DOCUMENT CHECKLIST
The audit plan should include a list of the documents to be reviewed.
Obvious assets: patents, trademarks, trade secrets, etc.
Less obvious assets: license agreements, distribution agreements, employee and consultant
agreements, journal articles, published papers, competitive analysis documents, marketing files,
patents, lab notebooks, etc.
DOCKETING...not IP management
Docketing systems are good at helping companies to ensure that they take appropriate actions by required dates. They do not determine, however, whether these actions are sensible. For example, a company with hundreds of patents could be wasting thousands of dollars annually by maintaining patents that it does not use in its core business, but the docketing system does not care. It simply informs users that it is time to make certain payments.
SPREADSHEETS...error prone
Spreadsheets often are used to try to make up for shortcomings in the functionality of docketing systems. Companies will try to track additional information about intellectual property. However, spreadsheets are error prone, difficult to share, and limited, and when used in conjunction with docketing systems, they can create a need for duplicate data entry.
SHARED DIRECTORIES...missed interrelationships
Shared directories on network servers sometimes are used in an attempt to overcome the inability of spreadsheets to be shared easily. Unfortunately, information kept in a shared directory requires a lot of maintenance in order to ensure that the data are current, and version control becomes a new problem. And although shared directories may be a convenient place to dump related bits of information, they are severely limited when it comes to handling key relationships, for example, between technologies and business units or between trademarks and products.
STAND-ALONE DATABASES...inflexible
Some companies have tried database programs in an attempt to improve on the limitations of spreadsheets and shared directories. However, these databases are not geared toward sharing data with a distributed workforce. They require extensive information technology resources and custom programming, and are expensive to modify as the business changes and grows.
None of the approaches or any combination of the tools described here suffices for the meaningful implementation of strategic intellectual property management. Consequently, many different spreadsheets, databases, and directories are deployed in different areas of the company in an attempt to address needs at a departmental level. This creates a nightmare scenario of disparate
data silos, each with its own risks of data inaccuracies and none with the complete business oriented
picture of the company’s intellectual property assets.