Strategic IP Support since 1997
Recent Insights & News
Why Costco’s $90B “Kirkland” Empire Is Really an IP Strategy in Disguise
A retailer just built a brand bigger than Boeing — and it did it almost entirely with intellectual property most boards treat as paperwork. The lesson sitting inside Costco’s private-label story isn’t about warehouses or hot dogs. It’s that a disciplined private label IP strategy can convert someone else’s manufacturing into a durable, owned asset.…
Who Do You Sue When the Thief Is an Agent? Autonomous AI and the Limits of Trade Secret Protection
A large share of the intellectual property in most businesses is protected by nothing but secrecy. That protection carries a hidden dependency: a wrongdoer you can name, and an obligation of confidence a court can enforce against that person. Two disclosures this month put weight on the assumption. On 16 July 2026, Hugging Face disclosed…
Can the Registrar Take Back Your Trade Mark? What the Brown Nose Day Appeal Means for Brand Owners
Once your trade mark is registered, how safe is it? For its first twelve months, less safe than most brand owners assume – the Registrar of Trade Marks holds a power under section 84A of the Trade Marks Act 1995 (Cth) to revoke a registration that should never have been granted, and recently the Full…
When IP Comes to Collect: Why IP Strategy Decides Whether You Pay or Get Paid
What happens when intellectual property built into your products turns out to belong to someone else? This week supplied three expensive answers. Each involved one of the world’s most powerful companies paying – or being ordered to pay – for rights held by a much smaller opponent. Together they carry a clear message for anyone…
Your patents didn’t lose value. The board where you play them changed.
Over the past two decades, US firm value flipped from mostly tangible to over 90% intangible — and the rulebook for defending those intangibles quietly rewrote itself underneath everyone. A recent Cornerstone Research study, Intellectual Property Litigation: U.S. Trends in Global Perspective (June 2026), maps where enforcement has actually gone, and the headline for anyone…
