Exploiting Your IP For Commercial Advantage

There were a couple times over the last week when I have bumped into Intellectual Property (IP), the first was that there are tax breaks if you exploit it and second IP is still hugely valuable even if you cant patent it.

My first instance was a post in my own LinkedIn group about the “Patent Box” which was a UK tax incentive come concession which over the next 5 years will enable businesses to claim corporation tax of 10% for that portion of the business based on patents. I’m a little fuzzy on the detail but true to form there was virtually no publicity around this change in tax breaks which is clearly designed to start to change the culture of British enterprises to recognise the commercial value of IP. If you are a manufacturing, engineering or high tech business, what are you doing to protect your IP? Could you protect your business assets by patenting your new ideas?