If you have control over an asset, then you can derive commercial benefit from it. IP can therefore enable a business to realise higher prices, increase market share or penetration and/or maintain lower costs than its competitors.
You can generate income directly from your IP, for example, by selling or licensing the right to use your patented invention. Alternatively, you can manufacture and sell the products yourself, and use IP to prevent competitors from encroaching onto your market, and making you the sole supplier of the patented product or service.
Usually the most profitable solution is to manufacture and sell the products yourself, but this carries the greatest risk. You will need to have routes to market, supply chain, HR, R&D, marketing functions etc., and not forgetting time, focus and resilience in spades. The reward is that by registering your IP, you can protect your investment by precluding competitors from adopting your patented technologies, making you the sole supplier of the products or services.
The licensing option is all about sharing the risks, and hence the rewards. The licensee takes care of the facilities, supply chain, routes to market, HR, etc., but you have different routes to market in that you have to find potential licensees and convince them to take a license. A license can be negotiated for particular territories, or fields of use, which may allow the IP owner to increase revenue or market penetration in other territories or fields that you cannot exploit. Equally, you might wish to pursue other business opportunities, by licensing-in technology, where strong IP protection is available.
The sale option is where you sell the IP asset for a lump sum, and walk away. You still need to think about R&D and prototyping, and finding and marketing to potential acquirers of the technology, and convincing them to pay, but this is one way of exiting and obtaining a return on your investment.
A pending patent application can also often be enough to confuse or stall a potential competitor. If you are a start-up and need to attract external funding such as, for example, venture capital finance, or identify strategic partnerships, then it may be essential for you to be registering your IP.
The “Patent Box” scheme is another commercial reason to seek patent protection. The Patent Box is a tax relief scheme that is available to companies liable to UK corporation tax and operates in parallel with, and in addition to, the existing R&D Tax Credits scheme. Our strength lies in identifying, filing and prosecuting patents to cover your key product developments that might benefit from such tax relief.
