Ownership & Licensing
While the initial ownership of intellectual property is stipulated in intellectual property laws, the incidence of ownership, like any property, can be transferred. In some instances, such as employer and employee, or commissioning relationships, there are often certain legal presumptions. In other instances, the ownership issue is left to the interested parties to sort out among themselves via contracts.
In the age of open innovation involving partnerships , one important management consideration of innovative institutions is to agree in advance the ownership and licensing arrangements of undisclosed information, industrial designs, inventive patents and other intellectual property subject matters. A certain degree of control particularly over the direction of technological evolution and interoperability is strategic and prudent in terms of governance. For any business models, it is always important to manage assets (particularly valuable intangible ones) and to maintain and sustain equitable revenue streams.
Intellectual property ownership can be assigned or exclusive licences can be granted by standard written clauses agreed contractually between the parties. For licensing, the licensing conditions should not restrain trade competition in the market and impede the transfer and dissemination of technology. Apart from managing risks, more value can be added through pooling or aggregating intellectual property subject matters eg to prepare for proprietary technology portfolios that the market will need.
All these require vision and leadership, strategic mission and specialist execution capacity, upfront financial support or equitable benefits sharing. If the trend is not recognized, there is no way to capitalize on it. To achieve more with less, entrepreneurship is required on all business fronts.