Community Forum – How do you staff your IP function

A: How do you staff your IP function? 

Please find below the responses to this week’s IRI Community Forum Survey. Thank you to those who took the time to add their input! 

From the IRI member posing the survey: We are looking to understand how other companies handle the management of their IP portfolio, particularly with regard to staffing. We have an opportunity to change our structure and would like to know what approaches others have found effective. We appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences with us. 

Responses are below.

Community Responses

Other:

• Internal team with a mix of IP staff and R&D management

What do you think works well about your structure and in what ways do you think it could be improved?

• The IP staff is located in a single group, which makes contact and role recognition easy. This could be improved with a greater number of FTEs dedicated as IP staff.
• Some located at R&D and some at corporate
• Current employer has a minor IP portfolio and it’s managed primarily by the corp leader and external council.  ($100-1000M size company).  Former company was $1-5B range, Aero & Defense company and managed IP with a specific IP lawyer (in-house, under legal – plus external counsel to do all drafting, prosecution, etc.) and a technology council (senior tech leaders for each business division plus the corporate tech leader).  Maintained a balanced approach – internal reviews plus business cases and cross-BU review / discussion of how to manage, incentivize, etc.
• This structure supports efficiencies through centralization of systems, processes, resources, etc. It also promotes best practice sharing and compliance with companywide policies and procedures.
• IP team employees work directly with researchers/engineers on specific projects.
• Agility, effective management of business risks versus just legal
• Better relationships with inventors, better understanding of the innovation happening within the business
• Limited resources