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Carry Out an Intellectual Property Investigation

Posted on 03 Jun 2011 by admin | Filled under: intellectual-property

Before proceeding to explore the best way to go about carrying out an intellectual property investigation, it may be a good idea to mention something with regard to when such an investigation would be justified. Now the need for you to carry out an intellectual property investigation would arise where you feel that someone could have breached your intellectual property rights. It could be, for instance, where you have filed a patent for a particular product and where, rather ‘coincidentally,' you come across someone selling a suspiciously similar product.

It could also be where you, as a creative worker (say a writer, a film maker, a singer or anything along those lines) come across bootleg copies of your work, and where you are keen on knowing who is infringing on your intellectual property rights. Or it could be where you feel that you are not getting enough money out of your intellectual property and where you come to develop a suspicion that the other people with whom you co-own the intellectual property are short-changing you.

In all these situations, the intellectual property investigation would have a number of objectives. Firstly, it would be aimed at identifying the source of the intellectual property infringement. This would be important because as it often turns out in these kinds of situations, the source of property rights infringement you most strongly suspect can be the most innocent person, whilst the person you least suspect turns out to be the real culprit. So the first objective would be to identify the actual source of the infringement. The second objective of the intellectual property investigation would be to establish the motives of the infringement. Sometimes, the motives for property rights infringement go beyond a desire to illegally benefit from the intellectual property. Sometimes, it turns out to be a case of malice, or a case of sabotage by a competitor, and these would be important things for you to establish properly. Finally, the intellectual property investigation would be aimed at building up a water-tight case that can carry the day in a court of justice, leading to restitution on your part, and punishment for the perpetrator of the intellectual property infringement.

The best way to go about intellectual property investigation would be by engaging the services of an investigator who is knowledgeable and experienced in this area. Sometimes, especially in the earliest stages of the whole thing, this may have to be a private investigator; with whose help you can understand the fundamentals of the whole thing, before calling in government investigators with whose help you can build up a prosecutable case.

Normally, the investigation will start with the identification of possible suspects. A hypothesis on how the whole thing is happening will be developed at this stage too. This is where an investigator's creativity comes in handy. Once we have a hypothesis (and a viable one at that), the next step would be to try and develop leads from it. Then the mechanics of the investigation would involve following those initial leads, and in the course of doing so unearthing other newer leads. The pursuit of the newer would lead to yet other leads…till the whole situation reveals itself, the real culprits identified and proper action taken against them.