BELLINNOVO IP

Companies like yours have seen it all:

A renegade ex-employee with an axe to grind.

An uncooperative co-founder angling for more equity.

An ambiguous development agreement that doesn’t clearly account for IP ownership.

BELLINNOVO has seen that, too.

Before worrying about whether your technology is protectable, it’s important to confirm that you definitively own it, unencumbered, in the first place. It will matter in your next round of financing, so now is the time to clean up whatever might appear less than “squeaky clean” to an investor.

A proactive approach is best. Did you know that your employees and contractors can presently (as in, “today”) assign to the company “prospective” IP rights that don’t exist yet? It’s easy, but you have to get the language in the agreement just right. It’s also possible to clear up chain of title “anomalies” after the fact with the right agreements (or artful interpretations of existing ones), but it takes a steady hand and persistence with third parties who might not want to cooperate.