06 Intellectual Property (IP)

As commercialisers of real innovation we are all about assisting Clients to conceive, research, develop, design and make unique, novel and never seen before intellectual property (IP). Business is way too hard to be bringing to market another commodity that is purely sold on price, that’s not our shtick and shouldn’t be yours.

We should also mention that there are no IP Police, so preventing someone from copying your idea needs to be done cleverly to discourage and minimise the chances of it happening. All our work is strictly confidential and from our first meeting we offer a Non Disclosure or Confidentiality Agreement for both of us to sign, or we are happy to sign yours. We pride ourselves on keeping your information confidential.

We assist Clients to work their angles through the innovation process ‘r’ (Research) + ‘D’ (Development) + ‘C’ (Commercialisation) so that they end up going to market with something inventive, unique and novel in their overall specification and product armour, it may be one piece of unique IP or a combination or multiplicity of many IP elements strategically design and developed together or separately. This IP may remain embedded within the actual innovation away from prying eyes and kept secret or it may be wrapped up in more formal registrations through Patent and or Design applications.

In sum, we assist you to:

  • Develop your innovation through R&D, however keeping an eye out for something unique akin to the brass rivet in denim jeans that may be a valuable piece of IP to take forward and protect.
  • Not rush into locking in your intellectual property (IP) protection via Patents and or Design applications until you have carried out a thorough prior art search and review, your innovation development has been finalised and tested, you have spoken to your target market and received endorsement and ‘pull’, as it’s pointless going to production and spending a lot of money on IP protection if there are no ‘known’ customers.
  • Manage your intellectual property (IP) when dealing with local and overseas suppliers and manufacturers, which generally involves executing a signed Non Disclosure Agreement with them, often written in the language of the country you want you work in to ensure the Agreement is more enforceable under their legal system.
  • Consider protecting your intellectual property (IP) by carefully choosing which components are made in which location, ie having multiple suppliers and or manufacturers for each component of your IP. Some Clients may choose to retain one key component of their manufacturing in Australia, while others are happy to split the product into separate parts, made in different offshore factories. The product can then be assembled in a third party trusted warehouse or back in Australia.

Copyright is free (Yippee), applies automatically when material is created and it’s a legal protection for people who invest their time, talent and other resources in creating new cultural and educational material, which benefits society. So, there is no need register for this and innovations that come in the form of books, papers and magazines, music, artwork and photographs, films, television and radio programmes, software and computer games are all protected by copyright. The owner of copyright can licence copies or adaptations of the work (e.g. translations; movie rights to a book etc) and in Australia, copyright generally lasts for the life of the creator plus 70 years … QED.

If you need assistance in developing an Intellectual Prioerty Strategy and or Plan or just need some quick assistance from people who deal with daily, then please don’t hesitate to email or call us now.


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