Strategic IP Support since 1997
Recent Insights & News
Owning It Is Not Controlling It
October was a month about the gap between owning a right and controlling an outcome. A valid patent on a drug’s mechanism that left its owner with no market. A licence signed years ago that now decides which defence contracts a company may bid for. A US$4.7 trillion profit shift that goes to whoever holds…
Who Owns the Design? Why IP Ownership Is often a Condition of Winning the Contract
Many companies treat IP ownership as something settled after a contract is won. However, a buyer large enough to set the terms can make ownership a condition of bidding. When that happens, the licence you signed five years ago quietly decides which contracts you are allowed to compete for. India’s Ministry of Defence has put…
Better buys time, not a barrier: what counter-positioning means for your patent strategy
A better product buys a challenger time. It does not buy a barrier. The mistake most founders make is treating the time as the win, and spending the whole of it on growth while the one thing that would outlast the window – an exclusive right – goes unfiled. Packy McCormick’s essay in Not Boring…
If the Model Is Free, What Are You Actually Buying? An IP Strategy Question for AI Buyers
The price of frontier AI capability is falling towards zero. The consequence for an IP strategy is not that AI has become cheaper. It is that anything you thought you were buying at the model layer, you are not buying exclusively. In July a Chinese lab released a model, free to use, that appeared to…
Who sets the price of your IP? Why the licence decides, not the patent
The patent is rarely where the money is decided. The licence is. Three IP developments from the past week make that point, and each turns on terms settled, or left unsettled, long before anyone reached a court. In the United Kingdom, the government has published its response to its consultation on standard essential patents, the…
