Good management of intellectual property will involve a sufficient understanding if intellectual property rights and processes. We highlighted this in a previous post called ‘Understanding intellectual property’. As we said there, you don’t have to be an expert.

Then the following points are important. Not all of them will be relevant or be achievable in every business. These points include:

• aligning innovation and intellectual property development or acquisition with clear business strategic objectives;

• the ability to make informed decisions about seeking intellectual property protection or acquisition of it;

• looking for new and diverse revenue streams from intellectual property and especially from underused intellectual property or uses that don’t compete with core business activities;

• develop criteria to help identify the likely valuable intellectual property and so protect it fully and the likely less valuable intellectual property which might be sold or abandoned;

• achieve lower overall costs associated with intellectual property development or acquisition, protection, and utilisation;

• create internal awareness of the importance of intellectual property to success

• the ability efficiently and successfully to absorb acquired intellectual property into the operations of the business, particularly in relation to mergers and acquisitions.