Why an IP audit can help you save money

Your IP portfolio is one of the most important elements of your business. It underpins your external messaging and how you interact with your customers. It allows you to sell your products with confidence that those products will be correctly identified and protected from copycats and bad actors. By making your IP portfolio work for you, you will not only enhance your ability to do business and reduce risk, but you will save money, too.

Without your intellectual property (IP) portfolio, your business would be extremely vulnerable. Yet, many businesses do not have a clear idea of what they own, the status of those assets and what they need to do to maintain them. Unfortunately, in many businesses, IP is still treated as a cost centre rather than an asset, and this can sometimes mean that it gets ignored.

Novagraaf employs a two-pronged approach to help clients ensure their IP portfolio is as effective as possible. By combining data verification with an IP audit, we help businesses build a clear picture of their assets, providing the data they need to make informed decisions on everything from trademark registrations to renewals.

Step 1: Data verification

Before you can decide on how to manage your trademark assets effectively, you need to know exactly what assets you own and what their status is. Very often, information in the record about your trademark assets may be out of date, and this could have grave implications for the asset if you don’t remedy it quickly. Novagraaf’s data verification and recordals process allows you to check vital elements, such as:

• Company name – are all your trademarks correctly registered to the company? Where there have been acquisitions or mergers in the past, ownership information may be outdated. Novagraaf verifies ownership information and also checks, for example, that there are no errors in the spelling or company name.
• Classes – do you have your trademarks registered in the correct classes? Novagraaf will verify what classes you have registered, and expose any gaps, as well as identify where you have trademarks registered in classes that you don’t need.
• Countries – are your trademarks registered in the correct jurisdictions? It sometimes happens that you have registrations in countries where you don’t need them, perhaps because the business strategy has changed. This means you’re wasting money maintaining assets that you don’t use.
• Renewal dates – do you know when your trademarks are up for renewal? Novagraaf will verify renewal dates for the entire portfolio in each country.

Step 2: Trademark portfolio audit

Once you’ve verified the assets in your portfolio, there will be work to do to address any shortcomings, such as changing ownership information or refiling for new classes.

At this point, you can audit the entire portfolio, confident in the knowledge that you are basing decisions on accurate information. This can save you money, as you can choose to let unnecessary registrations lapse. You can also identify your key risk markets where you have to be on top of your renewals.

Novagraaf will work with you to conduct the audit, identify trademarks you really need and help you understand where you are wasting precious time and money.

Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living. For trademarks, we might say that the unexamined IP portfolio is not worth having. Novagraaf can help you examine your portfolio efficiently, saving you time and money and ensuring that your portfolio works effectively for your business. Find out more about our methodology by downloading our white paper ‘Best practices in trademark auditing: Getting your rights in order’.