Corporate & Commercial

Protect the idea

Before you commercialise any idea, stop, think and decide:

• should you protect your IP?
• how to protect your IP?
• how should you fund the protection, development and commercialisation of the idea?
• what regulatory approvals, if any, might be needed along the way?

Let's look at each of these questions in turn.

Should you protect your IP?

The traditional answer to the question of whether to protect your IP is "of course you should". However, just because you've always done it doesn’t mean that it's right. The new answer to the question of whether to protect your IP is "it depends". There are a number of ways to make money out of ideas, and not all of them involve strong protection of IP.

How to protect your IP

Keep it confidential - disclose it only to those who need to know and make sure recipients and employees are bound by confidentiality agreements - then apply for the right type of protection for your IP. this could be a patent or registering a trademark, a design or a plant variety.

If you do become aware of a breach of your IP, be prepared to take action to enforce your rights. Sometimes a strongly worded "letter from the lawyers" can be good enough, but often further steps are needed and they can be costly.

How should you fund the protection, development and commercialisation of the idea?

While you're protecting your IP, you're probably also thinking about where you're going to get funding to develop your product or take it to the market.

A number of entrepreneurs decide (or are forced) to stump up the money themselves at this stage, but there are other ways. A popular option is to involve friends and family with a bit of spare cash in a simple capital raising. Government grants are also available to cover initial development costs. You might also be able to obtain funding through special venture capital schemes run by economic development and other agencies.

Which regulatory approvals do you need?

Most areas of innovation are relatively free of regulation, but if your idea or product is in the biotech or life sciences area, then there is a raft of legislation that could apply.

If you're going to sell your idea or products offshore, each new country is likely to have its own regulatory regime with which you will need to comply. You must also comply with any export restrictions or regulations.

To read more about protecting the idea, please order a full copy of Commercialisation of Innovation.

Enquiries and information

For more information about Commercialisation of Innovation, please contact:

Dean Oppenhuis
Partner, Wellington