Intellectual Property Management

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Intellectual Property Management ( IP management ) is an umbrella term for all strategic and operational activities and management tasks that are part of the business-oriented dealing with intellectual property ( IP , Intellectual Property are).

IP management is to be understood as holistic and integrated management in the sense of systematic planning, management and control of the intangible potential benefits of a company. Its overriding goal is to systematically increase success by optimizing the appropriation of innovation returns. For this purpose, IP management must necessarily be interdisciplinary.

Aspects of IP management in particular in the business administration and management theory innovation management , the technology management , as well as intellectual property law discussed.

scope

Definition of IP

The concept of intellectual property ( Intellectual Property , IP ) includes the intellectual property rights (including patents, utility models, trademarks, design rights), as well as copyright, rights related to copyright (eg. As in photographic works, rights of the database producer, rights in a cinematographic work) specific know-how (provided that the will to protect knowledge is clearly identifiable) and intangible assets (intangible assets). Intangible assets in this sense are intangible potential uses that are available to business operations, as well as licenses, know-how, business and trade secrets.

Definition management

From a functional perspective, the term management describes the targeted coordination of various individual processes and functions within the company based on economic principles; this includes in particular all management tasks, such as organization, planning, goal setting, management and control.

task

The aim of IP management is to turn competitive advantages into a sustainable source of above normal returns for companies. The IP management ensures that the return on innovation services is optimized. In order to achieve economic success in a targeted manner from competitive advantages, a competitive strategy is necessary.

Among the norm strategies, the differentiation approach is the dominant one in highly developed industrialized countries. It is important to equip your own products and services with differentiating features relevant to the customer benefit and to offer a superior service compared to the competition in order to reduce the price sensitivity of the customer. Typical leadership roles relate to product design, quality, service, or superior technology. With superior customer benefits, the provider can step out of the isolated price competition and avoids direct comparability of its services.

In this standard strategy, IP management intervenes in the business model by making customer benefits exclusive with the help of IP and thus giving the company the opportunity to amortize the investments made as part of its innovation efforts.

The central task of IP management in the differentiation approach is to protect the added value position in the customer benefit offer and thus to make the unique position legally defensible and thus sustainable. IP management is the operational implementation of the IP strategy in operational reality.

Location

IP management as a management task

So that the IP management does not eke out an existence isolated from the other corporate divisions, but can be integrated into the company, its management level must show leadership and commitment in this regard according to newer IP management approaches . Executives must actively contribute to working with IP and ensure that IP is included in the products and services, the overall corporate strategy and the business model.

To do this, it is essential to create a corresponding IP culture in the company. This means in particular that all stakeholders - most of whom are not IP experts - must be involved in a joint, consistent and coherent implementation of the IP strategy. The stakeholders of IP management should think in terms of legally enforceable and thus sustainable exclusivity, which enables them to formulate the company's need for IP in accordance with the overarching goals. It is important that they are aware of their role, that they are integrated into the processes of IP management and that they have recognized the IP instrument as helpful and expedient.

IP management as part of innovation management

In practice, IP management is often not understood as a creative part of the innovation process, but rather as an executing legal and administrative service provider within the company. Its area of ​​responsibility is essentially reduced to two actions: On the one hand, IP management is to use so-called “Freedom-to-Operate” (FTO) analyzes to clarify whether the new product may infringe the rights of third parties before it is launched. On the other hand, inventions made in the R&D process as well as other intangible product aspects such as a product name are to be protected from imitation. The latter includes, among other things, the receipt of invention reports or the registration, maintenance and enforcement of property rights.

Classically, IP work is carried out as a resource-oriented "inside-out" process. This begins with the invention in the R&D department as a result of the work of development engineers who work out a technical solution for a specific development problem that arises in the course of product development. In essence, this is a reactive protection of R&D results / inventions. However, this approach falls far short of the mark. Because IP management does not mean thinking in terms of protected technical solutions, but thinking in terms of exclusive customer benefits through prohibition rights. It must therefore take an active role within the innovation process to create exclusive customer benefits.

The question of which IP the company actually needs and to what extent can be systematically answered in this way. In this way, desired effects can be planned and the cooperation of the stakeholders involved can be coordinated in a targeted manner towards the unique position and the expected customer benefit. Last but not least, this also answers the question of an economically appropriate budget for IP in the context of the innovation project.

The integration of IP in the innovation process must take place as early as possible, at which the question of customer benefit and its constructive implementation can still be shaped. This requires real, reciprocal interaction between IP and innovation management.

Integrated IP management

IP management is understood as an integrated management system . Based on the existing technology and patent-driven processes, IP is integrated into other processes such as innovation, information and marketing processes.

The central IP process is essentially carried out by the company's own IP department, if necessary in cooperation with external IP experts or patent attorneys, and with the inventor. In the traditionally close connection between patent work and the R&D department, the phenomenon of decoupling from the rest of the company arises in an operational island. This effect is overcome by integrating IP management into the adjacent company functions.

