How to Build an IP Portfolio, and Use it for Success

By Cynthia Cannady
October 2025

For many leaders of early-stage ventures, intellectual property (IP) is a legal matter that is occasionally glimpsed in their peripheral vision,—or, unfortunately, in their rear-view mirror. Executives are often too busy looking after the company’s day-to-day operations to focus on IP. They suspect that IP is connected to their technology but are not sure how, other than a vague anxiety about future lawsuits, or immediate pressure to file provisional patent applications to satisfy investor due diligence. IP is a blur in the company horizon. 

Here is a list of 7 questions that will help you focus on how IP can help your business succeed. It may come as a surprise that the first 4 of these questions are not explicitly about IP. Spend some time with these questions and write down the answers—no more than 2 sentences for each so you get to the point—without showing the answers to anyone. This exercise is harder than you might think. Try it.

  1. What is the company business model? Or put more simply, how does [will] the company make money?  
  2. Is the company a technology company, a goods company or a service company? Do you make money by selling commodity goods, charging for services, or licensing intangible assets, or a combination? Specify what goods, services, and intangibles.
  3. Where are your markets in a geographic sense? Worldwide or only in certain countries?  Will this change over time? 
  4. What is the company’s distinctively superior user value or DSUV (a term coined by Gil Amelio, the former CEO of Apple)? Put another way, what is your competitive advantage? 
  5. Do you use IP to own and control your DSUV? Do you know what kind of IP will enable you to own and control your DSUV and make it into a company asset? Check all that apply:
  • Copyright applies to expressions (code, texts, instruction manuals, the structure and organization of databases)
  • Patents (new and useful ideas, methods, compounds, materials, ways of doing things, AKA “inventions”)  
  • Trade secrets (technical or business information of commercial value that is maintained in secret by practice or contract)
  • Design (functional but aesthetic designs that highlight your product’s value)
  • Trademark (identifying names, images, logos) 

6. What is your budget to file patent applications in the US and in foreign jurisdictions to match your markets?  
7. Do you have a set of IP related contracts that are appropriate for your business model and business relationships? Check all that apply.

    1. Employee and officer agreements that assign IP to the company.
    2. Consultant agreements that assign IP to the company
    3. Development collaboration agreement where your company personnel will work with another company’s personnel to develop or improve a technology
    4. Licensing agreement to let another use your IP under defined conditions
    5. Evaluation agreements (exploration of c and d above)
    6. Non-disclosure (aka Confidentiality) agreement. Note: this is only for the period of negotiation of contracts.
    7. Manufacturing license
    8. Distribution license
    9. Sale of goods or service (e.g. software as a service)

Having a set of form contracts with reasonable terms that fairly represent your business model and how IP will be protected and used is an advantage. You will still negotiate the terms, or use the other company’s contract draft, but working through the forms in advance helps to clarify things. For successful technology companies, contracts are the culmination of the answers to questions 1-6. 

Once you are finished with this exercise, consider doing this exercise with your legal counsel and your colleagues. You should discuss and get to the point where you see the answers in the same way. People often start out thinking that the answers are obvious, but experience proves otherwise.  

IP is a legal tool for owning and controlling a valuable intangible asset. It only works when business leaders bring it into focus.