By: Tom Hochstatter, President

 

Right Term, Feels Wrong

When I hear the word “audit” it conjures all kinds of negative emotions and feelings. For me and my stage in life an audit usually means just a couple of (soon to be painful) exercises: the much maligned “IRS audit”, or in business the “accounting audit”, or a “health audit”. None of these puts smiles on the faces of the recipients or participants, but that’s because the only two possible outcomes are: a) you’ve done something wrong and you have to fix it (or pay a penalty for having done it wrong in the first place), or b) ok, nothing is wrong, but we’re keeping an eye on things…

Brilliance of Discovery and Reflection

Remember back in college when you could audit a course simply because you had interest in a particular subject that generally wasn’t requisite for your particular major, but held you fascinated. Just drop in on the class and learn something new that either inspired you in a new or creative way or was actually useful to your core studies. In either case you exited that “audit” inspired, retrospective, but never ambivalent, or worse a feeling of dread avoided.

IP Audit Inspiration

In 2019, Techson will be formally announcing its newest IP Advisory practice area: the IP Audit – the good kind that invites new thinking, new opportunities, without the negative side-affects. We also call this effort a “Quality of IP” or QIP report similar in concept to a Quality of Earnings report but much easier, less costly and done at record speed.

We have assembled a brilliant team of experienced IP and Business professionals that span the entire Innovation Supply Chain (ISC) spectrum – from initial ideation to the most complicated monetization efforts and everything in between. Our team has rote IP experience as current or former practicing patent researchers, patent attorneys, engineers, damages experts and the like. We’ve married theses skill sets with experienced business executives, entrepreneurs, named inventors, VCs/PE/Investment professionals to bring a holist business approach to innovation and invention and your IP Audit.

Better – we have hand curated an ecosystem of like-minded professionals to come along side our IP Audit efforts; so, when we need additional firepower, we can both rely on trusted providers to achieve our mutual goals yet manage them under our direction – no loose cannons.  

Also, your IP Audit benefits from the use of our Limestone Innovation Supply Chain platform it provides extremely fast, unbiased answers across your entire patent portfolio. It sets our strategy consultants onto the best and most efficient trajectories. This allows your IP Audit to take just a few weeks and not months, or worse… The market is moving too fast to wait months for your results.

What’s in a Techson IP audit, beyond true actionability:

·      Areas of further invention and exploration

·      Areas to defocus – on prosecution, or maintenance - with reinvestment advice

·      How the market thinks about your current innovation or innovation trajectory

·      Opportunities to augment your patent portfolio with incremental patent acquisition

·      Avenues to monetize your patents

·      How to socialize your IP strategies within your company and the marketplace

·      A network of like-minded IP professionals that want to help you achieve your goals

What’s Not in a Techson IP Audit

·      Mountains of (useless) charts and graphs telling you what you already know

·      Get rich quick schemes with unrealistic monetization outcomes (hint: they don’t exist)

·      Slash and burn budget cutting on patent maintenance or prosecution

·      Weighty reports attempting to convince you to retain us for months on end

If you’d like to discuss this as part of your 2019 company objectives, we’ve still got a couple weeks left in the year to get a jump start. Reach out to me directly (tom at techsonip.com) and we’ll schedule a brief 30-minute conversation to get you moving and thinking in the right direction. Then, we can pick things up in the new year and make 2019 truly the year of the IP Audit (and not cringe when we say it).

 

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