Commercialisation of Innovation and Reputation
Intellectual property rights (IPRs) is a collective term for various rights recognised by law that protect commercial assets such as data, confidential information, discoveries, developments, inventions, improvements, methods of use or delivery, processes, know-how, trade secrets, creative work (e.g. literature, designs, images, symbols, logos) or names of businesses, products or services.
The person or business who is legally recognised as owner of any IPRs in such commercially valuable assets is in effect the owner of, and can legally control, those underlying assets.
A legal transaction can be used by an owner of any IPRs to exploit those IPRs. The most common transaction involving IPRs is licensing whereby the licensor retains the ownership of their IPRs but allows the licensee to use the IPRs. Licensing-out may well be the route pursued by an innovative company with an invention but without the resources to exploit it unaided. Conversely, licensing-in may be pursued by a larger business with the commercial muscle or resources which equip that business to promote the technology or products or services incorporating the IPRs of others.