Summary
This post outlines foundational intellectual property practices for small and medium-sized enterprises in India. It highlights the importance of IP awareness as the initial step towards leveraging IP for business advantage. The author provides practical resources, including free online courses and websites, to facilitate IP learning for SMEs. Emphasis is placed on understanding both the nature of IP and its business benefits. The post concludes by indicating that future editions will discuss aligning IP protection strategies with company objectives.
This post was first published on August 6th, 2013.
Intellectual Property (IP) can play an important role in taking a SME to the next level in business, provided the company takes the right steps in the right direction. While the nature of IP actions to be undertaken by an organisation varies from company to company, there are some basic practices that every company must take to keep the option of taking advantage of IP, open. The upcoming editions of this column will cover some of the most important IP practices.
The first step towards realizing value from IP is, gaining an understanding of what IP can do for an organisation. In other words, IP awareness is the first step towards a company’s IP success. IP awareness has to basic prongs, one, knowing what IP is, and two, learning how it can help a business. There are quite a few free, yet very effective materials available on IP for SMEs, which will help in IP learning. Some of the sources and their links are provided hereunder:
- Open and Free online IP courses for businesses – www.onlineipcourses.com;
- IP resources such as blogs – bananaip.com/sinapse and www.spicyipindia.blogspot.in;
- IP Radio – www.radiosinapse.com; and
- WIPO Case Studies and Articles on SMES – http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/
The next edition of this column will talk about integrating IP protection strategy with business goals of a company.