IP portfolio audit

Do you know what you own

Most companies cannot answer this precisely. They know which brands they use. They are less certain which are registered, in whose name, in which classes, whether the registrations are still alive, and whether the agreements behind the creative work ever transferred anything.

An audit answers it in writing, and it is usually the cheapest piece of work a company commissions, because it either confirms the position or finds something there is still time to fix.

What we check

• Ownership. Whether registrations are in the name of the operating company, a founder, a former partner or a holding entity that no longer exists.
• Coverage. Whether the classes registered match what the business sells now, as opposed to what it sold when it filed.
• Status and dates. Which marks are alive, which lapsed, and every upcoming deadline: use declarations at the third anniversary (article 233 of the Mexican Industrial Property Law), renewals counted from the grant (article 178), patent and design annuities and renewals (articles 53, 62 and 78).
• Chain of title. Whether the logo, the site, the photography and the code were ever assigned in writing.
• Contracts. Whether distributors, licensees or agencies hold rights or registrations they should not.
• Gaps. Products, markets and classes with no protection, and the ones worth filing.

What you receive

A written inventory of every asset with its status, a list of the problems ranked by how urgent and how reparable they are, a calendar of every deadline for the next three years, and a recommendation on what to file, what to let lapse and what to fix first.

The common outcome is a dead registration nobody noticed and one asset that was never actually assigned to the company.