Title: A coherent approach to SME intellectual property management 

Sub-title: Inattention may be the biggest menace

At first glance you might think that Luc Masson, Business Development Manager at Alu-Rex, a manufacturer of eaves-troughs, works in an old economy business. Gutters have been diverting rain water away from buildings for more than 100 years, and from ground level, the layman could be forgiven for thinking that they are all pretty much the same.

Not so. When our new designs come out they are all patented,” explains Masson. The visibility that Alu-Rex gets from exporting its eaves-trough leaf guard system and related fastening products throughout North America and Europe leaves it vulnerable to imitators. “We are constantly working to improve our offerings. But we have to be careful. In our industry, if someone develops a new or innovative concept, it will immediately be copied.”

Not just for technology companies

According to one expert Alu-Rex is right to be cautious about protecting its intellectual property. However not all businesses are as careful. “There is a perception that only technology companies need to worry about these issues,” says Neil Milton, a lawyer, and author of Canadian Intellectual Property Law for Dummies. “But businesses today are increasingly knowledge based, and much of that knowledge has value. If they don’t protect that knowledge, they could end up investing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, and then end up watching someone else reap the benefits.”

As a result, adopting a coherent approach to what Milton calls “intangible creations of the mind that can be legally protected,” is crucial. The first step is to identify just where the key challenges and opportunities lie. According to Milton, these can be best lumped into four broad groups: patents, trademarks, copyrights and industrial designs. “Unless you want your company to always be involved in a race to the bottom, by competing to sell at the lowest price, you have to protect all of these assets,” says Milton.

Don’t let the quiet fool you

However according to one technology transfer specialist, intellectual property issues often do not get the visibility they deserve, particularly in SMEs. Part of the reason for this is that intellectual property protection investments don’t generate the immediate bottom line contributions that many entrepreneurs seek. But a lot also has to do with the innate secrecy that surrounds new innovations. “If you are developing new products, the last thing you want is for the news to get out. So businesses often keep their progress under wraps,” says Phillip Bertin, of Stratégies Trois-Quatorze.  “But by keeping quiet about their innovations, they often also inadvertently avoid discussions about how to protect those investments.”

Another problem says Bertin, is that many businesses find out about intellectual property law the hard way: by inadvertently violating someone else’s patents, an often costly oversight that almost no one wants to publicize. “Often clients tell me their stories in two parts,” says Bertin. “First they tell me that they may have infringed on a competitor’s intellectual property rights. But secondly they insist that I keep quiet about it.” As a result, Bertin signs non-disclosure agreements with almost all clients that he works with.

The first step small- and medium-sized businesses need to take says Alu-Rex’s Masson is to start by being aware that intellectual property issues exist, and to then adopt a coherent approach to managing them. Persistence is key, says Masson.

“We have to be very careful. So we even enforce copyrights on pictures of our products,” says Masson. “Recently we found a company in China had posted some of our images on their site. We could have let it go. But we did not want to take a chance. So we sent them a lawyer’s letter.  They did not take the pictures down right away. But after one or two more letters, they finally responded.”

Peter Diekmeyer (peter@peterdiekmeyer.com) is a freelance Montreal-based business and economics writer.

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