Narrator (00:00:06) - Welcome back to Bringing New Ideas to Life, a podcast from a Oxentia. Today we have the final parts of our IP strategy series with Dom Eisley and Bruno Reynolds. And I'll be looking at where the real value lies in your IP strategy. How do you record and protect this value? And what happens to the IP when you exit the business? Enjoy

Dom (00:00:28) - An, an improvement that a lot of businesses could make is understanding that know-how is the fund, it's the foundation of their IP strategy. Yeah. So everyone sometimes focuses on, people tend to focus on patents. Yeah, they do. Because largely cuz of the costs and because they're expensive, they're, they've got a lot of, uh, cache, I guess. Yeah. Um, protection inventions and the process. Yeah. But actually most of the value in a company is not the patents. You know, if you can't run a business based on the information that's provided in a couple of patent applications or patent publications, you know, patents are there to stop other people doing what you are, what you are, you are claiming in the patents. So for me, they're the stick. But the, the carrot, I suppose is all of the know-how that you've generated to get that product or service to work.

Dom (00:01:25) - So for instance, if you take the, you know, if you were licensing some technology and you had a, you printed off all the information that you had, you might have a stack of paper this high and patterns will be like that on the top and the rest is gonna be knowhow. Yeah. And that's what you push across the table and say, right. That's gonna save you five years. It's worth X. Yeah. So knowhow is about saving people time. Yeah. Um, and I guess there's, there's a difference between confidential know-how and public know-how. So information that's in the public domain is for anyone to use. Um, but confidential know-how is is is what you are generating on a regular basis. And, and the value in a company, to me is the difference between what's in the public domain and, and what you've got. So it's that confidential know-how.

Dom (00:02:17) - Yeah. And then it's a question of what are you gonna do with that information? How are you gonna treat it? And there are sort of three scenarios really. There's keep it as confidential know-how until such time as it's published for whatever reason. Um, elevate it to trade secrets, uh, status, and really protect it properly with the steps you need to do to do that. Steps you need to take in order to do that. And that can be a two-way process. Stuff can be elevated to a trade secret and then sort of demoted again if it's no longer of such high value. Um, and then when you are thinking about launching a product, um, or, or otherwise disclosing that know-how, then you might think, well, that's a good time to start patenting it. Think about patenting it. So yeah. Conf confidential know-how trade secrets and or patents and a piece of technology or an improvement could be all three in its lifetime. It could start off as confidential knowhow could be elevated to a trade secret until such times you can't keep it secret any longer. And then you put it into a patent.

Bruno (00:03:28) - Sure.

Dom (00:03:28) - Sure. And then it's in the public domain,

Bruno (00:03:30) - . Yeah. And you may also have combinations of those protecting patents as well. Yeah,

Dom (00:03:35) - Yeah. Right.

Bruno (00:03:36) - Um, um, discussions that we have sometimes, um, around maximizing the value of your patents. Yeah. Um, I often tell people that it's, it's helpful if you can keep the confidential, you know, the know-how out of a patents. Yeah. Therefore you've got, you've got your legal documents, but, um, you know, all things being equal and that's granted. And then separate to that, you've got the know-how to actually put it into practice so you can use it. Yeah. So,

Dom (00:04:03) - Like I said, you can't necessarily run a business on the information and the patents. It's on one way of doing it. Exactly. Yeah. But there's always a temptation to put too much information into patents. Yes. You, there does have to be a base level of information. Yeah. Otherwise it, it's not patentable

Bruno (00:04:18) - In, in, in the in in the aim or hope that that's gonna increase your chances of getting it. Yeah.

Dom (00:04:24) - But often people give away stuff that it's a fine line. I mean, you have to put enough in there for it to be patentable, but at the same time, there's stuff that you may not want to put in there cuz you're giving away knowhow or trade secrets.

Bruno (00:04:36) - Yeah. And the and there's also an opportunity to, uh, to amend and edit your application when the examiner comes back with certain comments.

