BANGALORE, INDIA: Risk-taking is a key quality for an entrepreneur, but not taking blind risk. Any entrepreneur, right from the initial stages should have a clear goal and make sure that every step he takes for his venture should lead to business advantage and productivity. One such important step is IP patenting.

Every start-up has a core idea or innovative technology, which is their Intellectual Property. It is highly important to protect this.

"As far as IP generation is concerned, most of the entrepreneurs starting a company already have an idea in place. One of the key aspects for them is to ensure that the idea is appropriately protected and it is not taken away by VCs or large firms during the process of negotiation, which could make their business value go down,” said Dr. Kalyan C Kankala, chief knowledge officer, Brain League.

Brain League is an IP management company, which offers start-ups IP consultation and services with a blend of technology, law and management.

Awareness though a concern, the bigger problem that comes in way of IP patenting is lack of business advantage understanding and high costs.

“Most of the start-ups know that IP protection is possible but the gap in understanding is with regards to how IP protection can be used for their business. More often they feel that its too costly and can survive without patenting . Due to this lack of understanding between business and IP protection, they are not able to do the best,” says Kalyan.

Capital is always a problem for any venture. Most of the companies find it hard to get their IP protected due to the huge costs associated with it. According to Kalyan, the cost of IP protection may range from 2 to 5 Lakh, in the form of professional fee and the cost of risk clearance ranges from 1 to 3 lakh, based on the kind of clearance. Even an hour consultation is charged somewhere around ten thousand rupees by some high quality service provider.

To eliminate this problems, Brain League offers start-ups services with cost-effective models, which come with an initial 20 per cent discount for firms with low capital.

We help companies spread out their expenses over a period of 3-5 years, which will help them optimize their costs. The deferred payment model allows payment less as 10 or 15 per cent initially and pay the entire amount later when the idea becomes a success.

Brain league also validates few inventions on equity basis, where they do not charge the firm initially, but take the small portion of the equity.

Basic steps to protect your IP

These are few steps suggested by Kalyan, which entrepreneurs need to understand and often fail to take.

* Each start-up with a unique idea or solution should protect it, which can be done by filing provisional patent application. This will block the idea at the initial level in their favor and give 12 months time to file the complete application at a later stage.

* A proper trademark search should be done before registering the company's name. Most of the times, companies register the name by checking in the registrar of companies, but fail to understand that there might be lot of companies who have multiple brands which might not be registered in the registrar of companies. The trademark clearance search ensures that the name and logo of the company is freely available for them. This can be done for few thousand rupees.

* Right from the initial period, signing of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) or confidentiality agreements and taking reasonable measures within the company, like giving notice to people quoting that the information is confidential, should be made mandatory. This would help in protecting the information, which are disclosed to initial group of employees, potential business partners, customers and VCs. All this information once gone out of hand, will be a business dis-advantage

* Filing for copyrights is also essential. Most of the entrepreneurs fail to do this and when they find someone copying their property, such as the design of website, their business values get affected. It can be avoided if one files for a copyright, which can be done online.

*Above all, the most important is to have a goal in mind for the business idea and IP. One has to be sure about how to use the IP while negotiating as well, apart from having a clear strategy and goal in mind with regard to approaching business partner or a Venture Capitalist.