Integrated IP management is an originally interdisciplinary field of activity. The target and method systems of, in particular, technology management , corporate and competition strategy , marketing and innovation management are brought together in IP management.

IP management as part of marketing

The task of marketing is in particular to equip the company's range of services with a cross-competitive customer benefit, to compare this with the willingness of customers to pay, to ensure communication with customers and to give them access to the services offered.

The role of IP in marketing is based on its prohibitive nature. The aforementioned thinking in terms of exclusive customer benefits through prohibition rights makes the latter a powerful marketing tool. In this respect, IP is to be seen as one of the marketing instruments available to be used in the marketing mix.

Demarcation

Patent management

In practice, IP management is often equated with patent management. However, this view does not go far enough. Because the target of patent management is the invention , i.e. the technical invention. In contrast, the IP management , the innovation in the center of focus and sees this as a bundle of technical and non-technical elements of benefits. Directly linked with this is the objective of optimizing the appropriation of innovation yields, whereas patent management strives for the greatest possible freedom of action to exploit the invention on the basis of a comprehensive technical unique position.

Ultimately, both approaches have a value orientation in common. However, IP management is also characterized by its holistic, integrated and interdisciplinary orientation. The central element is the systematic planning, management and control of the company's intellectual property, which includes the entire range of available technical and non-technical protective instruments in the calculation without giving a priori preference to a certain instrument such as the patent.

Management of property rights

In relation to the idea of ​​a management of property rights (IPRM), which is more comprehensive compared to patent management, IP management is based on a broader subject area. Because while the IPRM only considers intangibles protected under intangible property law, the IP management also includes those intangible resources of the company that are fundamentally protectable, but (deliberately) do not enjoy special legal protection. The same applies to specific know-how, provided that the will to protect the knowledge can be clearly identified.

structure

IP strategy

The overriding goal of IP management is to systematically increase the company's success by optimizing the appropriation of economic income from the company's innovative activities. In the competition to differentiate, an exclusive, enforceable and sustainable customer benefit is required , which can be achieved with the help of IP .

This general objective must be concretized and specified in the context of the IP strategy in order to ultimately lead to a consistent package of measures, which can be monitored and controlled in its operational implementation. As a central element of IP management, the IP strategy defines - based on the concept of strategy by Chandler (1962) - the long-term goals with regard to the company's intangible assets and defines the corresponding guidelines for pursuing goals and the resources to be made available for this. This includes, in particular, the determination of the IP requirements, which is derived from the desired IP position in order to achieve the corporate goals, as well as the definition of the financial and human resources and the organizational framework for their implementation. The IP strategy takes into account the strategy options and derives the necessary measures for the use of IP for the active and continuous development of the company's market position.

The IP strategy of a company can, depending on its orientation, have a predominantly offensive or defensive basic orientation in relation to the competitors, whereby in practice it makes sense to pursue hybrid strategies that contain both defensive and offensive elements and are continuously adapted.

Offensive IP strategies

Offensive IP strategies primarily focus on the company's own IP position and strive to create protective positions with the help of which the freedom of action of current and potential competitors can be restricted. On the one hand, attempts are made to systematically prevent competitors from systematically building up a strong protective right position by actively preventing, restricting and destroying third-party property rights. This can be done by taking measures against the registration and granting of property rights, e.g. by opposing or bringing an action for nullity against a granted patent, objection to the registration of a trademark or application for deletion of a registered design due to invalidity. In addition, particularly in the area of ​​technical property rights, blocking patents or so-called bracketing can specifically limit the technological scope of action of competitors.

Defensive IP strategies

Defensive IP strategies, on the other hand, are primarily geared towards third party property rights. The focus is on the question of how to react to this in order to minimize the effects of third-party IP strategies on one's own company. The aim is to avoid unwanted copying of own products and services, violations of own property rights by third parties as well as attacks by third parties on one's own property rights portfolio through preventive measures and in this way to prevent property rights disputes and product imitations. In contrast to offensive IP strategies, the focus is not on restricting the freedom of action of third parties, but primarily on preserving one's own room for maneuver with regard to future innovation activities. In the literature, the term freedom-to-operate (FTO) is often used in this regard . Last but not least, the defense of one's own portfolio of property rights from attacks by competitors (objections, actions for annulment or attempts at imitation despite existing property rights) is a central component of defensive strategies.

