An IP strategy should be carefully tailored to the needs of your company. Think carefully about the industry and market sector in which you are active or would like to be active, how much risk you want to take and what financial means you have at your disposal.

As a rule, an IP strategy consists of three parts:

• Carry out patent and trade mark searches in order to be certain that your trade mark or patent application will not infringe any existing rights held by other parties or to determine the novelty of your invention.

• Register your intellectual property.

• Check the markets and consistently pursue infringements by third parties.
• Think about whether it would be wise to have providers, distributors or other business partners sign non-disclosure agreements.

• It is important to ensure that confidential information is protected within your company. Distribute sensitive technological know-how among several employees so that there is no concentration of risk if someone leaves to work for your competitor.

• If it is technically possible, integrate elements that can’t be reproduced into your products (known as ‘black boxes’), without which they cannot work.
• Develop labels for your products or packaging that are difficult to counterfeit and incorporate them into your products. This allows you and your customers to check whether an item is a counterfeit or an original.