What do you do if your R&D consultant is not adequately protecting your intellectual property rights?

If your R&D consultant isn't prioritizing the protection of your intellectual property rights, it's time for action! ?? Schedule a sit-down to address concerns, emphasizing the importance of safeguarding your innovations. ??? Review contracts and agreements to ensure clarity on IP ownership and confidentiality clauses. If necessary, seek legal counsel to strengthen your position and explore recourse options. Remember, protecting your IP is crucial for long-term success and innovation! ??

As intellectual property usually represent a unique and ultrahigh-value company asset, you should be very-very careful finding out what is the real situation when such issues are coming up. Do not forget that if there is a activity which can be documented and proven it would led to legal actions. If you start to claim anybody with such crime (this is a crime!) and you can not back up your claims, than you will have serious issues furthermore. Collecting FACTS and evaluating them are very important!

I have observed that it is very important to communicate concerns to the Consultant first before exploring legal gymnastics. This is because the response of the Consultant to the concerns are very important to the renderring of sound legal advice on how to address the situation.

ALWAYS. When having any concern on intellectual property rights handling, the first thing to do is get a legal counselor on board who would be able to help you how to even start the possible case. She/He will also advice what to check, how to collect and administer documentation, how to handle the whole situation for legal perspective.

Constant innovation in the project and selection of the team from different places makes certain people aware of the complete knowledge of your product and the security of work increases. NDAs ensure non-disclosure and keep important information confidential and are an essential method of protecting IP in business. In one of my visits, the company had agreements with organizations, some of which were not disclosed to us due to confidentiality, and this will increase the security of the information. Of course, this case was due to having a reliable consultant, who was the R&D manager of the company, and with the right advice in the work, he provided the manager of the collection with the best ways to achieve success.

No matter how hard you try to specify the IP items in the contract with great clarity and detail, most of the items will always remain vague and unclear. So rather than focusing on legal issues, try to prevent different interpretations of the contract provisions by engaging in open communication and discussing these issues. Act on the basis of mutual trust during these agreements.

People are not machines, they do make mistakes. So the first step would be to seek an open conversation. Often, whatever happened, didn't happen out of malice. So a stern but friendly word goes a long way. If you still see your consultant not protecting your IP: there is tons of really good consultants out there, especially in the small boutique consultancies. Pick one there!

If you just have the smallest clue of not having your intellectual property correctly handled and there is any chance of leakage, just think it over how much money and time it have costed you to collect, maintain and develop your exclusive knowledge. At that moment, you will immediately realize the urge and the importance how much damage such activity may cause you and how seriously you should take it!