Building an IP strategy: IP as investment
How to position your startup so that the IP you develop becomes an investment, not a cost. By Joshua Van Hoven, Counsel and Peter Hale, Partner, at Haley Giuliano
As an early stage company, you may be a disruptor or seek to advance a key technology in which your team has particular expertise. No matter the driver, even the most idealistic startups fail to achieve their goals if they do not position themselves for investment funding of some kind. Those investments are typically based on the potential financial return of a subsequent acquisition or public offering.
At each stage of the investment cycle, your investors and business partners will scrutinise your people, technology and operations. A robust intellectual property (IP) programme will ensure that the efforts of your people are owned by your company, that your technology is safe from theft or copying and that your operations (such as branding,
