Development of corporate IP strategy to support business rationale for a large patent portfolio

Client challenges

The importance of IP for the Client was growing rapidly due to convergence with the ICT sector and digital technology.

The Company had a substantial IP organization, which however was considered a support function, focused primarily on reactively creating and maintaining IP rights with limited clarity regarding business use.

The Client had a large patent portfolio costing a lot of money while lacking insight into whether and how it supported the business, or whether a lot of it could be abandoned/licensed/sold to free up/generate resources.

Project with Konsert

• The Client engaged Konsert to lead the development of a business-driven corporate IP strategy framework and format.
• The project aimed to create a “north star” for the Client’s strategic IP investments and to prove (or disprove) the value of more business-driven IP management, as starting point for a potential transformation.

Impact

• The new corporate IP strategy defined IP strategic objectives and action plans intimately aligned with business priorities across functions.
• Annual IP strategy approval process by CEO and the executive board, making the strategy the guiding document for all the Client´s IP operations and interfaces.
• The new strategic direction became the basis for a large change program, realigning the IP operating model to better support the business.
• Apart from guiding IP portfolio development and use, the IP strategy has also been used to identify strategic and non-strategic IP in the existing portfolio, resulting in large savings through portfolio pruning.