Kick-StartiP

Kick-StartiP will help you start up and start strong … starting with your IP

If you’re going to succeed in this increasingly competitive world you will need to give your business the strongest possible start. But how do you do that?

Your business has most likely evolved from a great idea. If that is the case you will have built your business plan around that idea and, from there, created the strategy and tactics to deliver that plan.

This is a proven path taken by most innovative, new businesses. However, we’d like to ask you one additional question:

Have you considered the pivotal role your intellectual property (IP) will need to play to make sure your strategy succeeds?

Your IP will define the value of your business. It will provide you with a commercial advantage. It will allow you to create exclusivity. It will protect your products or processes from the unwanted attention of your competitors and potential infringers.

And, if you are seeking investment, your IP will become even more crucial.

We have seen valuations drop by as much as 70% when investors spot weaknesses in an IP portfolio. More worryingly, we’ve also seen a significant number of investors walk away entirely if they don’t like what they see.

This means that if you are going to give your business the strongest possible start, you’ll need the strongest possible IP strategy - a strategy that not only complements but maps exactly to your business plan from the outset, and a strategy that will support the strongest possible exit.

HOW CAN YOU GET YOUR STRATEGY RIGHT FROM THE (Kick-)Start?

Don’t think of IP as just a compliance exercise or, worse still, put it off until later. Once you start down a particular track it is difficult (not to mention expensive) to get back on course. By that time, your opportunity to make the best possible start could have been lost forever.

Instead we’d always suggest you take time to:

Understand the potential importance of your IP, how it could support your company, how it will deliver your business plan and how you can use it to make your business more valuable.
Identify exactly what innovation you have and the type of IP protection that fits best with your business plan so you can work out when (or if) to start the process of obtaining registered protection.
Develop a formal patent, design, and trade mark filing strategy to dictate where, when and how you file and protect your know-how.
Document all your supporting information so you have a comprehensive but straightforward roadmap you can share with your board and potential investors.
Implement! Even the best ideas have little impact if they’re not acted upon, so once you have completed the first 4 stages, you’ll need to take the necessary action.

WHY SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO Kick-Start(your)iP?

The short answer is Kick-StartiP will give you all the clarity and certainty you’ll need to give your business the best possible start you want.

At the end of Step 1 you will have:

An explicit IP strategy (in writing) that will help you make the right IP decisions and manage your rights responsibly, commercially and cost-effectively
A report that confirms your inventive concepts, the relevant IP rights and the ownership of your inventions and summarises the other legal or commercial issues you should address
A set of slides that provides an executive summary of your IP strategy that you can add to your deck for use in presentations to prospective investors
An accurate budget for your future IP-related costs

And, as you start working through steps 2-5 you will have your very own attorney, someone you know and someone who already knows you and your business, so you continue to receive the best possible service and the most relevant advice at every stage.

HOW DOES Kick-StartiP WORK?

Kick-StartiP has been designed to help you to understand, identify, develop and document your IP strategy. It is not a shortcut to producing a token patent application so you have something to appease potential investors.

We want to encourage you to take a very different and more commercial view of IP.

Kick-StartiP will examine your innovation from the perspective of your business plan, your commercial objectives, your market and your competition so that together we can create the right IP strategy for you, the strategy that will guide you to the future you want.

The 4-step process our hugely experienced attorneys will lead you through is very straightforward. We’d also stress every step is totally self-contained. We will pause after each has been completed so you have the time you need to take stock and decide how – or even if – you’d like to approach the next stage.

The Innovation Capture Session (ICS) is the critical component; our findings will set the IP strategy for the remaining steps and beyond.

We'll meet you personally to host a very wide-ranging discussion that will cover (amongst other things): your business plan; your launch plan; the inventive concepts you have; the patentability of your invention(s); the development of a ‘storyboard’ to show what supporting, technical details are needed; a possible patent filing strategy; the importance of secret know how and how to protect it; the importance of your brand and how to protect it; whether you have absolutely everything required to start; and your IP budget.

Within days we will follow up with a written report that outlines: the key inventive concepts; the different forms of IP rights that are available; the best way to secure those rights; the ownership of any inventions; any other relevant legal or commercial issues we may have identified; and a suggested IP budget for the next 18 months.
Although this step is optional, if the ICS confirms you need a patent we may suggest you perform a pre-filing novelty search to provide greater certainty on the patentability of your invention.

To make it as easy as possible for you we will instruct a professional searcher to conduct the search, review the results and provide a written report summarising their findings. We can also discuss their findings by video conference if you have any questions.

WE ALWAYS (Kick-)Start WITH A FIXED OUTCOME AND A FIXED PRICE

We know that when you’re starting out cash is always at a premium. However, far too many professional advisers are still unwilling to offer any certainty in terms of outcome or cost. We don’t think that’s fair so at every stage we will guarantee what we’ll do and exactly how much it will cost so you can decide what you want to do next.

Step 1: the Innovation Capture Session. This includes our half-day meeting, the written report, and your summary slides. The cost for this is: £2,200 (exc. VAT) / 27,500 SEK (exc. MOMS) / 19,000 DKK (exc. MOMS).

Step 2: the optional pre-filing novelty search - undertaken, reviewed and summarised by an experienced professional. The cost for this, per inventive concept, is: £895 (exc. VAT) / 12,000 SEK (exc. MOMS) / 8,000 DKK (exc. MOMS).

Once Steps 1 and 2 are complete we’ll know exactly what we’re dealing with. This means we can give you a fixed-fee for drafting your patent application in Step 3 and provide you with a fixed-fee for filing your applications in the countries determined by your IP strategy in Step 4.

And, as every step will be looked after by an attorney you know and who knows you, you can rest assured they’ll be on hand to answer your questions, to make each step as easy as possible and to provide an accurate forecast of your future IP-related costs.

Partner - Patent Attorney

Partner - Patent Attorney

CONTACT US

Would you like to find out more about the Kick-StartiP process? You can arrange to speak to one of our team or request a copy of our brochure by providing us with your details below.