What is your brand design and style worth to your business?
In our three-part series How to Protect and Commercialise Industrial Design we looked at how IP works, explored the four primary forms of IP protection and explored the importance of protecting your designs in order to solidify the commercial value your intellectual property delivers to your business, now and in the future.
If you have missed any of these installments or would like to revisit them, simply click on the links below:
- Protect and Commercialise Industrial Design Part 1: Design and Trade Marks
- Protect and Commercialise Industrial Design Part 2: Copyright and Patents
The final part of this series takes a look at how to create tangible benefits from your intangible assets via commercialisation.
What to think about when commercialising an idea
Commercialisation is when you extract commercial value from the exercise of legal rights granted to owners of intellectual property by those owners and by others, whether directly or indirectly. (ref : ‘Commercialising Intellectual Property’, Chapter 22 in Andrew Stewart et al, Intellectual Property in Australia (LexisNexis, 5th ed, 2013).
Commercialising a new product or service is typically a journey of many steps comprising a ‘route to market’ or ‘commercialisation pathway’. An example of a commercial pathway may resemble the following without adhering to an identical sequence:
Deciding which steps to take requires careful consideration, stakeholder involvement (if applicable) and will be determined by specific IP involved.
A fundamental step will be to establish how the legal rights to the IP will be held and conveyed during commercialisation. The commercialisation vehicle or business model refers to this manner of conveyance and relates to many of the decisions that will need to be made along the commercialisation pathway.
Traditional models of commercialisation include:
- Start-up company;
- Licences, options and assignments;
- Research contracts, consultancies and direct sales.
In addition to the traditional models, there are many other ways in which commercialisation of intellectual property can occur, including the following:
- Collaborations and joint ventures:
- Franchises;
- Securitisation; and
- Collecting societies.
This list of ‘additional commercialisation models’ by no means exhausts the commercialisation options involving intellectual property. However, regardless of the commercialisation model you select, it is essential to understand the elements of IP in each step of the commercialisation process.
If you would like any further information on how to protect your IP, please contact the team at Antcliffe Scott.