eCentral Business Show^©

Why is your intellectual property important

Mon 7:00am 23 Oct 2017
Podcast Audio


If you are building a business then you are building intellectual property. As a consequence you've got capital, investment in knowledge, secrets, copyright material and more. In this interview with the Brent Weston we explore the nature of intellectual property, the assets and how important it is to protect it.

Brent Weston is most easily found on Linkedin

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Video transcript    why is intellectual property important it's what we're talking about today on the eCentral business show. I'm John Nayler joined again by Brett Weston. specialists in your field of intellectual property thank you very much for coming back to the show it's always a pleasure - okay all right all right now you do well you address the camera you talk to me and and you know you've informed as well congratulations it's a it's a scintillating combination sounds like a sporting comic anyway leave you all backs alone now what we want to talk to bit too about today is intellectual property and why it's important you know what why is it like important to protect your IP whole range of reasons I mean intellectual property is is an asset it'll intellectual property is is something that can vary bought and sold in the marketplace they can be licensed it can add significant value to a business it's all it's also important in terms of projecting the the the creator's ideas mm-hm as indicated in part one of the program some IP can be protected by registration of some is protected by operation of the ordinary law that's right so there's copyright and secrets or automatic tool arrest really do need some sample of registration yeah and then they're afforded statutory protection and I'm anywhere between 10 and 20 years depending on the IP right patent attorney afraid max of 10 and so on it's important to protect IP because it allows the the owner the Creator the developer to to manage their IP ownership if it's not protected the IPO get away from them really yeah what this dude's feeling it treats me you know you're not a producer be like if you want funding for something you've got some great idea for an app or piece of software or something you want to get down it's gonna be huge then you want to tell people better but you guys stare at said no no it's the secrecy is really important many balance the book my sequence is important at the initial development phase because it's very much a case of letting the cat at the bag if you start telling the whole world of it's a great idea because there are competitors out there there are there are people out there organizations that are keeping an eye and the ear open more new ideas which which lay themselves can take and start to develop and protect them so it's interesting you know I go to meetups quite regularly around technology and startups and stuff like that and you see this and all the ball while it foxes like in the crowd having a glass of wine talking to people randomly and they're there ferreting for that's real there's opportunities there's a nepeta knowledge that someone would just still exactly right so it's a general rule and this doesn't apply to copyright so much or mmm or to you know a musical word but but certainly in relation to something like and you would improve why of delivering some product bar news software hmm it's critical to keep the underlying source code secret yes yes you don't want to give competitors particularly if you're operating in the software development space anyway that's your stocking trade shall we say yes you know I want to give compared as competitors and unintended lift in the marketplace shall we say so identifying I he's critical at the first step okay what is it I've got here hmm secondly how do I protect it and once I protected it what am I going to do with it so there that there the initial steps in my view but in the third phase is it turns on what your approach to the world is I should think some people like to fix problems and they give that to humankind generally to improve the lot of us all yeah some people like to make a bit of money out of their ideas hmm so they want to commercially exploit the intellectual property that they developed and protected a couple of ways to take IP to market you can build a joint venture around it hmm for example if there's if you've developed a piece of mining equipment you may attract investors you might attract that attract different entities that invested its ongoing development hmm but at the same for the joint ventures built around the IP asset right and indeed it's taken to market devise some distribution arrangement perhaps with the third party you can license the intellectual property to a party with in Australia or abroad who might manufacture it and then distribute it through their channels in return for a license fee back to the owner mmm there's a lot of government funding available for the develop and exportation of IP as well the R&D grants that are available okay so you can take your IP and and and tap into that funding to further develop it you can form you could form our relationships with R&D startup companies or with universities to develop and then commercially exploit there's a range of ways of commercializing intellectual property yeah so on the basis of that dough it's all about building an asset out of this which then ultimately has a value yes there how does that work well that's the in a way the fourth way of commercially exploiting IP and that is to simply sell it so you mentioned earlier John off-camera that you know you have we've had you know a plethora of of IP or Infotech type startup companies that have developed an app or some such thing super smart software perhaps that was normal they've generated a substantial revenue huge market share hey presto we've reached a point yet where we probably can't take it any further there's an opportunity for a trade sale okay in depending on the value of the IPS if there might be a very large sale multiplier attached to it so what that means is generally speaking a a willing purchase or in good faith as we say in the trade who will want to value the IP assets yes and then they will you know through it through a series of spider and mirror type exercises I'll arrive at what they think is a reasonable purchase price paid based on prospective revenue and and market share and so the value of the asset is is X and then it's multiplied by say five or ten which arrives at a purchase price so the better the IPR said is has been protected and the greater but today it will be the higher sale price on exit okay that's the fourth way of realizing value of I appears to simply sell it mmm a huge multiplier and multiplier essentially a huge purchase price okay that's the dream but now are you prepared to stick around I really wanted like to drill down on entrepreneurship and startups and that sort of thing the disruptors and have a quick chat about that subject you stick around and talk to us about that because I think there's a real value in where we go where this is really any choice you make anyway thank you very much there Brent west and we find your LinkedIn is the best place we do and that's Western s w es gon correct very few Western maybe type in IP as well oh okay there you go Brisbane okay yeah that's gonna find you for sure okay thank you for Brent that's another episode of the eCentral business show done I'm John Nayler.