IA Audit

An IA audit comprises a systematic review of a business, which generates a report on the status of the business’ IA as well as an inventory of information relevant to the creation, identification, maintenance, use, protection and enforcement of IA rights.  The IA audit process should involve undertaking a comprehensive review of a business’ working practices, IA assets, related agreements, relevant policies and compliance procedures.

Historically, people viewed IA audits as only being required by large companies involved in the creation and development of large scale industrial innovation. Today however, every business owns and/or makes use of a variety of IA and should therefore undertake an IA audit, not just once, but on a regular basis.

This exercise is a powerful strategic tool for managing and maximising return on a business’ IA investment. The inventory produced will contain information useful in understanding what is happening in the underlying business and market.An IA audit and the resulting inventory will assist businesses to identify:

• which IA has been created and is owned by the business;
• which IA is being used by the business;
• how IA is being used or not used, helping to identify exploitation potential;
• whether the IA being used is owned by the business or by a third party;
• whether the IA being used infringe third party rights or whether the business’ IA is being infringed by third parties;
• which internal policies relating to IA exist and which should be put in place for better IA management purposes,

and to determine in light of this information, what action should be taken with respect to each IA to best serve the relevant goals of the business and to maintain and improve the business’ competitive edge in the relevant markets. This will be a very useful tool for business planning and strategy formation, meaning that IA can form an integral part of the business plan rather than being seen as a separate factor which is the current practice for many businesses.

Here at MBM, we use an online information gathering tool as the first step of undertaking an IA Audit. If you are interested in having an IA Audit undertaken by MBM Commercial and wish to use this online tool,  please contact us to discuss and we shall issue you with a registration password to enable you to logon to our system to use our online IA information gathering tool.

Please contact Hannah Alphey for further details.

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