IP portfolio review

Intellectual property tends to accumulate rather than be managed. A trademark filed at launch, a few designs registered for one collection, domain names bought by whoever ran the website, software built by an agency that has since closed. Years later nobody has the full picture, and it usually takes an outside event to reveal the gaps: an investor asking for a list of rights, a buyer’s due diligence, a renewal notice for a mark nobody uses, or a competitor filing the name the business has traded under all along.

A portfolio review sets out what the business actually holds, in whose name, and whether that matches what it does today and plans to do next. It looks at each right and at the paperwork behind it:

• the rules on chain of title, and on tracing each right from its creator to its current holder through every transfer and merger;
• the rules on renewal and maintenance, and on the registrations that lapse quietly when a fee or a declaration is missed;
• the rules on which group company should hold each right, and on the consequences of holding it in the wrong entity;
• the rules on pledges, security interests and licences already granted that limit what a buyer or lender receives;
• the rules on domain names and social media accounts, and on keeping them in the company’s name and under its control;
• the rules on due diligence before an investment, a sale or a financing, and on the disclosures a buyer will ask for;
• the rules on valuing intellectual property for the accounts, a transfer or a contribution to a company;
• the rules on abandoning rights that no longer serve the business without weakening the ones that remain.

Our lawyers can support you with this.