1PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY Intellectual property consists of wide range of legally-protected rights that include patents, trademarks, designs, copyrights, patents and many more forms of intangible assets such as goodwill, contract rights and human capital. The risks that the branch can face can be considered from two different perspectives, one from the first party intellectual property ownershipperspectiveandthethirdpartyintellectualpropertyinfringementliability perspective. From the perspective of first party, the various risks include legal costs of protectionand enforcementof the intellectualproperty rightsand decreasedvalue of intellectual property as an asset and from the third party perspective, the risks can be legal costs required to defend a certain intellectual property, resulting settlement or damages costs, design-around costs and many more [1]. The risks in this scenario can be keeping the trade secrets relevant during the whole process of research and development. Leakage of trade secrets can be beneficial to the competitors of the firm.The company in its domain of research and development can be targets of patent infringement lawsuits. The various risks for which SolarX’s new branch might lose IP in Research and Development are as follows: 1.Availability risks- The existing branch of the company has to provide informations available to the new branch and this can be risky as the new staffs there can misplace theses informations or mishandle these. 2. Compliance risk- The new branch of SolarX needs to be well aware of the legal issues that are pertaining to the IP rights and if they are not aware of the legal implications they can be in trouble for violating these IP rights [2]. 3.Brand risk- The new branch can hamper the most important asset of the company that is the brand name if it takes hasty decisions in the sphere of research and development.
2PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 4. Access risk- Access risk includes those risks that are related to the access of informations or maybe those which are inappropriately granted or sometimes refused. 5. Business value- This is another important aspect and the new branch can hamper the business value if it comes up with irrelevant research and development. Thus it is necessary that a certain firm’s IP is kept track of [3]. The relevant internal bodies in case of the availability risk are the management such as the board of directors and manager. The vital informations are kept with higher officials in a company and mainly the managers handle these. Thus when sensitive informations are being passed onto to the new branch then it can be said to be as the responsibility of these people to take care that these do not go to wrong hands. In research and development the company needs to refer to different sources and find out certain important things that can be considered as new developments but in this process it needs to be well aware of the compliance risks. In this case the internal bodies are both the IT officials of the existing branch and the new branch of the company [4]. The chief information officer and the IT head are some of the internal stakeholders. In case of the remaining three risks the entire workforce is relevant. SolarX can protect its current R&D advancements by ensuring that it IP are well protected.The main branch can create confidentiality and licensing contracts for the new employees in the new branch and other partners. Proper security measures such as setting up password protection for all computer networks, encrypting data, usage of virtual private network access and establishing Wi-Fi Protected Access2 and many more such measures [5]. The company should avoid joint ownership as this grants permission to more than one party to the copyright, patent and trademark. In order to protect Research and Development of the new branch of SolarX some steps can be taken that are as follows:
3PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY a. Keeping the business ideas and the trade secrets a secret- The Company should avoid talking about its intellectual property until it has successfully secured all it IP. The officials of the company should be careful about whom to trust with the key informations so that these do not get disclosed and affect the research and development advancements. b. Documenting the concepts and the original content in details- The Company should have with it detailed drawings, descriptions, various plans along with the records so that if any such situation comes to proof the rightful ownership then the company can handle the same. c. No-disclosure agreements- The Company should come up with certain procedures that make sure the corporate policies are followed. They should also take care that the protections along with the compliance are well documented. d. Controlling physical and electronic access- The Company needs to have confidential information protection incorporated into the physical and the information technology security planning system so that they can have control on the access of informations [6]. e. Risk management- SolarX needs to invest on risk management tools such as risk register, root cause analysis, probability and impact matrix to find out the probable risks and come up with the mitigation measures as well. SolarX has to face the budgeting challenges by incorporating certain things in its operations and those are as follows: 1. Closely managing attorney spending- The legal services are an important component in the IP budget and thus evaluation on a regular basis considering all dimensions such as law firm and asset can help in controlling and containing the costs relate to the same. 2. Regular audit- Auditing the intellectual property portfolio will help the company in keeping a check on the costs and opportunities.
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4PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 3. Maintaining organized portfolio- Maintaining an organized portfolio will help in managing the IP budge thus helping in the advancements in the research and development [7]. The possible risks that are associated with collaboration of SolarX and SARSun are as follows: a. There are instances in case of jointly owned IP rights where many disputes occur between the parties. It can happen that SolarX can claim for a intellectual property as it is investing on the development while SARSun can claim that as it will retain its ownership on the work as it is developing the same.Thus there are high chances that the companies’ have divided opinions that in turn can lead to legal issues. b. When agreeing on joint ownership there might be certain reasonable compromises and thus the arrangement is fraught with many difficulties associated with some undesirable outcomes. c. There can be many problems in this case as the branches of the company and that of the SARSun come under different jurisdictions. SolarX can protect its IP by being strict with its contract agreements and every discussion with the partner company should be well documented so that in case of disputes these documents can be cited. The developments will be a joint venture of both the companies thus there should be proper paper work done on which designs or developments are being done by the companies. SolarX should not provide sensitive information to the other company and all decisions taken must be well discussed and their consequences known. The company should have trade registry and copyright certificates with it so that in any situation it can prove its say [8]. Protecting IP is one of the main tasks that needs to be accomplished by a company and in case of joint venture with different companies such as in this case SolarX and SARSun, all aspects should be properly evaluated.
5PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY References [1].C.May.Theglobalpoliticaleconomyofintellectualpropertyrights:Thenew enclosures. Routledge. 2015. [2]. G. Dutfield.Intellectual property rights and the life science industries: a twentieth century history. Routledge. 2017. [3]. R.D. Anderson, and N. Gallini.Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Rights in a Knowledge-Based Economy. Routledge. 2019. [4]. C.M. Sweet and D.S.E. Maggio. Do stronger intellectual property rights increase innovation?.World Development,66, pp.665-677. 2015. [5]. R.J. Coombe. Intellectual Property.The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, pp.1-11. 2018. [6]. J. Hagedoorn and A.K. Zobel. The role of contracts and intellectual property rights in open innovation.Technology Analysis & Strategic Management,27(9), pp.1050-1067. 2015. [7]. P. Drahos.A philosophy of intellectual property. Routledge. 2016. [8].B.KangandK.Motohashi.Essentialintellectualpropertyrightsandinventors’ involvement in standardization.Research Policy,44(2), pp.483-492. 2015.