By Sean Waterman, Head of Intellectual Property

Commercial Licensing of Intellectual Property (IP) assets such as trade marks, product designs or copyright protected works can be a lucrative source of income but to exploit those assets you may need to work with licensing partners to create, develop or produce products or get them to market, therefore your choice of partners are important decisions.

Choosing a licensing partner that can maximise your income is of course important, but the potential financial returns should not be the sole consideration, ethics, values and the potential risks to your organisation’s reputation may also come into play.

This is especially true when licensing the use of your trade marks. Trade marks are typically symbols, images or words that are associated with the goods or services provided by the owner and as such they represent your brand. Your brand will be associated with nature and quality of the products and services for which your trade marks are used and it may also become associated with the reputation of your licensing partners.

If the products or services are poor quality or your licensing partner’s values do not align with your organisation’s, then all the hard work and expense that has gone into building your brand’s identity and reputation can be undermined. Therefore, having effective governance, procedures, policies and guidelines on the licensing and use of your trade marks is important if you are to ensure your reputation will be protected.

I will be leading Naomi Korn Associates’ next date of our intermediate level Commercial Licensing course, on Thursday 21st May 9:30am-1pm, worth 3 CPD points from CPD UK. This course is perfect for participants who want to navigate the steps required to develop the commercial potential of their assets including how to select the right licensing partners. It is advised that participants should already have a basic understanding of copyright. Book now via the link above or contact our Training Manager at info@naomikorn.com.

Each of our intermediate courses can be taken as an individual course or as part of our Intermediate Certificate (available in Copyright and in Data Protection). For further information, please see our ‘Certification and Accreditation’ page. If you have any queries or would like to get in touch, please reach out to our Training Manager at info@naomikorn.com.