanently expire-yet most companies have patents that are not asserted, are not commercialized and are not licensed. For a licensing professional, it is important to discover, assess and secure the best intellectual property avenues for maximizing business profits and return on investment through secure IP Licensing. In other words, the probability is very high that not all of the patents have significant business value, and yet they are often maintained to the tune of about $100,000 over their lifetime.
The best bet is to have a solid IPAM system and integrate it with an IP business analytics tool that can enable wise decision making. In the case of portfolio maintenance the integration of an IPAM system with a business analytics tool can be a tremendous advantage.
The licensing strategy can also be significantly more effective with an integrated management system. To enable this enhancement, the analytics tool should have collaboration features that allow your team to use it as a centralized repository. It’s not unusual for companies to have large research teams comprising scores of people and without a way to pull all the research in a single place, the research effort can often grind to a halt. Also, patent search can involve a myriad of activities intended to support the development and management of a company’s IP portfolio.
Once the licensing agreement is consummated by contract, IPAM can be used to maintain and track the agreement and any renewal schedules the contract covers. If the contract contains termination clauses, the analytics tool can enable you to make determinations about when or whether you should terminate the contract based on the terms of the agreement and changing market conditions.
It’s not really the case that an IP analytics business tool like Innography can take the place of an IPAM-it can’t. You will still need a way to track agreements, inventory, and to develop and execute workflows driven by a good intellectual property management system.
What is true, though, is that an IP business analytics tool can complement the management system, so that you can make sound decisions so as to tackle the discipline of holistically managing your portfolios.
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