When handled strategically, intellectual property assets create value for innovations. These assets often account for more than 80% of a company's value, especially in creative and digital industries like the gaming sector.

Identify the intellectual property assets within your company. Then, consider how to develop and manage them to generate the best possible business outcomes and value.

Why create an intellectual property strategy?

Since a large majority of your company's assets are intangible, having a strategy for them is critical. In your strategic work, you will identify, categorize, and prioritize your company's intellectual property assets and develop a plan for how best to control these assets and create business value.

The strategy can be used to:

• Develop your business model
• Enable good and clear collaborations
• Make the company more attractive to investors
• Market your business to consumers and users
• Stay ahead of competitors by controlling critical business assets
• Accelerate company development by identifying new opportunities

Having a strategy for your intellectual property assets is especially important in innovative gaming companies where the company's entire value often consists of ideas derived from creativity and innovation.

Many important assets

Examples of important intellectual property assets in a game development company include software, graphic design, development methods, company and product trademarks, branding strategies, contracts, business models, and technical solutions (often computer-implemented).

Many of these assets can be secured through intellectual property rights. Copyright covers artistic works as well as computer programs and is therefore central to the gaming industry. The company's registered rights (patents, registered trademarks, registered design protections) should be viewed as assets that need to be managed strategically.

Some assets may be suitable to handle as trade secrets, either because they cannot be registered as intellectual property or because the publication that comes with intellectual property registration is not desirable.

How you choose to manage these assets should always be the result of a strategic business consideration.

Here are examples of assets that can be included in an intellectual property strategy:

• All contracts entered into by the company, both commercial agreements and those regulating collaborations and other legal agreements.
• Brand names, logos, and domain names for game products or other services.
• Brand names, logos, and domain names for the company's studio.
• Design elements present in game products, such as character appearances.
• Registered design protections.
• Well-documented game concepts.
• Scripts and storyboards, sketches.
• Software and proprietary technology as well as other actors' technology you need access to.
• Film and music and other copyright-protected works.
• Patents.
• Trade secrets.

Remember to:

• Identify all of your company's intellectual property assets.
• Prioritize among the assets.
• Take control of the various assets using appropriate tools like intellectual property rights and trade secrets.
• Continuously manage and develop your intellectual property assets.
• Communicate your intellectual property assets, internally and externally, when needed in business contexts, such as in financing and competition.
• Lastly, use and leverage your intellectual property assets.