Business development and advice
Intellectual Property support
Intellectual property support for your business
Intellectual property (IP) refers to intangible, intellectual creations of the mind. For many businesses their IP and associated rights are the most valuable assets they have. Our specialist team can help your business to protect IP when you're innovating new products and services, and use your IP to develop new markets, attract investment and increase revenue.
What is intellectual property?
Intellectual property (IP) is concerned with creations of the mind. Intellectual property rights (IPR) are the legal instruments used to protect those creations.
Intangible assets such as IP are becoming increasingly important. Many companies now invest in and rely on IP to generate income.
For many businesses their IP and associated rights are the most valuable assets they have. They’re often the things that separate them most from their competitors.
IP covers a wide range of creations - and a wide range of intellectual property rights exist to protect those creations. These include:
- Patents, which protect technical inventions, such as how something works, what it does, how it’s made or what it’s made from
- Design rights, which protect the appearance of a product
- Trade marks - these protect brand names and symbols
- Copyright, which protects creative works
- Trade secrets - a special category of confidential information
How we can help
Our specialist team has expertise in IP strategy management with experience in a variety of sectors.
We can help your business to develop an effective IP strategy and protect your IP when you're innovating new products and services either yourself or in collaboration with others.
We offer free and impartial advice to help you:
- Develop new products, processes or services
- Prepare to export to international markets
- Collaborate
- Commercialise and diversify your IP to increase revenue
- Attract investment and funding
More details on our support
If you’re developing new products, processes or services, we can work with you to:
- Create an IP Strategy which aligns with your business plan objectives - and will focus on increasing revenue and reducing costs
- Consider the various forms of protection your business needs
- Protect and commercialise your IP - both locally and internationally
- Upskill your business - helping you to develop IP skills and introduce new systems and tools which will help identify, capture, and actively manage your company’s IP
We can help you understand how to protect your IP whether you are exporting, licensing, or franchising internationally.
- Registering your IP in countries other than the UK
- Costs and timelines of registration
- Guidance around sharing commercially sensitive information such as trade secrets with international partners
Looking to collaborate with third parties? We can help you think about how to treat the following IP issues during your collaboration:
- Confidentiality
- Access to your IP
- Ownership and management of any new IP created during the collaboration
If your business is exploiting your own or someone else’s IP, we can offer support before you enter into any commercialisation agreements (such as licensing or franchising agreements). We can provide advice and guidance on the important issues you should think about during negotiations.
In some cases, we could even help to support the drafting of associated agreements.
We can also directly improve your company’s bottom line by introducing you to the Patent Box. This is a preferential tax scheme that encourages innovation.
If eligible, your company could pay a lower rate of 10% corporation tax on profits relating to patent-protected products and services (the normal rate is currently 19%). If it’s appropriate, we could help your business to elect into the scheme.
If you’re looking to attract investment or other growth funding, we could help your business to become investor ready. We can help you to:
- Demonstrate clear ownership of your IP and freedom to operate in relevant markets
- Show how IP underpins your products and services and explain how it directly contributes to your revenue and your potential growth
- Undertake IP valuations to support your negotiations
- Secure grant funding, where describing a coherent IP strategy can be crucial
Read more about accessing finance and attracting investment.
Need some expert advice?
Our specialists are on hand to answer your questions and explain the support we can offer to help your business succeed.