Magazine Article, Source : The Manufacturer
Zone : Design and innovation
Published : October 2009
Your future: The Manufacturing Directors Conference
Protecting IP is essential in a recession, as Coller IP Management found out with industrial robot upgrade specialists Absolute Robotics.
Life is tough for organisations across all sectors in a downturn and for many companies it is a fight for survival. But it is vital to ensure that aspects of the business such as registering and updating intellectual property do not get neglected — after all, when business is hard to come by the last thing you want is someone stealing your branding or ideas and leaving, putting your survival at risk even further. It is also important for companies to remember that if you are planning to move into different areas of business, your IP needs to change with you. Too often organisations file a patent application and think that that is all they need to do. IP resides not merely in a particular invention, but in the entire way you do business. An organisation’s business plan and its IP need to evolve in tandem and it can be all too easy for them to get out of step.
The need to protect IP applies to both new companies and well-established ones. An example of an organisation that has recently sought IP protection is Absolute Robotics. Based in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, Absolute Robotics was set up three years ago to develop a concept that upgrades standard industrial robots to make them suitable for advanced manufacturing and aerospace applications. more>