Keep it Clean - Perks and Pitfalls when Developing a Cleantech IP Strategy

When setting intellectual property strategy it pays to have a solid understanding of the prevailing business issues. In cleantech there are a number of diverse industries involved, with a trend towards convergence of technologies and sectors.

Many cleantech sectors are also well established and have seen a lot of R&D over the past 10 years with heavy patenting activity. Such issues have intellectual property implications:

1. It is very important to conduct freedom-to-operate searching early in the R&D project. Care must be taken to ensure third party rights are not infringed. There may also be key patents in fields that are converging with your core technology that you may need to access before you can launch a commercially viable product.