One technology company came to us after eight years, convinced they owned a single trademark and nothing else. A short structured conversation surfaced eleven distinct assets: several potential patents, a software copyright generating licence income that was going unprotected, two trade secrets with no confidentiality measures around them, and design elements competitors were already copying. Most businesses generate intellectual property as a byproduct of operating, and most never stop to identify it.
Patents cover inventions, technical solutions and processes that work in a new way. Trademarks cover names, logos, slogans and other signs that distinguish your products. Registered designs protect the visual appearance of products. Copyright arises automatically in software, manuals, marketing materials, photographs and databases. Trade secrets protect recipes, customer lists, algorithms and processes, but only if you take reasonable steps to keep them confidential. And data assets, including databases and curated datasets, can be protected under the EU database right. Run your business through these six and the gaps become obvious.
Identifying IP is not a one-off exercise. Your product range is the natural starting point: map each product to its protection and you can see where coverage is missing. When the range changes, the IP implications change with it. Beyond products, look at what you create (research outputs, software releases) and what you contract (employment and freelancer agreements), because every agreement shapes what you actually own.
This is the starting point for our IP portfolio intelligence work and feeds into patents and trademarks. It connects to the fiscal upside in grants and tax incentives for IP and, for code, to protecting software IP. Surfacing and documenting hidden IP is supported by our innovation and IP identification technology.
If you develop products, create processes, design visual identities, write software or build training material, you are almost certainly generating IP. Audit the six categories: patents, trademarks, designs, copyright, trade secrets and data.
Treat it as continuous rather than periodic. Reviewing IP whenever your product range or contracts change catches gaps while they are still cheap to close.
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