SEB725 - Engineering Entrepreneurship: IP Risks and Challenges Report

This report examines the intellectual property (IP) risks and challenges faced by SolarX, a company in the solar technology sector, particularly in its research and development (R&D) efforts and potential collaboration with SARSun. The report identifies various risks, including availability, compliance, brand, access, and business value risks, and suggests measures to mitigate them. These include confidentiality agreements, security protocols, and risk management tools. The report also addresses the budgeting challenges associated with IP protection, such as managing attorney spending and maintaining an organized portfolio. Furthermore, it analyzes the risks inherent in joint ventures, such as disputes over IP ownership and jurisdictional issues, offering recommendations for protecting SolarX's IP through strict contract agreements and detailed documentation. The report emphasizes the importance of proactive IP protection strategies to safeguard the company's innovations and competitive advantage.

Running head: PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
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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
ownership perspective and the third party intellectual property infringement liability
perspective. From the perspective of first party, the various risks include legal costs of
protection and enforcement of the intellectual property rights and decreased value 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.

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. The global political economy of intellectual property rights: The new
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. Kang and K. Motohashi. Essential intellectual property rights and inventors’
involvement in standardization. Research Policy, 44(2), pp.483-492. 2015.