IP strategy is an objective-oriented and defined plan of actions for making use of IP to empower businesses, secure high prices for the products and services, increase market shares, maintain reduced costs compared to the competitors, protecting the IPs and extending the horizon and value of the IPs etc. With a carefully formulated IP strategy, organisations can protect their creative works and inventions, keep the resources in check and identify the appropriate time for exploring new research and development opportunities. An IP strategy puts a legal framework around intangible assets and makes the protection, enforcement and valuation of these assets much easier and more quantifiable. It has been found all around the world that the organisations demonstrating IP sophistication and management consistently outperform their competitors. In Bangladesh, we are yet to see that organisations are having proper IP strategies. Here, the IP related activities are mostly confined to brand protection and registration and sometimes, enforcement. Even large MNCs also focus on brand protection in a compartmentalised manner; and even when they have a strategy, the same is not localised in the country context as they mostly adopt the global ones prepared at the HQ levels. It is high time that all organisations shall not only formulate a uniquely designed IP strategy but also pursue a holistic IP strategy irrespective of their kinds, sectors, sizes, origins etc.
Such strategy, once formulated, cannot be considered as a fixed one as the same needs to be updated and periodically modified with the prevailing facts and circumstances. There is no single rule or even set of rules for formulating the strategy rather the same shall vary from organisation to organisation. Several variable factors shall be considered. To develop an IP strategy, organisations must first consider their type, the products/services that they offer, size of the Organisation, stage of development of the Organisation and other factors like barrier to entry/market barrier, exit strategy, IP protection budget, defined mechanism to regulate third-party interventions, including: employment contracts, Key Person insurance, succession planning, confidentiality agreements, development agreements, documentation protocols, visitor protocols, award schemes, licenses, IP trends, technological development and trend, marketing trend, consumer focus and evolving behavior, regulator’s behavior, local and international legislations, forthcoming legislations, knowledge about both organised and disorganised competitors, timing, auditing etc.
The writer is a Barrister-at-Law and an Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.
