Buying or Selling a Business
Do It The Right Way
Buying and selling a business often involves the transfer of intellectual property, or at least it should. There are many nuanced steps in identifying and evaluating the intellectual property being transferred.
- From the seller’s perspective, collecting the list of intellectual property and properly authenticating the seller’s ownership of these assets could not only impact the value of the transaction, it may impact whether or not the transaction even takes place.
- From the buyer’s perspective, you need to scrutinize every claim made to ensure that you are truly getting intellectual property that is useful and valuable, as opposed to collecting a paper tiger.
Initiating Protection can partner with business lawyers or other transaction counsel to act as a subject matter expert in this niche area.
Intellectual Property
Any business worth buying almost certainly has some intellectual property associated with it. Sometimes this IP is obvious, such as the patent on the main product the company sells. Other times it is less obvious, though maybe not less important.
- The First Step in this process is identifying the intellectual property that is important to the business value. At Initiating Protection, we have both the experience and the tools necessary to find these critical assets.
- The Second Step is ensuring that the intellectual property is valid. Does the seller own the IP? If not, is it properly licensed? We also find many instances in which a founder or a party closely related to the seller is the actual owner of the IP, which gives us a chance to correct this before the transaction.
- The Last Step is determining how the intellectual property can be transferred from the seller to the buyer. While simply assigning the IP right is often the correct answer, sometimes these assets can’t be assigned. Sometimes the seller needs to also use the IP after the transaction. Accordingly, this step involves the most creativity and likely adds the most value to the transaction.