Dom (00:04:45) - Yes. By that point in limited. Well that, that yes, you can amend the claims of the patents. Yeah. And in theory you can amend the description. By that point, the patent will have been published, so everything you originally put in there would've been in the public domain. Yeah. So the best thing is if you've got something that's really sensitive that you think is only peripheral to the, not to the patent, the patents kind of, uh, direction, then don't include it. And also, you know, patents are static, right? They, they might be been filed five or 10 years ago and your technology's really developed since then, and they might, the patent might cover the generality of what you're doing, but you might have iterated and then proved that process or product loads of times since then. So it'll be loads of know-how, which isn't in the patent, which is part of, you know, how, how to make the product or use the product or how to deliver the service. And all of that is additional to what's in the pattern. So that needs, it needs to be recorded.

Bruno (00:05:37) - So dom, so when a company's preparing for its, its exit strategy. Yeah. Um, all all of this, everything that we talked about so far, like keeping the good records of the know-how mm-hmm. , um, making sure you've got the right processes to follow and the training for your staff that, that, that basically saves you time, makes your, makes your, your exits, uh, much more, uh, achievable. Um, but it's not, you know, it, it, it encompasses, you know, it's because you are, you're capturing value and saving time. That's right. Yeah. Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Dom (00:06:12) - So if, if a company is, isn't, for instance, a larger company is buying a smaller company, why are they doing that? That they're buying the, the IP of the, of the smaller company, aren't they? The expertise. Yeah. And if that's only in the people, well that, that's, that's great. But the people might leave. Uh, so it needs to be a mixture of the, the people and the know-how, which hopefully has been recorded. Yeah. And you know, therefore, you know, the bigger company could just go away and develop that technology themselves. It, it might take the new company three years, but it might have taken the original company five years, but still three years is worth a lot of, a lot of time, a lot of money. Right. So, um, sure. What is the bigger company investing in, it's investing in, in the ip. So it is really important that, that know-how is recorded Yeah. On top of the trade secrets and the Yeah.

Bruno (00:07:06) - And that and that, that IP that it's investing in that time that it's saving Yeah. Covering patents obviously, but it's covering the knowhow. Yeah. But it's also covering the other IP assets such as branding, customer lists, methodologies, and

Dom (00:07:21) - Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Most of what we talked about is technical knowhow. Uh, but you know, IP is, is much broader as you point out and can that there's, there's non non-technical know-how, which you might say is, you know, commercial, uh, information like your, your customer lists or the, the, the terms of collaboration deals that you've, you know, you've, um, you've made. So, you know, you wouldn't want that information going out into the public domain. That's, that's high value. I would say, you know, things like your customer list or your commercial playbook or the terms of confidential terms in collaboration agreements or partnering deals would, would actually be probably trade secrets. Yeah. Um, and there's the branding side as well, which is obviously in the public domain, but there's a, there's a, there's quite a lot of value associated with the trademark, um, if you've got them or, um, the effort that you've put into, uh, branding and the recognition that comes with that in the, in, in the public, the marketplace.

Dom (00:08:29) - And on top of that, it, it, it, in certain sectors there will be other forms of ip which are, you know, fantastically valuable. So if you are, you know, if you are a software company, you might have a very powerful algorithm that might be a trade secret that you know, might not be patented. There might be elements of that that have been patented or, you know, if you're a med tech company, the data set on which your AI is being trained might be actually probably the most valuable thing in the whole company. Uh, so you know that that's not his, that's not patentable. So that's an example of something that's either confidential know-how, or almost certainly a trade secret. Yeah.

Narrator (00:09:11) - Well, thank you very much for listening to the final part of our IP strategy series with Dom and Bruno. Thank you very much to them. We hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions or would like a follow up conversation with them, then please do contact ideaspod@oxentia.com And remember, this is just the beginning of bringing new ideas to life are our new podcast, which we want to share with you. And we've got an awful lot of new topics to discuss in the weeks and months ahead. Um, ranging from knowledge, exchanging commercialization, innovation management processes and cultures, accelerator programs, social impact in the arts, humanities and social sciences, a huge range of topics and a number of guests to interview and discuss these matters with. So please do subscribe to the podcast and follow us. Um, also you can share with anyone else you think might be interested. So you can find us on anywhere you listen to your podcasts or the main distributors and we'd love to hear from you as well. That email address again is ideas pod centia.com. Thank you very much for listening, and we look forward to being with you again soon. Bye for now.