Isolated Intellectual Property

Every company has Intellectual Property (technical and practical knowledge) that is a critical component to its future. Your company standard processes may not even identify a method to capture Intellectual Property (IP) or define what IP is. Retention and definition of IP is key to your product and market place profitability; take a look at your situation. More often than not, the IP is isolated in the minds of your technical staff, scientists and senior engineers and tenured technicians. These IP people are not paid to document or capture their intellect, let alone reproduce in an understandable format unless formally queried and reviewed by senior management. Initiate action today to address your company’s situation if there is a shortcoming in this area.

Often there is no standard procedure to capture the IP in a documentation format, thus it is not reproducible and has the high risk potential of becoming lost or worse, transferred to the competition! In today’s market place there is a high probability of knowledge networking at trade shows, seminars and technical subject matter symposiums. Do you honestly think every person asking questions is a consumer? I do not think so, wake up or you will loose your IP edge. Don't think this is true, just look at the competitions products 3 months after a trade show, see any similarities?

Where to begin is simple, your technical director should have a couple of standard process’s outlined for defining to the staff what IP is and how to capture it. Most companies have engineering journals that are company property and issued to every new hire, but where this process falls short is in the use and implementation. If your chief scientist has been with the company 20 years, just thinks how many journals they might have filled out in longhand, read any Rx prescriptions lately? The journals are probably not cataloged or indexed that would allow easy identification and research of topics, or even kept in a common storage area or library. It is not too late to start reviewing how this technical data is captured by your IP personnel. Just ask a few questions to get an idea, it should not take long and the results my startle you.

If you are paper rich and organized poorly, one method may be to electronically scan the pages into archive database that can readily be indexed, searched and identified. Yes, this method will take some work and possible equipment purchase, but in the long run company IP survival is worth it. You m ay task you technical staff to organize their own journals, and of course look at the procedures when journals are issued. The first step should be with the issuance of journals and assuring there are formal steps that identify and implement how IP it to be documented and captures so the company does not loose any more time.

You will know how to best address your situation, if you have a formal method in place that is working great, many companies do not. Do not let the isolated IP become lost, act today, good luck and I hope you are successful in your endeavors.