What is the IPR Policy of Your Organisation?
The Companies are always bothering for their bottomline but they hardly realise as to how much IPR issues impact their working.
It is a holistic process and warrants that companies take a more serious approach on IPR in a consistent manner rather than acting as and when any infringement crops up.
Globally, the best practices in IPR Policy revolves around the following questions:
Is your company having an IPR Policy?
Is your company IPR Policy includes every intrinsic and extrinsic factors?
Is your IPR Policy being reviewed on regular basis with the backdrop of past experiences?
Is your IPR Policy sufficient to save your bottomline?
Bedrock of IPR Policy
The IPR Policy of every organisation varies on the basis of product or service they are engaged into.
It starts with various in-house checks and goes down the line with various extrinsic factors including business intelligence with
a.target demography,
b.statistics of anticipated and actual cases,
c.infringement patterns and modus operandi,
d. identified product(s),
e.estimated value of infringement with plan of actions from time to time for an entire financial year.
The IPR Policy should be reviewed and changed on regular basis since various intrinsic and extrinsic factors varies on regular basis too.
Why Companies should have an IPR Policy?
Companies should be vigilant about its IPR which makes an identity in the market and the market share it enjoys with its IPR standing. In order to understand a requirement of IPR Policy, let’s see some situations as below:
Situation 1
More the market share higher will be the probability of IPR infringements as unhealthy competition crops up to invade such position.If sales increase and market share also increases , the companies should be more vigil to safeguard their business interest.
The infringers are more likely to enter in such products or territory where the demand of a product or services are increasing as they may also end up making revenue for themselves under the guise of deceptive selling.
Situation 2
The second scenario is when the demand is not decreasing and then too bottom line is decreasing in a product line, then it can reflect a very high probability of IPR infringement on a new elevated level.
Situation 3
Sudden increase in demand of a product in a specific demography but there is gap between demand and supply, but then too it is available in the stores and shops all the time, then it can be an indication that infringed products are being positioned.
Situation 4
Where product has become instant hit and margin is high coupled with a fact that the cost of production is low, then it can be very sensitive to infringement.
Given the aforesaid and many more situations , it becomes significant to deal with the issue with proper bifurcation of strategy and implementation in stages with proper timing with consistency.
IPR Policy is not only about fighting out infringement and preventing duplication and infringements but also to take various safeguards, recognising dos and don’ts, identifying early indicators, documenting various case studies with statistics, demographic challenges and planning a meticulous plan to implement through out a year in a consistent manner.
This has to be holistically dealt with micro statistics in a consistent manner to make your company sail through in any given situation at any given point of time.
Likewise, there are many more situations. There is an imperative need to identify such situations well in advance and plan to tackle these on regular basis, since a customer can have bad experience while consuming the infringed product and can also bring bad name to the product line. This can also impact the goodwill of the brand and the company. These make a sound case for every company to have IPR Policy.
Conclusion
A regular deliberation should be in place with every product already in place and/or to be launched so that all external factors impacting it, coupled with different demography, can be well factored to check IPR infringement rather than acting in a “switch on” or “switch off” manner.
A well deliberated IPR policy should be in the DNA of working of every organisation as a natural process of working and in a meticulous manner with business intelligence deployed at the first place.
Further, gone are the days when IPR was only considered as an asset but in the present age it has much more impact in the disruption of businesses and will infact escalate in future in a multifold manner.
It is high time, companies should meticulously draft their IPR Policy and implement in a well informed manner to see a pragmatic change in working and achieve their desired bottomline.
We will love to hear from you on any question or feedback on arushi.vyas@amlegals.com | pooja.gadhavi@amlegals.com.
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