IP Audit to Enhance Intellectual Capital

Many organisations do not know what intellectual property or IP assets they own. An intellectual property audit (or IP audit) can fix that. IP assets include both legal IP (typical IP) and competitive IP (such as knowledge and know-how).

The tangible assets (like buildings, vehicles, or stock) that an organisation owns are usually known and therefore well managed. But the intangible IP assets are often neglected and often an organisation does not know what it owns. In today’s knowledge economy where many organisations have far more intangible assets than tangible assets and the intangible assets are often much more valuable then the tangible assets, this is a big problem.

If you don’t know it exists you cannot exploit it to create value for shareholders. You also cannot protect it.

Why Organisations don’t know what their Intangible Assets are

There are many reasons why an organisation might not know about all of their intangible assets:

• It could be that the organisation has acquired a new business recently – the due diligence that should have taken place before acquiring it may not have been conducted adequately.
• The organisation may have grown fast and there simply wasn’t time to document and protect the IP generated.
• Sometimes the intangible assets exist only within the head of a key individual and the knowledge or know-how has not yet been documented.

Find, document, protect and exploit your Intellectual Property

So, what should an organisation be doing? Conducting an IP audit, assessment or review (or intangible asset audit) is the best method to find out what intangible assets are owned, document them, and work out how to protect them.

Actions you can take:

• Find out why IP Audits are important, how they should be done, and the critical success factors.
• Save time by asking us to do an IP Audit for you.
• Fast track your IP audit by asking us to provide you with various tools (like a matrix and templates).
• Empower yourself by asking us to train you on how to conduct the necessary interviews with relevant people in your organisation.