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The critical success factors for conducting an IP Audit

Conducting a thorough audit of all the intangible assets or intellectual property (IP) that an organisation owns is a time-consuming and often costly business.  You want to get it right and make sure that maximum value is received by the organisation when conducting the audit.

So what are the critical success factors?  What are the important things to get right?

• Buy-in of relevant individuals - the IP audit should be initiated by senior management.  The people that will be involved in the IP audit must buy in to the benefits that will be obtained through doing the IP audit.
• Focus on the right issues - the results of the IP audit should be more than a simple register of the IP and tangible assets owned by an organisation.
• The right people - it is critical to have people with practical and commercial experience in conducting IP audits.   For example, these are some of the questions that should be asked - What processes or knowledge are critical to your success? Are they unique to your organisation?  If so, have you protected them?   Often a preliminary IP audit can be done by people within the organisation (in-house counsel or management).  Ideally, it should be conducted with the assistance of professional IP auditors.   Using attorneys to conduct the IP audit has the added advantage that al results of the IP audit are subject to attorney-client privilege.
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