Is your IP protected?

New Zealand businesses can no longer afford to ignore intellectual property assets while drawing up their risk management strategy, according to a review of IP risk management by Delta Insurance, Protecting Your Competitive Advantage.

The review traces major trends in IP-related issues in China and the US and outlines the challenges that can come from legitimate organisations taking legal action to protect their interests.

Review author Avani Vyas, a senior underwriter at Delta, says in a media release that IP registrations are rocketing globally as part of a major surge in the growth of intangible assets which now comprise almost 90 percent of the asset value of businesses “and patents, copyrights, registered designs and trademarks make up a big proportion of that”.

She says patent filings worldwide increased by 8.3 percent in 2016 over the previous year and the figure for trademarks was 13.5 percent – 9.7 million were filed. In 2016, China applied for 3.7 million trademarks and 1.3 million patents; the corresponding figures in the US were 545,000 and 605,000.

Alongside that, IP litigation also did brisk trade: 31,000 patent infringements went to court in the US between 2012 and 2107, while Chinese courts handled 213,000 IP-related cases in 2017 alone.

Kiwi companies invested around $1.6 billion in R&D and registered around 7000 trademarks and 300 patents in 2016.

The review provides cautionary tales of kiwi businesses which had to face consequences from IP violations, predatory IP attacks and outlines steps businesses can take to improve their risk management.