We live in a world of continuous improvement. To remain competitive, your business is likely to be innovating all the time: whether by launching new products and services, improving your manufacturing or production techniques, or making other improvements to the operation of your business.

Whenever you invent or create something new, you’ll almost certainly be generating new ‘intangibles’ – non-physical things that may become assets you can use repeatedly (without wearing them out). This is just as true for retail and service businesses as it is for high-tech firms and university or research institute ‘spin-outs’.

Just as your company should understand and value the intellectual property (IP) you already own, you should also have processes in place to identify all the new things you produce and think about how you should be protecting them. This is vital because if you don’t take timely action to safeguard an asset that could be protectable as IP, you can lose the ability to do so.