Intellectual Property Audits & Diagnostics

IP Wealth™ can establish and evaluate your intellectual property assets and liabilities by conducting an IP Audit or Diagnostic on your business or company. Our goal is to add value to your business or company by establishing your assets and decreasing your risk.

IP Audits and Diagnostics are suitable for all business types and are essential for those who are looking to sell, franchise or gain investment in their business or company.

IP Wealth™ IP Audit

An IP Wealth™ IP Audit is the most comprehensive of the two services and is aimed at larger businesses and companies. An IP Audit will establish and evaluate your IP assets and ascertain whether or not you are the legal 'owner' of these assets. Your business or company's compliance to IP Best Practice will also be evaluated, and any issues or liabilities that have arisen or could potentially arise from a lack of compliance will be highlighted. We will then provide you with a comprehensive report on the status of your IP assets and compliance to IP Best Practice, complete with detailed recommendations and an action plan for implementing our suggestions.

IP Wealth™ IP Diagnostic

IP Wealth's IP Diagnostic is aimed at small to medium size businesses or companies and will establish your business or company's current IP assets and ascertain whether or not you are the legal 'owner' of these assets. We will provide you with a report listing the status all of your IP Assets and our associated suggestions, as well as recommendations for ensuring compliance to IP Best Practice in your expanding business or company.

IP Wealth™ IP Audit and IP Diagnostic Case study

Young cosmetic company with big buy-out plans!

In 2004 IP Wealth™ was asked by the founders of an exciting young cosmetic company to conduct an IP Assessment. The goal was to ensure that the business owned everything, including its website, packaging design, eye-catching logo and the secret formulas it was developing with contract chemists. It was also just as essential that they be able to prove their ownership of these intellectual property assets with the appropriate legal agreements.

While the benefits of owning valuable IP assets are clear, the business' directors had a very specific reason for wanting to hone in on the intellectual property: it was their stated goal that at the 5 year mark that their business be sold for millions to an American cosmetic giant.

The audit found that due to a lack of an IP Policy about intellectual property created on their behalf by external suppliers that the business did not have clear title to almost all of their fundamental intellectual property.

Because this was so essential to their plan to create a highly valuable business that would be appealing to a savvy US purchaser, we immediately began securing ownership to these IP assets by having the following suppliers sign either a deed of assignment, a supplier agreement or a product development agreement as appropriate:

• web designer
• packaging designer
• contract chemists
• graphic designer
• photographer

As a result of this concerted campaign the directors were able to secure full unencumbered ownership of essential IP assets. They created an "IP Assets" folder that was quickly populated with signed legal agreements, and we established a detailed IP Asset Register.

Recognising that IP is effectively the wealth of the business and their constant output, the directors and their entire team took part in an IP Wealth IPETA IP Management in an Established Business Training session.

Now all intellectual property commissioned/purchased for the business is secured by:

• outlining their IP Policy for IP Ownership (the business will own it and you will need to sign a legal agreement to supply or no deal)
• using the appropriate legal agreement from the suite of legal agreement templates they received with their IP Wealth™ IP Audit
• managing their ownership by adding the new asset to their IP Asset folder and in their IP Asset Register
• portraying their ownership correctly by using the correct IP symbols (©, ® and ™ as appropriate) and the necessary warning statements stating their ownership or confidentiality as needed.

With the clock ticking toward buy-out heaven, IP Wealth™ is confident that our IP Assessment of this young, very exciting cosmetic company has guaranteed a signficantly higher purchase price than what would have been offered had they been unable to show title to key assets.