Task areas of IP management

To create a sustainable sphere of exclusivity, there are essentially the following four areas of responsibility for IP management, which are both resource and market-oriented:

  1. Control of risks: The company must identify and control all risks along its value chain that can arise from IP - in particular third-party IP - in order to gain freedom of action for the implementation of its own business model and to ensure it in the long term.
  2. Imitation suppression: Avoidance of imitation through the exclusion of own resources and core competencies, which are necessary to create the most exclusive and superior offer possible.
  3. Shaping your own market position: Securing your own market access through strategic prohibition against competition. Future service offers, products and technology fields of the company as well as the associated customer benefits are to be exclusive for the own company. The prohibition effect associated with IP is specifically used as a market entry barrier and thus an exclusive market position is established.
  4. Communication of the unique position in the market : Creation and maintenance of the differentiation potential and the unique position in customer perception. The task of IP management is not only to create an objective, unique position, but also to communicate this to the customer. For example, in the automotive industry, among other things, assistance systems are marked with names and abbreviations that are as concise as possible in order to communicate the service exclusively to the customer.

IP management processes

The IP management processes are part of the value creation process in the organization and describe how IP is used and how it interacts with corporate goals. In order to meet the goals of IP management, the company must ensure that necessary and meaningful processes are implemented. The processes describe the major challenges for IP management and document tasks and goals, control criteria and resources, as well as the roles of the individual stakeholders.

The integration of the IP management processes into the company's core processes, both with regard to the input and output factors and the process owners, which in the sense of the understanding of a company-wide operating IP management not only affect the IP departments, is of decisive importance -Administration are to be assigned.

DIN 77006 proposes a process landscape for IP management that essentially consists of the following main processes:

  • IP strategy
  • IP generation
  • IP administration
  • IP risk management
  • IP enforcement
  • IP defense
  • IP transactions
  • IP reporting
  • IP awareness raising

DIN 77006 - "Quality in Intellectual Property Management"

The demands on the quality of services in IP management are continuously increasing. At the same time, the relationships between service providers and industrial companies are becoming increasingly complex. Against this background, DIN 77006 "Quality in Intellectual Property Management", based on the quality concept of ISO 9001, was brought into being. This quality standard gives recommendations for the establishment, development, implementation, evaluation, maintenance and improvement of adequate and effective IP management within an organization. It defines all processes that are related to intellectual property and will in future shape a uniform understanding of what constitutes quality in corporate IP management.

Web links

  • IP for Business - The blog for a customer-focused intellectual property strategy in the age of digitization
  • IPWiki

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Stauf, Christian: Holistic Intellectual Property Management in the company . Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-13843-1 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-658-13844-8 ( springer.com ).
  2. ↑ Ann, Christoph: Know-how - stepchild of intellectual property? In: Commercial legal protection and copyright (GRUR), 109th year, issue 1 . S. 39-43 .
  3. ↑ Götting, Horst-Peter: Commercial legal protection . 10th, revised edition. CH Beck, Munich, ISBN 978-3-406-65313-1 .
  4. ↑ Corsten, Hans / Gössinger, Ralf (ed.): Lexicon of business administration . 5th, completely revised. and exp. Edition. Oldenbourg, Munich, ISBN 978-3-486-58717-3 , pp. 7th f .
  5. ↑ Kotler, Philip / Bliemel, Friedhelm / Keller, Kevin Lane: Marketing Management: Strategies for Value-Creating Action . 12th, updated edition. Pearson Studium, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-8273-7229-1 .
  6. ↑ Disselkamp, ​​Marcus: Innovation management instruments and methods for implementation in companies . 2. revised Edition. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-8349-4472-6 .
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g Wurzer, Alexander J./Grünewald, Theo / Berres, Wolfgang: The 360 ​​° IP strategy is how you secure your innovation success in the long term . 1st edition. Franz Vahlen, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-8006-5157-3 .
  8. ^ Chandler, Alfred: Strategy and structure: chapters in the history of the industrial enterprise . MIT Press Research Monographs, Cambridge 1962.
  9. ↑ Passadelis, Nicolas: Strategic management of intellectual property . In: Münch, Peter / Ziese, Hella (ed.): Intellectual Property Management: How IP is set up, managed and used to create value . Schulthess, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7255-6423-1 , p. 1-24 .
  10. ↑ a b DIN 77006
  11. ^ Rebel, Dieter: Industrial property rights: registration - strategy - utilization; a practical manual . 6., revised. and exp. Edition Heymann, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-452-27170-9 .
  12. ↑ Pitkethly, Robert H .: Intellectual property strategy in Japanese and UK companies: patent licensing, decisions and learning opportunities . In: Research Policy . Vol. 30, No. 1 , p. 425-442 .
  13. ↑ a b c Burr, Wolfgang et al .: Patent Management - Strategic Use and Economic Assessment of Technological Property Rights . Schäffer-Poeschel, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-7910-2527-8 .
  14. ↑ a b Hentschel, Mark: Patent Management, Technology Exploitation and Acquisition of External Technologies - An Empirical Analysis . Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag / GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-8350-9555-7 .
  15. ↑ Bader, Martin A./Gassmann, Oliver: Patent management using and protecting innovations successfully . 3., completely revised. and exp. Edition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-642-16605-1 .