Brian More, a director of scale-ups at Innovate UK, reviews Novaro’s new title on IP and high growth

Brian More

Most, if not all, high-tech SMEs have a longer term strategy and vision to grow their businesses exponentially, defined as either high growth or scale-up, where high growth is above 20 percent a year and scale-up 50 percent a year for at least the next three years. Indeed, the exceptional rate of growth in the current digitally connected global marketplace coined the word ‘blitzscaling’, where in excess of 100 percent year-on-year growth is reported for software as a service (SaaS) and business to consumer (B2C) businesses. This book, Winning with IP: managing high-growth intellectual property, is essential reading for all chief executives, chief technology officers and board directors who want to deliver on their company’s plans. It provides practical advice and recommendations on the management and strategies around intellectual assets and intellectual capital, focusing primarily on IP as an intangible asset class that can provide underlying sustainable value for any business. Strategic advice is given in clear and concise language for the assessment of IP assets and the decisions on whether to register this IP and in which countries to maximise the revenue returns, positioning the company for a solid foundation on which to build stakeholder value. As these high-tech businesses start to grow, and evidence shows that they are post Covid-19, they become visible to large corporations as they attract higher market share as competitors or become a target for acquisition. A strong and defensible IP position is known to add value to these growing enterprises and protect them from indefensible IP scrutiny. For chief executives who require quantifiable and justifiable data to back up IP strategies, the EPO chapter on benefits of IP registrations provides this, backed up by chapters on qualitative examples where the time and cost of IP portfolio management has reaped dividends for the owners. All the traditional methods of working with partners, collaborators, supply chain and even competitors highlight open innovation, and the need to understand the IP position before these contracts commence. The book covers the IP landscape and evolution of technology development from research through to market launch into global markets, with invaluable insights into the EU’s IP regimes and further afield in China. The importance of pre-research analysis of the IP landscape shows why freedom to operate (FTO) and not just patent registrations are demanded by the funders of tech enterprises, especially the venture capital community. In order to make the financial cost of IP attractive to any tech business, the book investigates regional schemes to reduce SME costs in research, filing patents and reduction of corporation tax in many EU states for patent holders through R&D tax credit and patent box schemes. Specific technical areas of current interest are pharmaceutical and digital innovation, where the patent insights cover supplementary patent certificates (SPCs) and standard essential patents (SEPs) respectively. This chapter on SEPs touches on the possible cost to owners of IP in protracted litigation cases, invalidation and opposition cases, something which the insurance sector has responded to by offering IP insurance packages to enable chief executives to embrace IP rather than ignore or reject it. The book is not a theoretical journey of academic research results, but a practical guide to the commercial use of IP in business, written by experts in their respective fields with experience of growing companies, selling companies and building IP portfolios to protect the business for exceptional growth in global markets.