If You Don’t Know What You Have, How Can You Make Money with It?

Your business has an inventory of your raw materials, finished products and stock on hand. What about your intangible assets?

Unlike hard/tangible assets, such as machinery and equipment, which depreciate over time, your intellectual assets appreciate over time as you invest more into their development. It’s not just patents, trademarks and copyrights. Your IP assets go well beyond the technology that gets baked into your products to include branding, know-how, trade secrets, and more.

Like physical assets, your IP assets must be acquired and maintained, accounted for, valued, monitored closely, and managed carefully to extract their full value. If your business doesn’t know what intellectual property it owns, you can’t manage and protect it from damage or loss. Instead of putting your IP to work, your company faces a number of potential risks including loss of income, infringement claims, and employee theft of trade secrets or valuable know-how.

An IP Audit is more than just a list of your IP assets. It’s a tool that helps you make sure your rights are secure, find new revenue opportunities, and increase your business value. In 2014, the UK conducted an IP Audit study of small and mid size business. The results showed over 40% of the companies identified new business opportunities, and one third reported increasing their revenues as a direct result of the IP Audit. In addition, about 20% reported securing new financing as a result of the IP Audit.

IP is your most important business asset. Regardless of what type of product or service you offer, your business is always using and creating some form of intellectual property. If you don’t know what you have, you can’t manage it. Just like physical assets, such as raw materials, finished goods and equipment, you need an IP inventory to effectively manage and make money with your IP assets.

Copyright Owners Guide to Licensing

Learn the basics of copyright protection and how to use licensing to make money with your copyright.

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Rand Brenner Author
CEO Licensing Consulting Group , Licensing4Profits
Rand Brenner is an IP professional whose passion is helping inventors, startups, and businesses of all sizes use licensing to turn their IP into income-producing products, services, and technologies. His decades of experience run the gamut from medical devices to food technology to consumer products. He’s licensed some of the biggest Hollywood entertainment blockbusters including the Batman Movies (1 and 2), and the number one kid\'s action TV show, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Rand speaks about licensing and is a featured speaker at investment conferences, trade shows, colleges, and startup events. He’s a published writer with articles appearing in several prestigious trade magazines including The Licensing Journal, Intellectual Property Magazine, and License India.

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