STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

The famous British writer and scholar Prof. Dr. J.R.R. Tolkien’s trio of Lord of the Rings starts with the sentence “The World is Changing!” This sentence survives today and in fact, the world has never stopped changing. Only some of us or maybe the majority of the humanity have resisted to the change for some period by acting against the nature. Today, the ever increasing pace of technological advancements unavoidably influences our culture while established cultural patterns have been collapsing one by one. As the model of economy that creates added value becomes more important as a consequence of emerging customer expectations and under the influence of the Industry 4.0, new models of work and business appears to rise.

As the economy model that creates added value is promoted and developed with the contributions of creative ideas and the added values provided by such ideas, the pace of innovations has increased too. This acceleration is so big that today we see serious initiatives which gather creative teams to commercialize innovation through creative intangible products more rapidly. European Union’s funding, Project Horizon 2020 is a good example of this process. Therefore, the ability to create intangible products with a higher added value not only increases the market value of the companies that own such products but also provides them the advantage of having a greater income and a competitive edge.

And at this point, creating intangible products with higher added value and protecting them with an appropriate strategy has become very important. We can say today that the concepts of collaboration and strategy have become an integral part of the process of creation of the intangible products with higher added value. The protection and the management of a product with higher added value with an appropriate intellectual rights strategy compliant with the marketing strategy of the company is as important as putting the product on the market with an eligible business model. If a product and the intellectual property rights established on it are not correctly shaped up and managed from the beginning, it will unavoidably have a negative impact on the value and competitive power of the company during the commercialization of that product as it will be impossible to ensure a proper management and protection of its intellectual property rights, regardless of the significance of added value of the said product. For example, the protection, commercialization and management of a highly distinguishable trademark with an appropriate intellectual property right strategy is as important as its proper designing and creation under the supervision of a visual identity specialist.

Having encountered with many conflicts arising from defaults stumbled into at the early stages of the intellectual property creation process and the problems caused by such defaults, Özden & Güçlü Legal added “Strategic Intellectual Rights Management” to its portfolio of services to ensure the development of Turkish industry in the light of a proper strategic management of intellectual rights so that strong intangible products viable to commercialization can be created. The strategic management of intellectual rights, which is better known and more widely implemented abroad than in our country, is a service which includes several disciplines or in other words, it’s a multi-disciplinary service and it offers a comprehensive perspective that embodies new horizons from clustering the intangible products of a company and determining how effectively they are protected to strategies with which they can be more effectively and efficiently commercialized, from strategies which are most suitable for the intangible products by taking into account commercial competitive environment to what kind of products they should develop based on which innovative ideas in a futuristic sense. Özden & Güçlü Legal consolidates its service of strategic management of intellectual rights, which can be differentiated according to the size of the company and the portfolio of the intellectual rights, with the software programs supplied by its German solution partner Stellbrink & Partner, aims to support the companies which desire to have a strong position in the competitive environment by developing intangible products or to increase their competitive power and income by managing and commercializing their existing intellectual rights more properly.

The “Strategic Management of Intellectual Rights” service is generally provided in macro or micro based modules and the process starts with the audit of the existing intangible assets/products of the company to be consulted (“IP Audit”) and the products are spread out locally and globally (“Landscaping”) and clustered (“Clustering”). An investigation is made on the basis of the competitive environment of the company to determine which intellectual right affects the intangible product and the extent of this influence; whether the intangible product is effectively used in the market; whether the intangible product provides sufficient revenue to the company in proportion to the added value it creates; whether correct licensing or sales, market power, collaboration and grace strategies have been established so that forward looking intellectual rights strategies can be established by considering the appropriate areas where an intangible product is created. The service of strategic management of intellectual rights which includes risk management and proper commercialization strategies, also covers the phases of creating an In-house Policy of Intellectual Rights and an Implementation Plan to allow it to become a permanent management attitute and a part of the corporate culture and training modules such as “Intellectual Property Rights In General”, “Proper Commercialization Models”, “Change Management” and “Innovation”.