Does your business have an intellectual property strategy? This question was once asked only of larger businesses, most frequently in the technology-focused industry or some other sector in which IP and other intangible assets traditionally comprised a larger portion of overall business value.

Today, most founders and executives of small- and medium-size businesses understand that IP and other intangible assets represent the majority of the value of their business. Yet, far fewer take the time to create an IP strategy and fewer still actually put their IP strategies to use in managing their IP assets and guiding their IP decision-making processes.

The gap that has arisen between those businesses that recognize the significance of IP but fail to develop and implement IP strategies is often due to a perception that IP strategies are costly and cumbersome documents to produce (and even more costly and cumbersome documents to implement).

Nothing could be further from the truth. At its core an IP strategy should be a simple set of statements to help guide your approach to IP. The core of a solid IP strategy can be as simple as:

• Block competitors from using the next generation of our product;

• Maintain rights to use the information we collect from the users of our services;

• Allow use of content by third parties, but only for noncommercial purposes; or

• Maintain our market advantage through secrecy of our proprietary processes.

An ideal IP strategy should help you form a clear game plan around IP decision-making - providing guidance as to the role IP should play in commercial decisions and acting as a tool to help identify ways IP can be used to build business value. The IP policy should record in a few sentences the strategic role played by IP in your business and how to best protect and commercialize that IP. An IP strategy should help ensure that each decision any individual in your business makes about IP is an informed and reasoned decision in support your business objectives and strategy.

A well-developed and properly implemented IP strategy can help create value for your business by significantly increasing the level of visibility you have into the IP assets and enabling you to take a more consistent approach to protecting and commercializing those assets. These increases in visibility and consistency can not only lead to more effective and efficient protection and use of key IP assets, but will often times also yield additional benefits in the form of increases in:

• Opportunities to generate additional revenue through IP licensing;

• Access to the growing secondary markets for the sale of IP assets;

• Availability of IP assets for use as collateral in financing and other transactions;

• Cost-savings through more efficient IP filings (and the elimination of obsolete IP filings);

• Protection against IP theft, espionage, and competitive intelligence;

•Responsiveness to diligence requests from vendors, customers, financing sources, and others;

• Capacity to assess and respond to IP litigation threats - from competitors and other companies, such as patent holding companies (often referred to as "trolls"); and

• Ability to recognize, evaluate and prosecute violations of your own IP.

While there is no substitute for proper legal counsel in the process of developing an IP strategy, there are steps that you can take to prepare for engaging an attorney to discuss an IP strategy. Publicly available resources (many prepared by law firms) can be a useful tool to familiarize yourself with the basic forms of IP and options for developing an IP strategy. Introductory meetings with attorneys (often held "off the clock") can also be a helpful way to both gather information and assess the capabilities of an attorney in this area. Ultimately though, a successful IP strategy is dependant not only on recognizing the importance of IP to achieving your business objectives but on making it a priority to follow-through on the development of an IP strategy tailored to fit those objectives. Only then can you begin realize the benefits that come with having a successful IP strategy.

Jason Haislmaier is a partner in the Boulder office of the law firm of Holme Roberts & Owen LLP. He can be reached at 303-417-8503 or by e-mail at jason.haislmaier@hro.com.