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The project of establishing and adopting an enterprise-wide IP strategy is a necessarily long and intricate one. Comprehensive alignment of your overall business strategy with your IP objectives may feel daunting. There are, however, several relatively simple yet deeply effective steps you can take to establish IP as a priority within your company’s culture.

There are many types of words and symbols that the USPTO is obliged to exclude from registration as trademarks, including those that are merely descriptive of the applicant’s goods and/or services and those that otherwise simply fail to indicate to consumers that the goods or services identified by the mark are associated with a particular source. Understood that way, it would seem audacious for anyone attempt to register the single most common word in the English language for their own exclusive use in connection with any specific product or service.

The next step in your development as an IP-aligned organization is to begin fostering an enterprise-wide culture of IP awareness such that everyone within your company’s innovation ecosystem possesses a mindset rooted in the understanding of the value and importance of your intangible assets, and is armed with the tools and incentives they need to effectively carry out their roles in your IP strategy.

“Aligning your business strategy with your IP objectives in order to maximize enterprise value and garner a competitive edge begins with putting in place the infrastructure to understand your company’s dynamic IP position. Maintaining an evolving knowledge of what assets you hold, the IP-related clauses that pertain to them, and what gaps you may have to address in your IP is the first step toward universal and prevailing IP awareness throughout your organization.

These systems and practices will help you think about your IP as actual monetized assets, not just perfunctory insurance. They will encourage you to account for IP as a major component of your larger business goals, helping your enterprise strategically as it grows.”

“The Dilworth IP team is growing! We are excited to announce that Michael K. Kinney of MKG, LLC has decided to join his practice to Dilworth IP as Partner. Mike will be joined by Robert D. Crawford, also of MKG, as Senior Associate. Together, they bring decades of experience serving their clients in a diversity of intellectual property matters, helping companies meet their IP goals across the innovation business spectrum in industries ranging from semiconductor manufacturing to energy, medical, and defense.”

“Threats to your valuable IP and other intangible assets are commensurate to a direct threat to your company’s overall value and viability. In order to best protect these assets, it is more important now than it has ever been for innovation companies to fully align their IP strategy with their overall business strategy.”

The conditions for patent eligibility under Section 101, especially for process inventions involving artificial intelligence and machine learning, can be onerous at times. This handy visual guide can help inventors and patent attorneys sort out some of the strategies to get around potential 101 rejections when drafting claims directed to “abstract ideas.”

“For the fourth time in recent years, Michael Dilworth has been recognized by IAM among the top intellectual property professionals worldwide.

The IAM 1000 list of the world’s leading patent professionals is the industry’s foremost directory of the world’s top attorneys and firms working in the intellectual property field.”

Understanding the value of your IP more generally is a fundamental factor in making decisions around how to manage your portfolio. Patents and trademarks, for example, require regular investment in the form of annuities or fees to maintain your ownership rights. If a particular asset or group of assets aren’t contributing to the value of your company, then you need to decide whether or not to pay the money to maintain your proprietary rights. If you do decide to maintain your IP, perhaps you’ve assessed that the value of those assets lies in your ability to license or sell them. Having a clear framework for these decisions and opportunities can not only save money in paying fees but provide new revenue opportunities.”

In summary, ineffective communication between inventors and attorneys can be a recipe for weak patents and lost inventions. An industry-specific invention disclosure form (IDF) with narrowly tailored sections and precise prompts can organize and focus an inventor’s disclosure, making it easier for the inventor to write and the attorney to understand. Ultimately, such a well-crafted IDF can save time and resources and result in higher quality and quantity of patents from R&D activities.